Current Advancements of and Future Developments for Fourth Party Logistics in a Digital Future

This paper aims to analyze the potential future of the 4PL concept based on expert opinions with special regard to the influence of digitalization coming with a disruptive trans-formation of supply chains. Service arrangements, provider capabilities and benefits resulting from a 4PL partnership are compared in current and future configurations. The research follows an explorative mixed methods approach with semi structured interviews followed by an expert panel. This builds a basis for an online survey questionnaire to inquire on important future aspects for the 4PL concept by a sample of respondents from multinational companies. Our results show a clear trend away from simply organizing transportation and logistics activities towards the provision of an IT platform as well as further value-added service activities such as planning, analytics and monitoring. Along with this, IT capabilities appear to be an important differentiator for 4PL providers in the future. Moreover, relationships between 4PL providers and their clients become closer and more strategic, which leads to a customer valuing not only direct cost reductions but rather improvements resulting from optimized operations through superior analysis and planning functions

An Analysis of Logistics Pedagogical Literature: Past and Future Trends in Curriculum, Content, and Pedagogy

There presently is no comprehensive review which systematizes and summarizes the burgeoning body of logistics educational literature. The purpose of this paper is to provide a guide for both educators and practitioners to assess the history, current status, and future trends in logistics education in order to nurture advancement in logistics education. This paper draws its conclusions based upon a literature review and categorizes the evolution of logistics education into three areas: defining curriculum, developing content and skills taught, and refining teaching methods. Logistics education continues to benefit from strong ties to industry. Additionally, four principle macro-environmental factors were discovered that impact the current status of logistics education: an increase in the number of logistics educational programs, limited supply of logistics-trained faculty, changes to content requirements, and a changing teaching environment. Future research directions from the published literature are summarized. As current logistics programs continue to evolve and the number of logistics and supply chain management programs continue to increase in response to industry demand, this comprehensive review of the logistics literature may help serve as a benchmark for past and current practices in logistics education. The early partnership between industry and education set the stage to help guide educators to evolve logistics education to address practitioner needs. Increased interest in logistics education and changing environmental factors suggest the need for continued collaboration to further logistics education. The literature demonstrates successful dynamic behavior in response to dynamic industries. It highlights factors which may drive further evolution of logistics education and proposes areas impacted

Logistics hardware and services control system

Software system permits onsite direct control of logistics operations, which include spare parts, initial installation, tool control, and repairable parts status and control, through all facets of operations. System integrates logistics actions and controls receipts, issues, loans, repairs, fabrications, and modifications and assets in predicting and allocating logistics parts and services effectively

THE IMPACT OF LOGISTICS PERFORMANCE ON THE SALES LEVEL An Empirical Study in Retail Sector

The aim of this research is to assess the impact of logistics performance on retail sector. This research was conducted in Palu in Central Sulawesi Province. There are several indicators involve in this study, such as, customer service, operation metric, and logistics cost. This research is categorized as explanatory research and multiple regression method was used to analyze the hypotheses. Simultaneously, this research found that logistics performance has significant contribution to sales level. However, customer service has not had positive contribution to sales level compare to operation metric and logistics cost. In addition, logistics cost has big impact on the sales level of retail groceries. The result of this research can be used by academicians and professionals who intent to deal with logistics in retail sector. This research also identifies that logistics performance need further study in different region and sector with the aim to improve the understanding of dimension

The impact of green logistics service quality on logistics provider performance

Paper delivered at the 19th Logistics Research Network annual conference 2014, 3rd-5th September 2014, Huddersfield. Effective and efficient logistics services can enhance the firm’s competitive advantage. Therefore, logistics management can be considered as a key component of organisational effectiveness and success (Khan and Burnes, 2007). At the same time, environmental or green issues in logistics service offerings have attracted much managerial attention in the logistics industry for the future. One important objective is for logistics service providers (LSPs) to deliver their service offerings to customers in more environmentally friendly ways. The study is ongoing project and investigates variables and constructs of green service quality, logistics service quality and logistics performance index in Thailand. The purpose of this paper is to report on an ongoing study of the importance and relationship of green service quality (GSQ) competencies relative to logistics service quality (LSQ) competencies in the context of Thai LSPs

Outsourcing the logistics function: the supply chain role of third-party logistics service providers in UK convenience retailing

Logistics, defined as the process of strategically managing the procurement, movement and storage of materials; parts; finished inventory and related information flow through the organisation and its marketing channels, is increasingly being recognised as a vital part of an organisation’s marketing strategy. In many organisations, the logistics function is currently facing significant challenges. Pressures from increasing competition and high customer service-level expectations have created a need for more professional and better-equipped logistics services. Confronted with such competitive pressures, these organisations are faced with decisions of the make OR buy kind with regard to the logistics processes of supply and distribution. In addition, the emergence of a need to focus on core capabilities has led many organisations to contract out all, or part of, the logistics function to third-party providers. This paper explores the challenges of outsourcing logistics in the UK convenience-retailing sector

Global logistics indicators, supply chain metrics, and bilateral trade patterns

Past research into the determinants of international trade highlighted the importance of the basic spatial gravity model augmented by additional variables representing sources of friction. Studies modeled many sources of friction using various proxies, including indices based on expert judgment in some cases. This paper focuses on logistics friction and draws on a data set recently compiled by the World Bank with specific quantitative metrics of logistics performance interms of time, cost, and variability in time. It finds that the new variables that relate directly to logistics performance have a statistically significant relationship with the level of bilateral trade. It also finds that a single logistics index can capture virtually all of the explanatory power of multiple logistics indicators. The findings should spur public and private agencies that have direct or indirect power over logistics performance to focus attention on reducing sources of friction so as to improve their country's ability to compete in today's global economy. Moreover, since the logistics metrics are directly related to operational performance, countries can use these metrics to target actions to improve logistics and monitor their progress.Common Carriers Industry,Transport and Trade Logistics,Economic Theory&Research,Free Trade,Trade Policy

Relationship dynamics in logistics

In recent years, a growing number of organisations have outsourced logistics services to logistics services providers (LSPs). To account for greater interconnection between organisations, supply chain relationship is crucial for achieving successful logistics outsourcing. Because organisations need to continuously change their decision-making in outsourcing, relationships among organisations in outsourcing are dynamic. Further, because logistics outsourcing has created more supply chain relationships (SCRs) among suppliers, LSPs, and customers, managers need to use a network perspective to manage multiple relationships in the process of outsourcing. The triadic relationship is recognised as the smallest network structure. As a result, the primary goal of this research is to study dynamics of supply chain relationships in logistics outsourcing from a view of triadic relationship. This relationship is called a logistics triad and consists of a supplier, a logistics service provider (LSP), and their common customer. The present research was carried out in two stages. The first stage collected triadic cases from LSPs. To improve validity and reliability, the second stage used a deductive process to test findings of the first stage by collecting triadic cases from suppliers and customers. Results of the comparison between the two stages provided verified research findings because the two stages exhibited close similarity. The research outcomes led to the identification of factors that influenced the relationship dynamics in logistics triads. Among these factors, the combined effects of purchasing volumes, resource capability, and focal firm can override influences from other factors to determine stability and dynamics of logistics triads. Overall, this research makes several major contributions to the knowledge of supply chain relationships: developing an integrative model of triadic relationship dynamics, identifying control approaches used by organisations to dominate triads, and demonstrating organisations' mediating effects on dyadic relationships within triads

Utilization of e-Logistics in multinational companies to overcome difficulties of today’s economic environment

As the incredible growth of the Internet is changing the way corporations conduct their business. Logistics service providers must consider changing their traditional logistics system into an e-Logistics system in order to accommodate to the dynamic changes in the commercial world. The purpose of this study is to provide a better understanding of how organizations utilize e-Logistics within their supply chain and how to create a competitive advantage during the economic crisis so that losses be limited if not eliminated. To reach this purpose, two research questions are stated (two multinational companies), focusing the factors that influence the e-Logistics system. From the in-depth interviews and used to collect data, the findings show that the e-Logistics system can be described as a network creating value process. The findings further indicate that reliability factors, maintainability factors, software factors and facility, transportation and handling factors, all influence the e-Logistics system. On the other hand, availability factors, economic factors, organizational factors and test and support equipment factors are of low-level importance for e-logistics system. The second part of the paper focuses on how e-logistics will change the multinational traditional logistics systems and how we can measure (Key Performance Indicators) these changes.competitively, e-logistics, economic crises, measure (key Performance Indicators).