Methodological Problems of Modern Transportation Logistics

The terminology and conceptual apparatus of modern logistics as a scientific discipline is far from being shaped. Researches and developers of legislative and norm-setting documents are obliged to use their own or barrowed terminology, in both case not shared ubiquitously. Consequently, the interpretations even of basic concepts differ significantly. In particular, there exists an academic and practical point of view that refuse the right for existence of the term “transportation logistics”. This clause is explained by the proclaimed omnipresence and universality of logistics, which has in its operational glossary the term “transportation”, treated as a local, subordinated and thus secondary function. This paper tries to set a decisive rule to distinguish between general logistics and transportation logistics, arguing that these two disciplines are well separated by the objects and methodology, knowledge and activities. In transportation logistics defined this way the authors examine two principal components of the transportation processes, storage (warehousing) and movement (shipping). This consideration lead to conclusions that the classical mathematical toolkit is not fitted for the design and management of modern global supply chains

Factoring as an Effective Working Capital Option: A Critical Review

Purpose – The purpose of this paper was to critically review the concept of factoring, with the view to ascertain its effectiveness in ensuring that organizations have access to enough liquid funds that facilitate the smooth running of their operations. Methodology – The Systematic Quantitative Assessment Technique (SQAT) was used to identify and review relevant peer-reviewed journal articles that had investigated factoring as a source of working capital. Findings – Based on a critical review of extant factoring scholarship, it was deduced that factoring has been effective enough to elicit a growing rate of adoption across the continents, despite the costs of adoption, as well as the 2009-2014 global financial crisis, excluding only North America where there seems to be a constant decline in adoption rate. Research limitations – The use of limited but high quality academic databases means that some articles were not considered for this review. Originality/value –The study is one of few studies to discuss the effectiveness of factoring as a source of working capital

Supply chain finance for ameliorating and deteriorating products: a systematic literature review

Ameliorating and deteriorating products, or, more generally, items that change value over time, present a high sensitiveness to the surrounding environment (e.g., temperature, humidity, and light intensity). For this reason, they should be properly stored along the supply chain to guarantee the desired quality to the consumers. Specifically, ameliorating items face an increase in value if there are stored for longer periods, which can lead to higher selling price. At the same time, the costumers’ demand is sensitive to the price (i.e., the higher the selling price the lower the final demand), sensitiveness that is related to the quality of the products (i.e., lower sensitiveness for high-quality products). On the contrary, deteriorating items lose quality and value over time which result in revenue losses due to lost sales or reduced selling price. Since these products need to be properly stored (i.e., usually in temperature- and humidity-controlled warehouses) the holding costs, which comprise also the energy costs, may be particularly relevant impacting on the economic, environmental, and social sustainability of the supply chain. Furthermore, due to the recent economic crisis, companies (especially, small and medium enterprises) face payment difficulties of customers and high volatility of resources prices. This increases the risk of insolvency and on the other hand the financing needs. In this context, supply chain finance emerged as a mean for efficiency by coordinating the financial flow and providing a set of financial schemes aiming at optimizing accounts payable and receivable along the supply chain. The aim of the present study is thus to investigate through a systematic literature review the two main themes presented (i.e., inventory management models for products that change value over time, and financial techniques and strategies to support companies in inventory management) to understand if any financial technique has been studied for supporting the management of this class of products and to verify the existing literature gap