Journal articles on the topic 'Agile procurement'

This case study introduces an innovation and development concept for agile software tools for the improvement of the productivity and customer experience of forest services. This need was recognized in the context of the opening of forest data and the development of service platforms for a forest-based bioeconomy in Finland. The forest services that were studied covered a continuum from a single type of work, e.g., soil preparation and young stand management through timber procurement, to comprehensive forest property management services. The study concentrated on the needs of micro-, small, and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which provide either retail- or business to business (B2B) services as sub-contractors. In addition, the challenges and bottlenecks in service processes detected by other stakeholders were considered. The prevailing service processes were conceptually modelled in order to search for opportunities for improvements in business and ecosystem services, i.e., agile software concepts. For example, we examined whether it would be possible to create opportunities for flexible operational models for precision, resilience, and protection of valuable microsites in forests. These software concepts were developed and evaluated in co-operation with the stakeholders in a co-creative workshop. The technological feasibility and commercial viability of the concepts, as well as the desirability for the customer were considered. The results of this business development process—i.e., agile software concepts and their anticipated benefits—were provided for further evaluation. In addition to the practical implications of this kind of innovation process tested, the potential of these kinds of agile tools for the further development of knowledge-intensive service processes was further discussed.

Pharmaceuticals companies manufacture and maintain the stocks of several medicines. Presently, hospitals maintain stock to supply the appropriate medicine to patients under their care. The availability of medicines is dependent on the service level of suppliers. In last decade, the pharmaceutical supply chains have been an increasingly important topic. Pharmaceutical supply chains of the medicine manufacturing firm are based on traditional supply chain strategies. But, the concept became obsolete, replaced by modern supply chain strategy. The modern supply chain better analyzes pharmaceutical architectures such as green, service, agile, resilient, flexible manufacturing and is called the pharmaceutical G-F-A-L-R supply chain. To evolve a new model for the pharmaceutical supply chain, a 2nd second level pharmaceutical hierarchy G-F-A-L-R supply chain module structure has been constructed, where a Fuzzy Performance Index model has been applied on the module to compute the overall performance of individual pharmaceutical companies.

In order to flexibly respond to market demands and changing business environments, today’s European machinery and equipment manufacturers are organized in agile, non-hierarchical business networks. As a consequence, relationships with suppliers are often highly volatile, instable and inapprehensible, which in turn causes turbulences with respect to reliability of deliveries. Following the design research paradigm, both practical and knowledge problems are considered by this paper. First, from a practical point of view, a new intelligent supply chain design for non-hierarchical manufacturing networks is developed, that pledges to improve the delivery reliability. Second, from a knowledge point of view, the underlying hypotheses that go along with this new design are validated using structural equation modeling. The results confirm several previously proposed assumptions, including the importance of an electronic procurement process as well as the use of incentive mechanisms for influencing a supplier’s delivery reliability.

This article provides an overview of project management aspects of a data warehouse application implementation. More specifically, the article discusses the project's implementation, challenges faced, and lessons learned. The project was initiated with an objective to redesign the procurement data pipeline of a data warehouse. The data flows from enterprise resource planning (ERP) system to enterprise data warehouse (EDW) to reporting environments. This project was challenged to deliver more quickly to the consumers with improved report performance, and reduced total cost of ownership (TCO) in EDW and data latency. Strategies of this project include providing continuous business value, and adopt new technologies in data extraction, transformation and loading. The project's strategy was also to implement it using some of the agile principles. The project team accomplished twice the scope of previous project in the same duration with a relatively smaller team. It also achieved improved quality of the products, and increased customer satisfaction by improving the reports' response time for management.

Many societies are still in the stranglehold of the coronavirus. China, South Korea and Taiwan have apparently overcome the pandemic but problems that are almost impossible to resolve are piling up in Europe. Despite the joint vaccination procurement campaign, the EU in particular is struggling to regulate the crisis domestically. The states of the western Balkans which have been relying on an EU perspective for years and which have repeatedly been put off, have also been hit hard, piling problems on top of health services that are, for a number of reasons, already seriously jeopardised. In view of the worsening situation - countries in central and south-eastern Europe are over-represented among those with the highest numbers of Covid-19 related deaths - we take a closer look at current practicalities and political realities in these ‘high incidence areas’, as the region is currently known (according to the Ost-Ausschuss der Deutschen Wirtschaft). This article focuses on the role of the EU, and how views of this are changing in the region, as well as that being played by other, apparently more nimble and agile, powers.

IntroductionEvidence supporting the use of pacemakers is well established. However, evidence about the optimal use of pacemaker telemonitoring for disease management in heart failure is not. Health Technology Wales (HTW) held a national adoption event to encourage implementation and best practice in use of pacemaker telemonitoring in the National Health Service (NHS) Wales to improve patient outcomes in heart failure.MethodsMulti-stakeholder national adoption workshop using a mixture of expert presentations, case studies and interdisciplinary group and panel discussions to agree key actions to understand the value and promote optimal use of pacemakers for remote disease monitoring in patients with heart failure in Wales.ResultsThe workshop was attended by forty-five senior professionals with an interest in improving care of patients with heart failure. Actions to progress included: providing a centralized Welsh system to support technical issues that arise with telemonitoring; considering interoperability with other NHS Wales systems; encouraging value-based procurement with collection of a core outcome set; agreeing implementation issues with both professionals and patients; audit to understand experience, resource use and outcomes; and sharing manufacturer evidence on the accuracy of telemanagement algorithms. It was suggested that these actions be progressed via an All-Wales multi-stakeholder approach, led by the Welsh Cardiac Network.ConclusionsDeveloping a more agile, lifecycle approach to technology appraisal is currently advocated; recalibrating the focus from technology assessment to technology management across the complete technology lifecycle. HTW will endeavour through regular adoption events to facilitate such a paradigm shift that aims to understand value and optimise use of evidence-based technologies.

Purpose: This study aims to identify whether the degree of fit of the correlation between high supply chain and manufacturing strategy will result in a better performance.Design/methodology/approach: Strategic alignment test between the functions uses 102 SMEs in Yogyakarta as, Indonesia with purposive sampling technique. The data are collected by distributing questionnaires to the companies that qualify the criteria of the sample, respondent target are procurement manager, production and IT.Findings: Samples are grouped into two ideal types of strategies used mean split technique. 53 SMEs adopt ASCS (Agile Supply Chain Strategy) and 49 SMEs adopt LSCS (Lean Supply Chain Strategy). Two of the strategy groups have a low value of misfit score; it means that the degree of fit between supply chain strategy and manufacturing strategy is high. The result of simple regression test by using one side technique shows that a regression coefficient values is negative both in LSCS and ASCS group, but the hypothesis test is only proven on ASCS group while LSCS group is not significant.Research limitations/implications: (1) The empirical finding of bivariate fit model test encourage a research space to explore the other contingent variable besides manufacturing strategy. For example, business and information technology strategy; (2) The measurement of the company performance becomes the objective of the success of the alignment of supply chain strategy with the contingent variable which should be specified using the performance variable of the supply chain.Originality/value: The use of Euclidean distance formula is expected to cover the technical limitations of contingency test by using interaction approach between the complex variables; the value of misfit score reflects the extent to which program alignment between the company functions.

Abstract The development of Information Technology projects using Project Management Methodologies like PMP-PMI, Agile or SCRUM for software development, CPM, CCPM, RAD, XP, FDD, ITIL, JAD, LD, PRINCE2, etc.; may be a complete success or a total catastrophe, for series of reasons, events and circumstances that frequently are not related at all with the deliverables, the products being built, the IT technology involved, the level of expertise, the responsibility and professionalism of the stakeholders including the project manager, but due to intercultural factors. The PMP-PMI Model (PMBOK) describes 10 areas: Cost Management, Time Management, Scope Management, Risk Management, Quality Management, Procurement Management, Integration Management, Stakeholder Management, Human Resources Management and Communication Management. An IT project is considered successful if the customer is happy, but technically and formally if the TEAM was able to meet the triple constraint set up by time/cost/scope. This happy ending is not possible if the project manager and the team as a whole are not able to confront, attack and solve the issues associated with Human Resources Management, Stakeholder Management and specially Communication Management. These three areas are highly influenced by Intercultural factors like language, race, age, gender, religion, sexual preferences, beliefs, habits, etc., becoming their analysis an essential task if we want to accomplish and guarantee a favorable outcome. This position paper concludes in contradiction with what is a very common believe between many technical project managers that the most important factors to take in consideration for the success of an IT project management is the careful and planned attention to the potential issues and challenges associated with the cross-cultural communication and the human resources implicated in the projects. This paper will describe the cultural dimensions, issues and challenges associated with Intercultural Project Management for IT.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to present an overview of the current practices in “corporate-startup collaboration” and “Open Innovation” (OI) in Europe. OI has increasingly become mainstream. A growing number of European corporates are adopting OI approaches to innovate and benefit from a more agile business environment. As Henry Chesbrough – the father of OI – finds out, there is “no single best model for engagement”. It highly depends on the goals that companies want to achieve. Models and approaches of corporate-startup collaboration are continuously evolving. A study of the variety of their effective-implementations in a real business context is therefore beneficial. Design/methodology/approach For the purpose of this research, the authors analyzed the European corporates that are considered as “innovation leaders” according to “SEP Europe’s Corporate Startup Stars” annual ranking. According to experts’ evaluations, these companies represent the most advanced case studies in open innovation. The paper analyses the experience of 31 European large corporates implementing effective corporate-startup collaboration. The research approach is exploratory and descriptive. Findings By adopting a practitioner-oriented perspective, the authors contribute to shed new light on how European corporates adopt OI and internalize arising innovations across organizational boundaries. Six key areas of OI activities have been identified and compared based on required resources’ commitment. Nearly all of the corporates have implemented low-commitment strategies such as organizing one-off startup events and/or sharing free resources with startups. By contrast, only a limited number of corporates engaged actively through acquisitions (M&A), which requires the highest level of commitment. Startup procurement and investments seem to be the most effective approaches to startup-corporate collaboration, while corporate accelerators and innovation outposts are adopted by only nearly half of the companies considered. Research limitations/implications Although the research is not a comprehensive survey, it is useful to identify current and future trends of successful corporate-startup collaboration as well as best practices by European leading companies working at the forefront of OI. Practical implications This study provides evidence of the main trends in corporate-startup collaborations, both opening up their innovation processes for mutual benefits. The results have important implications both for corporates and policy makers since the study also highlights the main barriers that hinder successful corporate-startup collaborations. Although many of the analyzed corporates report to have introduced “startup-friendly procedures” – including shortening payments times, simplification of vendor registration and qualification process – the vast majority of companies still need to be educated about the opportunities and benefits arising from Open Innovation (OI). This is particularly true for mid-size companies and small and medium-sized companies that based on some preliminary evidences have not yet fully engaged in open innovation due to limited resources and lack of ability to understand the disruption threats posed by recent technology and market evolution. Originality/value To date, there is little evidence on current practices of “Open Innovation” and “corporate-startup collaboration” in Europe. Only recently, large European corporations have concretely started to engage with startups. This paper attempts to shed new light on this so-far under-explored issue.

ABC is a retail textile shop is situated in a suburb area of Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka. They have a routine of daily sales and weekly purchases and have a monthly expense of utility and salary payment for workers who work on sales. For the moment they are running a filebased system like Excel sheet for inventory keeping, purchasing, maintaining vendors’ details and workers details, daily sales and profit margins including number of items on each variety with a custom variety code. Since there is poor network coverage in the area, they are unable to use an open source online inventory system. So, it was decided to implement an inventory management system for them. By developing, “Procurement and Inventory Management System”, they can reduce their time for entering, updating, calculating and retrieving data. Not only that but also, they can avoid data redundancy, data consistency, high data security, privacy, and easy recovery. They can enter memos or special notes and they can filter and search related data. And, they can export grid view data to Microsoft excel sheet. The system built has been able to have a positive and beneficial impact on both organization and consumers. To develop the system, it was used agile software development methodology, the SQL Server 2014 was used as the database, Visual Studio 2010 as developer tools and C# is used as the programming language. The results of this study to get a system that has been developed that can make transactions which generate transaction reports, and which update database and remind notes for consumers thus greatly supporting the activities at the ABC shop.

PurposeMany supply chains have faced disruption during Covid-19. Artificial intelligence (AI) is one mechanism that can be used to improve supply chain resilience by developing business continuity capabilities. This study examines how firms employ AI and consider the opportunities for AI to enhance supply chain resilience by developing visibility, risk, sourcing and distribution capabilities.Design/methodology/approachThe authors have gathered rich data by conducting semistructured interviews with 35 experts from the e-commerce supply chain. The authors have adopted a systematic approach of coding using open, axial and selective methods to map and identify the themes that represent the critical elements of AI-enabled supply chain resilience.FindingsThe results of the study highlight the emergence of five critical areas where AI can contribute to enhanced supply chain resilience; (1) transparency, (2) ensuring last-mile delivery, (3) offering personalized solutions to both upstream and downstream supply chain stakeholders, (4) minimizing the impact of disruption and (5) facilitating an agile procurement strategy.Research limitations/implicationsThe study offers interesting implications for bridging the theory–practice gap by drawing on contemporary empirical data to demonstrate how enhancing dynamic capabilities via AI technologies further strengthens supply chain resilience. The study also offers suggestions for utilizing the findings and proposes a framework to strengthen supply chain resilience through AI.Originality/valueThe study presents the dynamic capabilities for supply chain resilience through the employment of AI. AI can contribute to readying supply chains to reduce their risk of disruption through enhanced resilience.

ABSTRACTObjectives Researchers are increasingly recognising the potential for connected health devices – in particular, wearables and smartphones - to capture high-resolution, multi-dimensional data from everyday life. The Dementias Platform UK project aims to develop research capacity in this emerging area by providing a combination of hardware and software: a pool of devices capable of generating data supported by a ‘sensing platform’ designed to securely receive, store and link these data with sources, including clinical records and cohort data. We collected feedback from researchers and patients to (i) develop requirements for the sensing platform and (ii) inform procurement of a device pool.
 ApproachSeparate workshops were held to involve (i) researchers (public and private sector) and (ii) over 30 patients from four potential user groups, including people with dementia. Both groups gave feedback on the suitability and acceptability of a range of wearable devices for capturing data for different study purposes. Additionally, researchers commented on the platform functionality. Patients were provided opportunities to handle multiple devices and test them at home. We captured feedback at workshops using notes, which were collated, shared and discussed among the team. An agile software development methodology was used to respond rapidly to changing requirements.
 ResultsPatients supported plans for connected health dementia research and, in principle, were willing to wear devices, provided they consented voluntarily and data were stored securely and confidentially. Many patients were prepared to undergo some level of inconvenience, for example wearing devices for longer periods, particularly if given ongoing feedback about research progress, findings and benefits. Researchers and patients agreed the platform should be open to a wide range of devices, available currently and in future. Researchers envisaged using the platform for a range of projects and data types. As a result, we established a device pool (including wearables, smartphones and tablets) and developed a generic, ‘device-agnostic’ platform to receive and store data. Platform architecture was designed to be as flexible as possible to allow for future modifications.
 ConclusionWe found it was feasible to integrate requirements from both researchers and patients when developing a sensing platform for dementia research. By seeking feedback from both user groups, we were better able to attend to device linkage requirements, platform functionality and acceptability, integrating these within development and procurement processes. Furthermore, we identified aspects of research setup and design that could support sustained engagement from participants, thereby improving data completeness and quality.