Supply chains are becoming increasingly sophisticated and vital for many firms’ competetiveness. Nevertheless, their interrelated, complex and global nature also makes them more vulnerable to the risk of their operations being interrupted. This article analyzes the ripple effect on supply chains, which occurs when disruption in one node spreads throughout the supply chain and impacts its performance, design and planning parameters. This article offers a systematic review of the existing literature that covers the ripple effect in the supply chain context. It structures and classifies existing research currents and application areas in this context by presenting and analyzing the obtained results. Based on the conclusions obtained with the literature review, a conceptual framework is proposed and includes the main characteristics and perspectives of the ripple effect on supply chains, and the possible proactive and reactive measures to mitigate its effects and to recover from serious disruptions. The conceptual framework is also analyzed and validated by a system dynamics simulation model.

In this paper a two-year field study was carried out to analyse how satisfaction differs across the traditional and blended learning methods. Altogether, 21 courses for graduate and postgraduate engineering students were evaluated. Several variables and their relationship with student satisfaction in the first year, with all courses delivered in traditional mode, were compared with student satisfaction in the second year, which had the same courses delivered in blended mode. Results suggest that student satisfaction is greater in blended courses than in face-to-face courses. This can be explained because the levels of class attendance, motivation and collaboration with classmates were higher in blended learning than in classroom instruction. In addition, class attendance, access to teachers, collaboration with classmates and motivation were found to be leading predictors of student satisfaction in blended environments.

This article presents a literature review to identify the current knowledge of supply chains 4.0 from the sustainability perspective. Reviewed papers were classified in terms of objectives, results, and sustainability approaches. Additionally, a critical discussion with the main results and recommendations for further research was carried out. Manufacturing supply chains have been contemplated but agri-food supply chains and chains related to diversified cropping systems have been also considered. In this way, 54 articles were identified and revised, and were classified according to the three main aspects of sustainability: economic, social, and environmental. The classification of articles indicated that more attention has been paid to the environmental aspect in the industry 4.0 (I4.0) context in the literature, while the social aspect has been paid less attention. Finally, reference frameworks were identified, along with the I4.0 models, algorithms, heuristics, metaheuristics, and technologies, which have enabled sustainability in supply chains.

This article proposes a simulation approach based on system dynamics for operational procurement and transport planning in a two-level, multi-product and multi-period supply chain. This work uses the Vensim^® simulation tool to highlight the potential of system dynamics for supply chain simulation. A real continuous simulation application is presented in an automobile supply chain. The effectiveness of the proposed model is validated through the comparison of the results provided by spreadsheet-based simulation, fuzzy multi-objective programming and system dynamics-based simulation models. The fundamental point of this paper is that the simulation model is the most effective approach in quantifying the trade-off between number of truck shipments and average inventory level. In this case, the number of truck shipments is to be minimised, resulting in a higher inventory level. If the average inventory level were minimised, then there would be more truck shipments. Here, it is shown the benefit of this type of simulation model in reducing inventory by about 10%.