Int. Journal of Business Science and Applied Management / Business-and-Management.org
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EDITORIAL
This special issue is composed of five selected papers from the 3rd Olympus International
Conference on Supply Chains held on Athens Metropolitan Expo, November 7 & 8 2015, Greece,
covering different aspects of the Supply Chain Management. The selected papers were submitted in
two double-blind review process by academics. The first review process was conducted for the purpose
of the Conference and the second for the special issue, ensuring a significant contribution to higher
quality papers. A short presentation of the selected papers is following.
In the first paper Sambracos and Ramfou try to answer to the following key question: "Do freight
transport time savings translate to benefit for transport consuming companies?" by modeling the
internal supply chain of a generic company. They concluded that savings in freight transportation time
do not always result to benefits for the company. The main reason behind that is that he behavior of a
system cannot be known just by knowing the elements of which the system is made of.
Parisi et al. design a specialised telecommunications container (TC) that belongs to a group of
containers that serve the purpose of immediate response to global disasters. The design focuses on
defining the topology of the various parts of equipment by taking into consideration factors of
serviceability, functionality, human-product interaction, universal design language, energy
consumption, sustainability and the interrelationship with the other containers.
Sakali, Skalkos and Bourlakis investigate in a systematic way the level of agility of the Greek food
chain companies. The findings of this study indicated that the Greek food chain cannot be characterized
as agile as it has low flexibility in the workings of many of its members. This is mainly due to the
major challenges that the examined sector is faced with that arise from changes in the sector’s
economic and non- economic environments, from changes in consumers’ lifestyles, from global
increases in food consumption, and from a diminishing production base and now days from the not
stable political and economical situation.
Malindretos et al. study the exploitation of the opportunities derived from the wine production and
waste management. The results of the study reveal the significant opportunities (both financial and
environmental) derived from the application of sustainable practices in the wine industry. It has greater
applicability globally, providing some key cost elements and the evaluation results from the operation
of a company that elaborates wineries by-products.
Pavlou et al. in the fifth paper try to estimate the effect of different parameters, such as the number
of machines or the travel distance between field and biorefinary facility, on total operational time and
variable cost of biomass supply chain through a simulation model. The results shown that in each case /
scenario, parameters such as area of the field, travel distance, number of available machines, capacity
of the machines, etc. should be taken into account in order a less time and/ or cost consuming
machinery combination to be chosen.
