A Systems Thinking Approach to Investigating Complex Sugarcane Supply and Processing Systems: Integrating Rich Pictures and Bayesian Networks

Shongwe, Mduduzi Innocent

doi:10.1007/s11213-017-9418-7

Cited by 11 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…A supply chain is a synthesis in which many components and functions are integrated to manage the flow of goods, information, and finances from the source to end customers efficiently [85][86][87][88][89]. Furthermore, a supply chain is built within the marketing environment, where many uncertain factors exist [90][91][92][93].…”

Section: Strategic Supply Chain Alliance and Cooperation Instabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The systems thinking introduced by Holmberg [90] to supply chain management provides us with a holistic view and has been widely used in research and management practice [87,89,[94][95][96]. Systems thinking is a framework for seeing the connections between components rather than each component only for seeing properties that are the properties of the whole rather than the properties of its components [90].…”

Section: Strategic Supply Chain Alliance and Cooperation Instabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Home-Delivery-Oriented Agri-Food Supply Chain Alliance: Framework, Management Strategies, and Cooperation Stability Control

Han

Pervez

et al. 2020

Sustainability

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The high cost of operation and severe competition in the agri-food e-commerce market make it hard for the small and medium agri-food enterprises (A-SMEs) to operate cost-efficiently and in a sustainable manner. This paper seeks to organize A-SMEs to develop a cooperative organization via collaborative strategies and alliance structures, named as the home-delivery-oriented agri-food supply chain (HASC) alliance, to form a substantive relationship to gain a stable foothold in the emerging e-commerce market. A theoretical framework of the HASC alliance is built with its organizational structure and schematics of the process of implementation strategies that cover the aspects of last-mile chain extension, food transportation, and production/distribution control. Furthermore, a three-step analytical method is proposed to analyze the performance of the alliance with the aim to provide appropriate strategies to hedge against the potential risks of cooperation instability. A hypothetical case is conducted, and the results show that: (1) the performance of the hypothetical HASC alliance with time shows significant variation in the beginning, but it gains stability with the application of stability control strategies; (2) the cooperation stability of HASC alliance is very sensitive to the performance of the strategies that control the customer and environment variations; (3) the factors of trust and market fluctuation have higher effects on membership and environmental stability, respectively; (4) the minimum and maximum cost ranges of control strategies at which the alliance can maintain its stability and performance are 5% and 29%, respectively, of the total operation cost.

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Section: Strategic Supply Chain Alliance and Cooperation Instabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Strategic Supply Chain Alliance and Cooperation Instabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Home-Delivery-Oriented Agri-Food Supply Chain Alliance: Framework, Management Strategies, and Cooperation Stability Control

Han

Pervez

et al. 2020

Sustainability

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“…They are a free-form type of diagrammatic representation used as a facilitating tool in an analytical situation [16]. However, rich pictures are soft modelling tools from soft systems methodology, which means that they do not concretely represent external reality but instead personal views [14,17]. As a way of enhancing a rich picture, we propose the use of technology and spatial data analysis to create a more realistic rich picture.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Applying Spatial Analysis to Create Modern Rich Pictures for Grassland Health Analysis

et al. 2021

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Grasslands are complex and heterogeneous ecosystems, and their health can be defined by the cumulative ability of their components to evolve, adapt, and maintain their integrity in the presence of stress/disturbance and provide ecosystem services. Herein, a design approach is used to generate alternative and multifunctional pastoral livestock production systems that enhance grassland health. As a way of understanding the complexity of grasslands and initiating the design process using systems thinking, rich pictures emerge as a useful method. As rich pictures are subjective views, geographic information systems (GIS) could be applied to improve the veracity of their outcomes, as both techniques are forms of an analytical process. This paper reports the application of GIS to a case study of a high-country farm to generate and combine different thematic maps to create a modern rich picture. The rich picture is a combination of remote sensing data (altitude, slope, aspects, and the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI)), and on-the-ground data (plant species distribution and diversity and soil chemical, biological, and physical parameters). Layers were combined using a multi-criteria evaluation (MCE) based on the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) to create a final rich picture. The results highlight dissimilarities in perceptions of what underpins ‘grassland health’ between researchers in different fields and with different perspectives. The use of GIS produced a modern rich picture that enhanced the understanding of grassland health and allowed for the identification of gaps, values, and possibilities for future research work.

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“…Agricultural systems are characterised by interactions between, amongst others, multiple stakeholders, the environment, land use planning and finances. As such, agricultural systems are viewed as complex socioecological [8] or sociotechnical [9] systems.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Integrated agricultural supply and processing systems exhibit several complex system's characteristics such as nonlinear dynamics, feedback, emergence, delay, and counterintuitive behaviour [10]. Solutions to such contexts as a consequence, rely on the interactions between the various system components rather than on isolated components [9]. A systems thinking approach as such, is required to unlock and to understand the adoption of technologies in IASPS.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Developing a Systematic Diagnostic Model for Integrated Agricultural Supply and Processing Systems

Shongwe

Bezuidenhout

Sibomana

et al. 2019

Systems

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Despite all the innovative research in agriculture, technology adoption in integrated agricultural supply and processing systems (IASPS) remains a challenge. This is attributed to the complex nature of IASPS and the continued lack of a holistic view towards most of the interventions into the systems. To make sense of issues that affect IASPS, it is important to recognise that most issues within these systems do not exist in isolation, but are imbedded within complex interrelationships. This research developed and demonstrated a systematic diagnostic model that could be used to locate high leverage intervention points within IASPS and to make predictions about the systems behaviour. A meta-analysis was conducted to test the evidence of the interlinkages between IASPS domains and to compare the strength of these relationships. The model revealed that the collaboration, structure and information sharing domains had a higher direct leverage over the other IASPS domains as these were associated with a larger number of interlinkages. Additionally, collaboration and structure provided dynamic leverage as these domains were part of feedback loops. In terms of the potency, collaboration was highly correlated to culture compared to the other domains, viz., information sharing, coercive power and transaction costs.

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A Systems Thinking Approach to Investigating Complex Sugarcane Supply and Processing Systems: Integrating Rich Pictures and Bayesian Networks

Cited by 11 publications

References 38 publications

Home-Delivery-Oriented Agri-Food Supply Chain Alliance: Framework, Management Strategies, and Cooperation Stability Control

Home-Delivery-Oriented Agri-Food Supply Chain Alliance: Framework, Management Strategies, and Cooperation Stability Control

Applying Spatial Analysis to Create Modern Rich Pictures for Grassland Health Analysis

Developing a Systematic Diagnostic Model for Integrated Agricultural Supply and Processing Systems

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