Sharing services for freight distribution: concepts, stakes and experience comebacks

La mutualisation logistique est un sujet très à la mode mais peu étudié dans la littérature scientifique. Ce document propose les concepts de base de la mutualisation logistique pour la distribution de marchandises, énonçant les principes de base et proposant deux modèles pour la conception et l'analyses de systèmes de distribution de marchandises avec une mutualisation de plusieurs opérations.Mutualisation logistique; supply chain management; aide aux décisions de groupe; logistique urbaine

The Potential of an Enhanced Cooperation Measure in the EAFRD (2014-2020): the case of Ireland

This report was funded by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) through the National Rural Network (February-May, 2012).The current Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on support for Rural Development by the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development (EAFRD) includes Article (36) Cooperation that is potentially instrumental for realising the objectives of FOOD HARVEST 20204. The purpose of this report is to assess the scope and potential of Article 36 in the context of Irish agriculture and its findings have four key aspects. First, the main areas of confluence between Article 36 and primary policy objectives as set out in Food Harvest 2020 are identified. Second, a range of cooperation categories and types relevant to Article 36, many of which are operational in Ireland, are profiled. Third, drawing from case-studies of these co-operation types5, the operational characteristics of each type are presented, focusing on compatibility with Article 36. Possible supports that would encourage and assist the formation and operation of the cooperation types on a broad scale into the future, and also any possible constraints that would prevent success, are indicated. Fourth, a brief discussion of some key implementation considerations arising from the analysis overall is presented.Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marin

THE CHANGES ON THE FIELD OF LOGISTIC ACTIVITIES

If logistics can be considered an assembly of methods, functions, and ways used by a company with the purpose of giving clients the goods taken at a low price and in a period of time according to clients’ expectations, taking into consideration the quantities settled by contract, we can say that, in a company, the logistics functionality contributes to coordination the offer by requiring the lowest costs, based on some strategic and tactics plans as well as keeping qualitative relations between suppliers and clients. Logistics can be said to represent the optimization of the company’s both fundamental cycles: the cycle-client (from order to delivery) and the project-cycle (from conception to use). From this point of view, this is an essential component of both the strategy and the companies’ organization. Some companies in West Europe have moved or created new production plants in Centre and East Europe, mainly in the new member states of the European Union (NOKIA from Germany to Romania, RENAULT from France to Romania, etc). This is based on some detailed research on the importance that a functional logistics of industrial platforms has taking into consideration both raw materials and clients’ satisfaction, who, more often than not is far from the production place.planning, distribution, management, supply, market

Logistics’ place in the global administration of the product’s life cycle

If logistics can be considered an assembly of methods, functions, and ways used by a company with the purpose of giving clients the goods taken at a low price and in a period of time according to clients’ expectations, taking into consideration the quantities settled by contract, we can say that, in a company, the logistics functionality contributes to coordination the offer by requiring the lowest costs, based on some strategic and tactics plans as well as keeping qualitative relations between suppliers and clients. Logistics can be said to represent the optimization of the company’s both fundamental cycles: the cycle-client (from order to delivery) and the project-cycle (from conception to use). From this point of view, this is an essential component of both the strategy and the companies’ organization. Some companies in West Europe have moved or created new production plants in Centre and East Europe, mainly in the new member states of the European Union (NOKIA from Germany to Romania, RENAULT from France to Romania etc.). This is based on some detailed research on the importance that a functional logistics of industrial platforms has taking into consideration both raw materials and clients’ satisfaction, who, more often than not is far from the production place.client, distribution, performance, supplier, supply.

Towards a Novel Cooperative Logistics Information System Framework

Supply Chains and Logistics have a growing importance in global economy. Supply Chain Information Systems over the world are heterogeneous and each one can both produce and receive massive amounts of structured and unstructured data in real-time, which are usually generated by information systems, connected objects or manually by humans. This heterogeneity is due to Logistics Information Systems components and processes that are developed by different modelling methods and running on many platforms; hence, decision making process is difficult in such multi-actor environment. In this paper we identify some current challenges and integration issues between separately designed Logistics Information Systems (LIS), and we propose a Distributed Cooperative Logistics Platform (DCLP) framework based on NoSQL, which facilitates real-time cooperation between stakeholders and improves decision making process in a multi-actor environment. We included also a case study of Hospital Supply Chain (HSC), and a brief discussion on perspectives and future scope of work

Simulation and optimization methods for logistics pooling in the outbound supply chain

Logistics pooling and collaborative transportation systems are relatively new concepts in logistics research, but are very popular in practice. This communication proposes a conceptual framework for logistics and transportation pooling systems, as well as a simulation method for strategic planning optimization. This method is based on a twostep constructive heuristic in order to estimate for big instances the transportation and storage costs at a macroscopic level. Four possible scenarios are explored and commented. Finally, a socio-economic analysis based on 20 semi-directive interviews is presented to propose the limitations and obstacles of logistics poolingLogistics pooling, supply chain management, optimization, group reasoning, simulation

Maritime transport in digital world

Authors investigate the impact of the electronic economy to the transport value chain, and especially the port as technological node. The electronic economy impacts on the transport chain, and on logistics outline different view on the port operations. The ports do not only bound themselves to basic transit operations only, but rather involve the sophisticated logistic operations. Simulation has been used to define economic behaviour of the model and its entities for two generic case studies – usage of the electronic and paper documents. The results show that electronic documents can decrease the transaction costs Electronic documents diminish the time used to obtain, create the documents, and thus the costs are decreased. For one shipment (total of 103 documents) electronic documents are 39% cheaper then paper documents and the difference between the electronic and paper documents is 295.44$ for one set of 103 documents in one shipment.

Transition UGent: a bottom-up initiative towards a more sustainable university

The vibrant think-tank ‘Transition UGent’ engaged over 250 academics, students and people from the university management in suggesting objectives and actions for the Sustainability Policy of Ghent University (Belgium). Founded in 2012, this bottom-up initiative succeeded to place sustainability high on the policy agenda of our university. Through discussions within 9 working groups and using the transition management method, Transition UGent developed system analyses, sustainability visions and transition paths on 9 fields of Ghent University: mobility, energy, food, waste, nature and green, water, art, education and research. At the moment, many visions and ideas find their way into concrete actions and policies. In our presentation we focused on the broad participative process, on the most remarkable structural results (e.g. a formal and ambitious Sustainability Vision and a student-led Sustainability Office) and on recent actions and experiments (e.g. a sustainability assessment on food supply in student restaurants, artistic COP21 activities, ambitious mobility plans, food leftovers projects, an education network on sustainability controversies, a transdisciplinary platform on Sustainable Cities). We concluded with some recommendations and reflections on this transition approach, on the important role of ‘policy entrepreneurs’ and student involvement, on lock-ins and bottlenecks, and on convincing skeptical leaders

The introduction of mandatory inter-municipal cooperation in small municipalities: preliminary lessons from Italy

PurposeThis article studies effects of mandatory inter-municipal cooperation (IMC) in small Italian municipalities. Data from 280 small Italian municipalities on effects of IMC in terms of higher efficiency, better effectiveness of local public services, and greater institutional legitimacy of the small municipalities participating in IMC have been investigated against four variables: size; geographical area; type of inter-municipal integration and IMC membership (the presence in the IMC of a bigger municipality, the so-called big brother).Design/methodology/approachData were gathered from a mail survey that was sent to a random sample of 1,360 chief financial officers acting in municipalities of under 5,000 inhabitants, stratified by size (0–1,000 and 1,001–5,000) and geographic area (North, Center, and South) criteria. To analyze dependency relationships between the three potential effects of participating in IMC and possible explanatory variables, we used a logistic regression model as the benefits were binarily categorized (presence or absence of benefits).FindingsFindings show that in more than two-thirds of the municipalities participating in IMC there were benefits in terms of costs reduction and better public services, whereas greater institutional legitimacy was detected in about half of the cases. Our statistical analysis with logistic regression highlighted that IMC type is particularly critical for explaining successful IMC. In particular, positive effects of IMC were mainly detected in those small municipalities that promoted a service delivery organization rather than participating in service delivery agreements or opting for mixed arrangements of joint public services delivery.Originality/valueThe paper focuses on small municipalities where studies are usually scant. Our analysis highlighted that the organizational setting is particularly critical for explaining successful IMC