An Operations Perspective on Product Take‐Back Legislation for E‐Waste: Theory,Practice, and Research Needs

Agrowing stream of environmental legislation enforces collection and recycling of used electrical and electronics products. Based on our experiences with producers coping with e‐waste legislation, we find that there is a strong need for research on the implications of such legislation from an operations perspective. In particular, as a discipline at the interface of systems design and economic modeling, operations focused research can be extremely useful in identifying appropriate e‐waste take‐back implementations for different business environments and how producers should react to them.     

Historical Relationship Between Performance Assessment for Radioactive Waste Disposal and Other Types of Risk Assessment

This article describes the evolution of the process for assessing the hazards of a geologic disposal system for radioactive waste and, similarly, nuclear power reactors, and the relationship of this process with other assessments of risk, particularly assessments of hazards from manufactured carcinogenic chemicals during use and disposal. This perspective reviews the common history of scientific concepts for risk assessment developed until the 1950s. Computational tools and techniques developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s to analyze the reliability of nuclear weapon delivery systems were adopted in the early 1970s for probabilistic risk assessment of nuclear power reactors, a technology for which behavior was unknown. In turn, these analyses became an important foundation for performance assessment of nuclear waste disposal in the late 1970s. The evaluation of risk to human health and the environment from chemical hazards is built on methods for assessing the dose response of radionuclides in the 1950s. Despite a shared background, however, societal events, often in the form of legislation, have affected the development path for risk assessment for human health, producing dissimilarities between these risk assessments and those for nuclear facilities. An important difference is the regulator's interest in accounting for uncertainty.     

Hazardous Waste Incineration at Sea: EPA Decision Making on Risk

This paper critiques the Environmental Protection Agency's assessment of risk for hazardous waste incineration at sea. It reviews operational and transportation risks and considers alternative approaches for managing chlorinated organic hazardous wastes. It concludes that depending on the scale of the program, ocean incineration will either contribute little to the overall management of this waste stream or else it will engender significant risks, especially in the coastal environment. Furthermore, past assessments on the part of EPA have tended to understate the risks of incineration at sea while simultaneously holding out the promise of the technology as a commercial-scale management option. Finally, this paper observes that the Western European countries that pioneered incineration in the North Sea are now finding practical alternatives. It is recommended that waste reuse, on-site treatment, and techniques of waste reduction provide viable alternatives and obviate the need for incineration at sea.     

Intergenerational Issues Regarding Nuclear Power, Nuclear Waste, and Nuclear Weapons

Nuclear power, nuclear waste, and nuclear weapons raise substantial public concern in many countries. While new support for nuclear power can be found in arguments concerning greenhouse gases and global warming, the long-term existence of radioactive waste has led to requirements for 10,000-year isolation. Some of the support for such requirements is based on intergenerational equity arguments. This, however, places a very high value on lives far in the future. An alternative is to use discounting, as is applied to other resource applications. Nuclear weapons, even though being dismantled by the major nations, are growing in number due to the increase in the number of countries possessing these weapons of mass destruction. This is an unfortunate legacy for future generations.     

Internationalization of Developing Country Firms into Developed Countries: The Role of Host Country Knowledge-Based Assets and IPR Protection in FDI Location Choice

Foreign direct investment (FDI) from developing to developed countries is a widespread phenomenon in the global economy. The literature suggests that such investments frequently follow a motive to seek knowledge-based assets, with the goal of augmenting the firm's resource base through internationalization. We argue that the prevalence of this motive may direct developing country firms' FDI toward developed countries with relatively stronger knowledge-based assets and weaker intellectual property rights (IPR) protection and that this effect is amplified when both conditions coincide. Furthermore, we suggest that the respective importance of knowledge-based assets and IPR protection diminishes as developing countries augment their own knowledge-based assets and that the importance of asset seeking as an internationalization motive for the country's firms declines compared with other motives such as institutional escapism. We investigate our model with FDI data including investment flows from 85 developing countries to 35 developed countries during 2009–2014. We find that developing country firms prefer investing in developed countries with stronger knowledge-based assets and weaker IPR protection. These criteria attract even more FDI when both co-occur. Furthermore, the influence of weaker host country IPR protection on the location decision diminishes for firms originating from home countries with higher stocks of knowledge-based assets.     

Infant Exposure Assessment for Breast Milk Dioxins and Furans Derived from Waste Incineration Emissions

Polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins (PCDDs) and polychlorinated dibenzofurans (PCDFs) have been detected in human milk samples obtained in several countries. Possible sources include emissions from incineration of municipal waste in resource recovery facilities. A formula is presented for calculating the infant daily dose of dioxin equivalents from breast milk on the basis of the maternal daily intake. Application of the formula suggests that an infant breast-fed for 12 months would receive around 10% of the cumulative exposure dose per body weight that would be received by an adult with 50 years of exposure. Further analysis indicated that the contribution of dioxin equivalents from breast milk to an infant's body concentration at the end of 12 months of breast feeding would amount to 1.7 times the concentration in the mother. However, dioxin and furan emissions from a source calculated to result in worst-case lifetime cancer risks of the order of 1 in 100,000 are only likely to increase breast milk concentrations by around 1%-10% of the levels that have been detected in several countries. This finding suggests that there are major sources of dioxins and furans other than from municipal solid waste incineration that need to be identified.     

Analysis of Local Acceptance of a Radioactive Waste Disposal Facility

Like many other countries in the world, Korea has struggled to site a facility for radioactive waste for almost 30 years because of the strong opposition from local residents. Finally, in 2005, Gyeongju was established as the first Korean site for a radioactive waste facility. The objectives of this research are to verify Gyeongju citizens' average level of risk perception of a radioactive waste disposal facility as compared to other risks, and to explore the best model for predicting respondents' acceptance level using variables related to cost-benefit, risk perception, and political process. For this purpose, a survey is conducted among Gyeongju residents, the results of which are as follows. First, the local residents' risk perception of an accident in a radioactive waste disposal facility is ranked seventh among a total of 13 risks, which implies that nuclear-related risk is not perceived very highly by Gyeongju residents; however, its characteristics are still somewhat negative. Second, the comparative regression analyses show that the cost-benefit and political process models are more suitable for explaining the respondents' level of acceptance than the risk perception model. This may be the result of the current economic depression in Gyeongju, residents' familiarity with the nuclear industry, or cultural characteristics of risk tolerance.     

Waste identification diagrams

Value Stream Mapping (VSM) is a very popular tool in lean environments to represent production flows, mapping value stream of a product or family of products, and helps to identify some types of waste. Although very popular, this tool has some limitations as already described in many publications, especially in terms of restrictions in showing most types of waste as well as in its inability to represent various production routes. The purpose of this study is to introduce the waste identification diagram (WID), a new tool to represent production units with its different forms of waste, which overcomes some VSM limitations. The originality of WID comes from the use of its symbols’ dimensions to convey, in a visual and immediate way, relevant information about a production unit. In this paper, WID is applied on a production unit of a lift manufacturer, for testing its performance and comparing it to VSM. The main findings are that WID is in general more effective than VSM in terms of representation of complex production units and in terms of identification of more forms of waste. WID must however overcome some of its limitations such as the lack of information-flow representation and the links to suppliers and clients.     

Hybrid Governance: The Case of Household Solid Waste Management in Sweden

Governance is hybrid to the extent that it involves diverse organizational forms, jurisdictional domains, and stakeholders across the public and private sectors. This article analyses the governance of household solid waste management in Sweden from a hybridity perspective, with the City of Helsingborg in North-Western Scania in Sweden as an example. The governance arrangements comprise municipal and company-based organizations, conflicting legislation, and long planning and investment horizons. The latter has resulted in significant innovations over the last 20 years, while changes in organizational forms, tasks, networks and jurisdictions have caused tensions in governance processes and relationships.     

Quantitative methods in a developing country: Managers' perceptions and desires

The role of quantitative methods in business decision making has been a subject of much discussion in the literature. Most of this discussion has emanated from developed countries. In this paper, the current practice in a developing country is examined, as well as the desires and perceptions of management. It is evident that the current practice lags that of the developed countries. Moreover, while the practice in companies with international association is not markedly different from local companies, the management of these companies desire a situation closer to that found in the developed countries. It is suggested that adequately trained personnel are not currently available and that a career orientated masters programme in quantitative methods is necessary in developing countries.     

Partner selection for reverse logistics centres in green supply chains: a fuzzy artificial immune optimisation approach

The design of reverse logistics networks has now emerged as a major issue for manufacturers, not only in developed countries where legislation and societal pressures are strong, but also in developing countries where the adoption of reverse logistics practices may offer a competitive advantage. This paper presents a new model for partner selection for reverse logistic centres in green supply chains. The model offers three advantages. Firstly, it enables economic, environment and social factors to be considered simultaneously. Secondly, by integrating fuzzy set theory and artificial immune optimisation technology, it enables both quantitative and qualitative criteria to be considered simultaneously throughout the whole decision-making process. Thirdly, it extends the flat criteria structure for partner selection evaluation for reverse logistics centres to the more suitable hierarchy structure. The applicability of the model is demonstrated by means of an empirical application based on data from a Chinese electronic equipment and instruments manufacturing company.     

Modelling end-of-life product recovery chains - a case study

European Union legislation, and existing national legislation of many European countries, mandates that manufacturers take back and recover their electronic and electrical equipment. If manufacturers are to comply with legislation, models need to be developed for these activities. Whilst infrastructural and technological deficits exist and must be addressed, so too must the organization of recovery, from a business perspective. In this paper, models of resource recovery are presented and a case study described.     

Waste Package Performance Evaluations for the Proposed High-Level Nuclear Waste Repository at Yucca Mountain

The evaluation studies of the proposed repository for long-term storage of spent nuclear fuel and high-level nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, are underway. Fulfillment of the requirements for limiting dose to the public, which includes containment of the radioactive waste emplaced in the proposed repository and subsequent slow release of radionuclides from the Engineered Barrier System (EBS) into the geosphere, will rely on a robust waste container design, among other EBS components. Part of the evaluation process involves sensitivity studies aimed at elucidating which model parameters contribute most to the waste package and overlying drip shield degradation characteristics. The model parameters identified for this study include (1) general corrosion rate parameters and (2) stress corrosion cracking (SCC) parameters. Temperature dependence and parameter uncertainty are evaluated for the general corrosion rate model parameters while for the SCC model parameters, uncertainty treatment of stress intensity factor, crack initiation threshold, and manufacturing flaw orientations are evaluated. Based on these evaluations new uncertainty distributions are generated and recommended for future analyses. Also, early waste package failures due to improper heat treatment were added to the waste package degradation model. The results of these investigations indicate that the waste package failure profiles are governed by the manufacturing flaw orientation model parameters.     

“扩大生产者责任”制的一般均衡分析

扩大生产者责任制是当前发达国家或地区正在实行的一项废弃物管理政策,其研究在我国亦引起了愈来愈多的关注。文章针对我国废弃物管理中最突出的家电废弃物问题构建了一般均衡模型,分别探讨了外部性存在时的最优家电废弃物管理政策和外部性不存在时的最优家电废弃物管理政策。研究结果表明:外部性存在时,庇古税是家电废弃物管理的最优政策;外部性不存在时,可在我国将要实行的收购回收方式的基础上推行扩大生产者责任制。     

Competitive Capabilities among Manufacturing Plants in Developing,Emerging, and Industrialized Countries: A Comparative Analysis

Competitive capabilities have been defined as a plant's actual performance relative to its competitors, with the most commonly investigated capabilities being quality, delivery, flexibility, and cost. However, most research in this realm has investigated capabilities within developed countries, and neglected the context of developing and emerging nations, which are increasingly becoming viable economic entities in global supply chains in their own right. The present study fills this gap and carries out a comparative analysis of competitive capabilities among plants in developing, emerging, and industrialized countries. Basing our arguments on the resource‐based view of the firm, we suggest that the influence of competitive capabilities on each other varies among plants in differentially industrialized regions. Specifically, we suggest that, on average, competitive capabilities tend to influence each other to a greater degree in plants in emerging and developing countries compared to industrialized countries. Along similar lines, we suggest that the influence of the four competitive capabilities on performance improvement is manifested more strongly among plants in emerging and developing countries than among plants in industrialized nations. We investigate these contentions with data from 1,211 plants in 21 countries. The results are particularly important for decision makers as they decide on the increasingly global location of their manufacturing operations or the configuration of their global supply chains.     

The contribution of outward direct investment to productivity changes within China, 1991–2007

There has been a marked growth in recent years in outward direct investment (ODI) by developing countries, and in particular, by China. Previous studies have examined the impact on developing countries productivity of foreign direct investment (FDI) from developed countries. This paper looks at the effects of China's outward direct investment on growth in its own productivity, and at two specific reasons for this growth: technology sourcing and improvements in efficiency. These are examined using data from China's ODI in eight developed countries during the period 1991 to 2007. It appears that Chinese outward direct investment has had beneficial spill-over effects in improving total factor productivity growth over the period of the study, and that gains in efficiency have been the chief reason for this. Our vector auto regression (VAR) decomposition analysis also suggests that domestic R&D capital stocks are the most important source of productivity growth with greater contribution to technological progress. China is likely to continue to expand its ODI and it will be interesting to see whether the productivity gains continue at the same rate, and whether other developing countries also increase their ODI and reap the same benefits.     

Efficient Take‐Back Legislation

Product and waste take‐back is becoming more regulated by countries to protect the environment. Such regulation puts an economic burden on firms, while creating fairness concerns and potentially even missing its primary target: environmental benefits. This research discusses the economic and environmental impacts of extended producer responsibility type of legislation and identifies efficiency conditions. It is shown that the right policy would (i) make producers responsible for their own waste to avoid fairness concerns and (ii) favor eco‐design producers to create stronger environmental benefits. Furthermore, the efficiency of take‐back systems is also driven by environmental classification of products, industry structure, and end‐user willingness to participate in take‐back programs.     

Sustainable supply chain management in the fast fashion industry: An analysis of corporate reports

In recent decades, the fast fashion industry has been characterized by widespread operations across both developing and developed countries. Due to the economic, social and environmental problems in developing countries, companies increasingly focus on sustainability and try to ensure the same quality and standards in working and production conditions throughout their supply chains. Although the tension in the exchange of resources between developing and developed countries lies at the heart of current sustainability activities, what these companies are actually doing to manage their supply chain has not yet been explored in depth in the literature. Drawing on the theoretical framework of Seuring and Müller (2008), the current study attempts to fill this void by conceptually mapping the current situation of sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) in the fast fashion industry by analysing reports from 9 companies that use the same reporting guidelines. The results of the study reveal that these companies focus significantly on supplier compliance with their code of conduct, employing further monitoring and auditing activities to prevent production problems in developing countries, improve overall supply chain performance and set sustainability criteria for their suppliers.     

Managing Nuclear Waste from Power Plants

National strategies to manage nuclear waste from commercial nuclear power plants are analyzed and compared. The current strategy is to try to operate a repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, to dispose of high-level nuclear waste underground. The main alternatives involve temporary above-ground storage at a centralized facility or next to nuclear power plants. If either of these is pursued now, the analysis assumes that a repository will be built in 2100 for waste not subsequently put to use. The analysis treats various uncertainties: whether a repository at Yucca Mountain would be licensed, possible theft and misuse of the waste, innovations in repository design and waste management, the potential availability of a cancer cure by 2100, and possible future uses of nuclear waste. The objectives used to compare alternatives include concerns for health and safety, environmental and socioeconomic impacts, and direct economic costs, as well as equity concerns (geographical, intergenerational, and procedural), indirect economic costs to electricity ratepayers, federal government responsibility to manage nuclear waste, and implications of theft and misuse of nuclear waste. The analysis shows that currently building an underground repository at Yucca Mountain is inferior to other available strategies by the equivalent of $10,000 million to $50,000 million. This strongly suggests that this policy should be reconsidered. A more detailed analysis using the framework presented would help to define a new national policy to manage nuclear waste.     

A cross-cultural comparative study of management

This paper discusses a conceptual scheme and the research findings of an empirical study recently completed in six developing countries. The main purpose of the study was to examine the feasibility and effectiveness of transferring advanced management practices, know-how, and techniques from the developed to the developing countries. The research design and approach utilized in this study can be best classified as a micro-macro approach.