Enhancing Supply Chain Agility with Industry 4.0 Enablers to Mitigate Ripple Effects Based on Integrated QFD-MCDM: An Empirical Study of New Energy Materials Manufacturers

Abstract

Given the increasing complexity of the global supply chain, it is an important issue to enhance the agilities of enterprises that manufacture new energy materials to reduce the ripple effects of supply chains. Quality function deployment (QFD) has been applied in many areas to solve multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) problems successfully. However, there is still lack of sufficient research on the use of MCDM to develop two house-of-quality systems in the supply chain of new energy materials manufacturing enterprises to determine ripple effect factors (REFs), supply chain agility indicators (SCAIs), and industry 4.0 enablers (I4Es). This study aimed to develop a valuable decision framework by integrating MCDM and QFD; using key I4Es to enhance the agility of supply chain and reduce or mitigate its ripple effects ultimately, this study provides an effective method for new energy materials manufacturers to develop supply chains that can rapidly respond to change and uncertainty. The case study considered China’s largest new energy materials manufacturing enterprise as the object and obtained important management insights, as well as practical significance, from implementing the proposed research framework. The study found the following to be the most urgent I4Es required to strengthen the agility of supply chain and reduce the key REFs: ensuring data privacy and security, guarding against legal risks, adopting digital transformation investment to improve economic efficiency, ramming IT infrastructure for big data management, and investing and using the new equipment of Industry 4.0. When these measures are improved, the agility of the supply chain can be improved, such as long-term cooperation with partners to strengthen trust relationships, supply chain information transparency and visualization to quickly respond to customer needs, and improving customer service levels and satisfaction. Finally, REFs, such as the bullwhip effect caused by inaccurate prediction, facility failure, and poor strain capacity caused by supply chain disruption, can be alleviated or eliminated. The proposed framework provides an effective strategy for formulating I4Es to strengthen supply chain agility (SCA) and mitigate ripple effects, as well as provides a reference for supply chain management of other manufacturing enterprises in the field of cleaner production.

Improving manufacturing Efficiency in the industry 4.0 era: empirical evidence from the manufacturing companies

“…ِAlso, the results of this study support the results from Frank et al (2019) andBougaa et al (2015)that VM technology meets the requirements of the competitive condition in FoF through achieving customers' needs and improving profitability through industry 4.0. Also, the results of this study support findings from Hsu et al (2022) and Mohanty et al (2022) that agility is one of the requirements and enabling factors of FoF, which VM provides a high level of agility to Improving Manufacturing Efficiency.…”

“…Given the increasing complexity of the manufacturing environment, it is important to enhance the agility of facilities to reduce the cascading effects of intense competition. Thus, agility is one of the requirements and enabling factors of FoF (Hsu et al, 2022). The most urgent requirements to enhance the agility of enterprises are the adoption of investment in digital transformation to improve economic efficiency.…”

Industry 4.0 in “Major Emerging Markets”: A Systematic Literature Review of Benefits, Use, Challenges, and Mitigation Strategies in Supply Chain Management

“…However, due to weak cyber-security practices, data are prone to theft from internal and external actors [17]. Data leakage has severe legal repercussions and reputation damage, which can be more damaging compared to traditional leakage accidents [86].…”

“…For instance, Ningde City provides a 5 percent subsidy to new energy manufacturers who spend more than CNY 5 million on new investments. This will support new energy manufacturers in acquiring Industry 4.0 equipment and developing their supply chain agility [86]. Regulatory pressure influences enterprises to implement Industry 4.0 so as to minimize hazardous waste and comply with environmental regulations [51].…”

A novel hybrid GIS‐based multi‐criteria decision‐making approach for flood susceptibility analysis in large ungauged watersheds

“…As another novelty of this study, we integrate DEcision‐MAking Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) method with the BWM‐based ANP to clarify the inter‐dependencies and causal interactions among the flood‐influencing criteria. DEMATEL is a well‐known systematic framework to detect and evaluate a sophisticated system that contains causal connections between contributing factors such as flood susceptibility analysis (Hsu et al, 2022). DEMATEL is said to be an efficient method to deal with interdependencies on the computations to provide a reliable and stable result (Azareh et al, 2019; Kanani‐Sadat et al, 2019; Wang et al, 2019).…”