Efficient supply chain management is essential for maintaining successful workflows within companies. A lack of decisional, organizational, and information integration can lead to increased cost for a business due to missed opportunities, delays, inefficient inventory decisions, poor capacity allocation, and misuse of resources. Companies must employ collaborative practices across all functions of the supply chain in order to avoid costly mishaps. Hierarchical Planning and Information Sharing Techniques in Supply Chain Management is an essential reference source that discusses information exchanges and approaches of coordination related to operation planning for a better understanding of how hierarchical planning techniques and principles can contribute to the effective and efficient management and planning of supply chain activities. Featuring research on topics such as competitive advantages, information sharing, and transport management, this book is ideally designed for managers, academicians, and practitioners in the field of supply chain management, operations management, logistics, and operations research.

The global supply chain creates environmental and social burdens during different stages of production and distribution. Ethical and sustainable practices along the supply chain seek to minimize these burdens and ensure fair labor practices, lower emissions, and a cleaner environment. Ethical and Sustainable Supply Chain Management in a Global Context uses cases, qualitative studies, empirical results, and analyses of legal frameworks to focus on ethics and sustainability as they relate to the management of global supply chains. Featuring research on topics such as production planning, consumer awareness, and labor laws, this book is ideally designed for managers, policymakers, professionals, researchers, and students working in the field of sustainable development and related disciplines including marketing, economics, finance, operations management, supply chain management, environmental science, and waste management.

In terms of healthcare, in both the People’s Republic of China and the United States there have been dramatic changes within the past 60 years. The PRC has evolved to be a superpower and a major player in the international healthcare development arena whereas the USA has struggled to maintain its image as a major builder of soft diplomacy. When it comes to delivering healthcare, Africa is a continent with many developing countries with individualized needs that calls for individualized healthcare plans, and both the PRC and USA have struggled with this relationship. The PRC on one hand has had social conflict with the average African, which has been detrimental to relations, the USA on the other hand, has reduced international development funds and has been in a healthcare crisis of its own. Due to these changes, Africa has essentially become the last battleground for soft power with healthcare being the measuring tool. Transitioning Healthcare Support in Developing Countries From the US to China: Emerging Research and Opportunities explores the history of healthcare in Africa from the 1960s to the COVID-19 (Coronavirus) Pandemic in 2020. This book examines the relationship between the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the United States of America (USA) in providing healthcare services to Africa and documents the struggles and areas of both success and failure in doing so. The chapters cover issues such as racism in PRC residing in Africa and the USA’s struggle with coronavirus. This book is ideal for government officials, medical personnel, policymakers, international agencies, practitioners, stakeholders, researchers, academicians, and students interested in the relations and healthcare delivery between both the USA and PRC to Africa.

City logistics is one of the most popular fields of transportation sciences, dealing with sustainably supplying cities and at the same time reducing congestion and pollution related to goods transport in urban areas. Recently, humanitarian, emergency, and crises logistics has been a subject of increasing interest, often seen from an international viewpoint. However, some of the recent natural crises have shown the importance of resilience and reliability of the current urban logistics systems. The Handbook of Research on Urban and Humanitarian Logistics is a critical scholarly publication that addresses urban logistics and resilience, sustainable urban logistics, humanitarian logistics in urban areas both for crisis or long-term, and planning for resilient urban development. Featuring a broad range of topics that discuss the new and future trends in urban logistics and resilient cities, this publication is ideal for public planners; urban planners; company managers in logistics and transport; consulting agencies; regional, national, and international institutions and organizations; researchers; academicians; and students.

In recent decades, the industrial revolution has increased economic growth despite its immersion in global environmental issues such as climate change. Researchers emphasize the adoption of circular economy practices in global supply chains and businesses for better socio-environmental sustainability without compromising economic growth. Integrating blockchain technology into business practices could promote the circular economy as well as global environmental sustainability. Integrating Blockchain Technology Into the Circular Economy discusses the technological advancements in circular economy practices, which provide better results for both economic growth and environmental sustainability. It provides relevant theoretical frameworks and the latest empirical research findings in the applications of blockchain technology. Covering topics such as big data analytics, financial market infrastructure, and sustainable performance, this book is an essential resource for managers, operations managers, executives, manufacturers, environmentalists, researchers, industry practitioners, students and educators of higher education, and academicians.

International trade has made logistics a strategic consideration for firms. The decision-making framework is substantially different in the case of international logistics, as this involves cross-border movement of goods and multimodal transportation. An integrated framework based on customer's requirement, their country regulations, risk, and cost specific to goods and countries needs to be developed. Global Supply Chains and Multimodal Logistics: Emerging Research and Opportunities is an essential reference source that provides concepts of global logistics and its risk factors and provides an integrated framework for effective decision making. Highlighting such topics as enterprise resource planning, forecasting models, and logistics systems, this publication is ideally designed for managers, business professionals, researchers, academicians, and students in fields including but not limited to supply chain management, international business, and logistics.

In this technology-driven era, conventional manufacturing is increasingly at risk of reaching its limit, and a more design-driven manufacturing process, additive manufacturing, might just hold the key to innovation. Offering a higher degree of design freedom, the optimization and integration of functional features, and the manufacturing of small batch sizes, additive manufacturing is changing industry as we know it. Additive Manufacturing Technologies From an Optimization Perspective is a critical reference source that provides a unified platform for the dissemination of basic and applied knowledge about additive manufacturing. It carefully examines how additive manufacturing is increasingly being used in series production, giving those in the most varied sectors of industry the opportunity to create a distinctive profile for themselves based on new customer benefits, cost-saving potential, and the ability to meet sustainability goals. Highlighting topics such as bio-printing, tensile strength, and cell printing, this book is ideally designed for academicians, students, engineers, scientists, software developers, architects, entrepreneurs, and medical professionals interested in advancements in next-generation manufacturing.