International Research Symposium on Pure and Applied Sciences (IRSPAS)
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Item Optimization approaches for inventory management in Blood Supply Chains: A systematic review of literature(4th International Research Symposium on Pure and Applied Sciences, Faculty of Science, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, 2019) Gunawardana, K. D. R.; Vidanagamachchi, K.; Nanayakkara, L. D. J. F.Blood Supply Chain Management is highly critical, as ensuring the availability of the right blood type, at the right place, in the right quantity, at the right time is a matter of life and death. Unlike other products, there is no substitute to human blood. Therefore, there is an increasing need of wisely managing this invaluable resource. Studies show that blood availability in countries need to be increased in order to meet the demands of ageing populations. Meanwhile, the discard rate of blood collections has an impact on the people’s attitude towards the blood system of the country and the first-time donor return rate. The overall objective of this study is to investigate the optimization approaches towards inventory management aspect in blood supply chains. A systematic review of literature has been carried out to investigate different optimization approaches and management concepts towards blood inventory optimization while maximizing the service levels and minimizing discard rates. Firstly, articles were selected through a web search based on the keywords of the study domain in order to ensure the relevance to the study. Further, articles published between 2000 and 2019 were considered ensuring novelty of findings. Keywords such as “inventory management”, “supply chain”, “optimization”, “simulation” and “blood” were used. In the process of reviewing literature, initially 43 studies were analysed through the keywords search and 15 papers were selected which are directly related with the area of the study. Studies revealed that perishable and substitution inventory management systems with stochastic demands are highly complex and scarcely represented in the literature. The studies further indicated that simulation could be used as a tool to determine optimal inventory policies accounting for perishability and substitution. A framework was developed summarizing management concepts and optimization techniques used in blood inventory management. This framework can be used to identify potential research areas that are available in this arena and as a guidance for future researchers who are willing to study in this field. As a further research, it is suggested to explore the behaviour of inventory management practices of multi-product, multi-echelon and perishable supply chains with highly uncertain demand and supplyItem Vehicle routing optimization in Sri Lankan megacity logistics context(4th International Research Symposium on Pure and Applied Sciences, Faculty of Science, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, 2019) Warnakulasuriya, M. M.; Vidanagamachchi, K.; Niwunhella, D. H. H.; Nanayakkara, L. D. J. F.Sri Lanka has been making its way to develop its metropolitan city, Colombo, as a megacity. Transportation is one of the basic components to consider in planning any city emerging as megacities. City logistics function is a major factor which influences the economy and the social activities of a country. In megacity logistics, the growth in the volume of freight traffic and the aim to optimize the logistics activities have led research in recent years. According to the National Transport Report for year 2017, Port of Colombo handled 651,968 of Imports (TEUs) alone in year 2016. The majority of the destinations of this freight is Colombo and its suburbs. Considering the growing demands, the Western Region Megapolis Master Plan has been developed to cater systematic inland freight transportation in Colombo and suburbs. Therefore, it is important to focus on optimizing the urban transport network as well as the freight transport which has been given insignificant attention to date. Routing of flows and scheduling of deliveries are the two main factors to be considered in optimizing freight transport on which a lot of opportunities lie upon. Routing of flows is the pattern of flow at different spatial scales and scheduling of deliveries determines the flow of freight traffic through time windows. This study investigates the impact of city logistics for the road network in Sri Lanka, considering the main land transport corridors to map the freight flows as identified in the Megapolis Master Plan – Sri Lanka. This is done through a systematic data collection from a company handling freights within Colombo to match the Sri Lankan city logistic scenario about the freight transport regarding the units that are transported, and travel times taken for the considered destinations from the depot where freights are consolidated before released into the road network. It also identifies main city destinations around Colombo, the freight flows and freight volumes (in TEUs) in determining the impact of it for the road network. Thereby, this study will depict a vehicle routing optimization model to optimize the freight outflow function, minimizing the time taken. This is conducted through a simulation-based approach using the Supply Chain Guru simulation and modelling software, which is tested with the data collected. This vehicle routing simulation will provide platform for improved operation with identified demands to minimize the freight traffic and decision making in terms of the road network utilization for future demandsItem Employee competencies development framework for industry 4.0 adaptation in the healthcare sector(4th International Research Symposium on Pure and Applied Sciences, Faculty of Science, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, 2019) Weerasinghe, W. P. T. D.; Vidanagamachchi, K.; Nanayakkara, L. D. J. F.Item Optimizing the process of airline fleet re-assignment to minimize the impact of disruptions(4th International Research Symposium on Pure and Applied Sciences, Faculty of Science, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, 2019) Fernando, P. A.; Nanayakkara, L. D. J. F.; Tharaka, V. K.; Niwunhella, D. H. H.Aircraft assignments often deviate from the original schedule due to technical failures, operational requirements and other unforeseen circumstances which can be termed as disruptions. In such situations, it is necessary for the airline to assign an aircraft on ground to replace the grounded aircraft. Such reassignments entail re-work of the network, seat configurations, fuel requirements, load and other operational requirements. An efficient method to carry out re-assignments is absent in the Sri Lankan context; although research has been conducted to identify the optimum methodology for fleet assignment, those related to disruption management and aircraft re-assignment to minimize the impact of disruptions are scarce; disruptions still cost about 10% of airline revenue according to research conducted. Through the background study on Sri Lankan Airlines and literature, it was identified that the constraints of existing models do not capture all the elements such as passengers, aircraft and crew in the optimization of their objective functions. Available models do not consider re-assignment options such as ferrying, swapping, delaying and cancelling, in their entirety either. The exploratory study established the fact that disruption recovery is a time consuming and complex task which is required to be planned and executed in a matter of minutes. The controllers are often constrained to produce only a single feasible plan of action which may not be optimal. It is a difficult task to evaluate the quality of the recovery action which is to be executed. In most airlines, the personnel generating the recovery plan do not have adequate software-based decision support to construct high-quality recovery options, to compare available options or assess the down-stream impact of a disruption. The research is aimed at developing a model based on heuristics and meta-heuristics for supporting a model for the formal optimization of disruption recovery decisions. The impact of disruptions on the airline, types of fleet, nature of assignments, past assignments and requirements of an assignment are taken into consideration as qualitative data analysis. Quantitative data analysis is used to assess alternative assignments that could have been possible, comparison of options, model building and impact analysis in terms of cost and frequency. The study identified and validated the heuristics/meta-heuristics involved in the current methodology followed in aircraft schedule recovery and the rational/logic behind current process that can support optimization model building using heuristics, integer programming and simulationItem Assessment of enterprise information systems adoption in small & medium enterprises in Sri Lanka: A systematic review of literature(Research Symposium on Pure and Applied Sciences, 2018 Faculty of Science, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, 2018) Kaluarachchi, T. R.; Weerabahu, W. M. S. K.; Nanayakkara, L. D. J. F.In Sri Lanka, Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) play a vital role in the economy in terms of national output and employment. In today’s highly competitive economy, small and medium-sized enterprises lack the resources and technologies to compete with large enterprises with a relatively high death rate. In order to survive in the competitive market and exploit opportunities, many small and medium-sized enterprises adopt information technology (IT) related applications. However, in the current context of IT application usage, such as Enterprise Information Systems (EIS), the SME sector in Sri Lanka is far behind compared to other countries. Therefore, the need to adopt to EIS/other Information Systems related technologies is becoming a must or an urgent need in the context of establishing a competitive SME sector. As a result, some IT organizations have integrated with the SME sector in different business solutions according to their information requirements while meeting up with their capabilities. However, these integrations would ultimately face failures rather than success. The objective of this study is to recognize the real need for EIS based applications in the SME sector while accessing the adoption level and identify the driving forces and barriers which influence the focus of SMEs adoption of EIS based technologies. This study is based on a comprehensive, systematic review of literature published in relation to assessing adoption of IT related applications’ in the SME sector. Consequently, to conceptualize the factors under technological, organizational and environmental contexts, reviewed articles are roughly classified into these 3 categories according to different keywords. Under such classification framework, top management support, IT experience, relative advantage, complexity, industry, market scope, regulatory policies, external IT support, and competitive pressure etc. are emphasized as the main factors. Further originated that, innovativeness, IT-driven attitude and entrepreneurial competencies also drive adoption of EIS related technologies. Through the effective analysis of the above evidence of factors, the paper explains the specific causes of the low adoption rate of EIS, which will be extremely important for the SME management and policymakers. Hence, the future work needs to be carried out to answer the problems on what level of adoption of EIS is required by SMEs and why EIS adoption is difficult for the SME sector in Sri Lanka.Item Assessing the applicability of industry 4.0 to optimize new product development process in Sri Lankan apparel industry: a conceptual model(Research Symposium on Pure and Applied Sciences, 2018 Faculty of Science, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, 2018) Wijewardena, S. G. E. H.; Weerabahu, W. M. S. K.; Nanayakkara, L. D. J. F.The world is experiencing environmental problems due to the environmental pollution and degradation happening in a major scale due to the waste generated both by public and industries. Among the industrial waste generators, logistics industry plays a major role due to the wastes released in different forms in their operations. Sustainability is emerging as a main consideration throughout the industrial world to reduce and control the industrial waste. Lean management is becoming a popular management tool on minimizing wastes. Although lean and green concepts have been studied in different industrial contexts, a theoretical gap has been identified in the field of logistics. A comprehensive literature review was conducted along with the expert reviews based on interviews to address the identified research gap. The objective of the study is to examine the best practices related with lean and green concepts which are applicable to the logistics industry. A key word based search in Google scholar and Scopus was conducted for selecting the published research papers which have been proven as valid to extract the knowledge for this study. In this stage, the studies conducted on lean and sustainable practices were selected while excluding the other studies. Then the topics and abstracts of selected articles were analyzed to select the studies that have studied about the practical implementation of green and lean concepts. Finally, a full text review was conducted to identify best practices in the logistics industry while excluding the research papers in other industries. Transportation and the warehousing are the main logistics functions focused in this study. The result of the study is a best practice reference model developed by authors for logistics service providers to identify their stage in implementing lean and green best practices. Best practices were identified through a comprehensive literature review and industry based observations. The identified best practices have been categorized for five different levels which gives a clear understanding for an organization regarding the current stage while providing a clear road map for organizations to develop to the next stage. The model is validated through the reviews of experts in the logistics industry. The proposed model will be beneficial for the logistics service providers. It can be concluded that the result of the study will lead the logistics service providers to reduce their industrial wastes and provide a sustainable service if the model is used properly.