Many leading firms in the USA have adopted an integrated strategic approach to purchasing and logistics management known as supply chain management. As the twenty-first century begins, supply chain management has become a significant strategic tool for firms striving to improve quality, customer service and competitive success. This article surveyed senior managers in various industries to study the prevalent supply chain management and supplier evaluation practices. The study reduced these practices to a smaller set of constructs and related the constructs to firm performance. The results show that many constructs were correlated with firm performance and that some constructs were found to adversely affect performance.

Past research has shown that the performance of manufacturing cells can be improved if family orientated schedulingheuristicsare used,or ifjobs are split into smaller transfer batches for processing and material handling purposes. The researchhas also shown that large amounts oflot splitting results in increasedsetup frequency due to the reduction in transfer batch size. This can offset any gains in performance. This study examines the combined effect of lot splitting in a manufacturingcellthat utilizes family-based schedulingheuristics. The resultsshow that family-based schedulingis an effective means of reducingthe negativeimpact of lot splitting on flow time. Lot splitting, however, has little benefit for due date performance even when scheduling rules that reduce setup frequency are used.

Much of the research in tool management has ignored the potential impact of tool life on shop performance. Tool management research has typically assumed that tool life is deterministic and can be predicted accurately. Since tool life is a function of its quality, cutting speed, depth and other environmental factors, no two identi cal tools exhibit the exact same tool life. An as sumption of stochastic tool life is more realistic on the actual shop floor. In this paper, we have developed a simulation model to examine the effects of stochastic tool life, dispatching rules and tool failure penalties on shop performance.