What Drives the Choice of Third Party Logistics Provider?

It is generally believed that companies choose supply chain partners on the basis of their distinctive value propositions; a fact one would also expect holds true when companies choose a logistics service provider. However, faced with the complexities of varied customer demands, it can be difficult for logistics service companies to obtain an effective understanding of how customers differentially value the service components they offer. In this paper, we address this by identifying the factors that are important in a customer’s choice of a logistics service provider. Using stated choice methods we explore the relative importance of seven service attributes using a sample of 309 managers with a central role in purchasing logistics services across a range of industries and countries. The results reveal that three distinct decision models populate our data where the preferences for different logistics service attributes – such as price and delivery performance –vary greatly between customer groups represented by these models. Strategically, our findings provide the management of a third party logistics provider with a logical starting point from which to determine the goals that are set for their operations, particularly in choosing the customer segments to service

Obstacles, Interfacial Forms, and Turbulence: A Numerical Analysis of Soil–Water Evaporation Across Different Interfaces

AbstractExchange processes between a turbulent free flow and a porous media flow are sensitive to the flow dynamics in both flow regimes, as well as to the interface that separates them. Resolving these complex exchange processes across irregular interfaces is key in understanding many natural and engineered systems. With soil–water evaporation as the natural application of interest, the coupled behavior and exchange between flow regimes are investigated numerically, considering a turbulent free flow as well as interfacial forms and obstacles. Interfacial forms and obstacles will alter the flow conditions at the interface, creating flow structures that either enhance or reduce exchange rates based on their velocity conditions and their mixing with the main flow. To evaluate how these interfacial forms change the exchange rates, interfacial conditions are isolated and investigated numerically. First, different flow speeds are compared for a flat surface. Second, a porous obstacle of varied height is introduced at the interface, and the effects the flow structures that develop have on the interface are analyzed. The flow parameters of this obstacle are then varied and the interfacial exchange rates investigated. Next, to evaluate the interaction of flow structures between obstacles, a second obstacle is introduced, separated by a varied distance. Finally, the shape of these obstacles is modified to create different wave forms. Each of these interfacial forms and obstacles is shown to create different flow structures adjacent to the surface which alter the mass, momentum, and energy conditions at the interface. These changes will enhance the exchange rate in locations where higher velocity gradients and more mixing with the main flow develop, but will reduce the exchange rate in locations where low velocity gradients and limited mixing with the main flow occur

What drives the choice of a third party logistics provider?

It is generally believed that companies choose supply chain partners on the basis of their distinctive value propositions — a fact one would also expect holds true when companies choose a logistics service provider. However, faced with the complexities of varied customer demands, it can be difficult for logistics service companies to obtain an effective understanding of how customers differentially value the service components they offer. In this paper, we address this issue by identifying the factors that are important in a customer's choice of a logistics service provider. Using stated choice methods we explore the relative importance of seven service attributes using a sample of 309 managers with a central role in purchasing logistics services across a range of industries and countries. The results reveal that three distinct decision models populate our data where the preferences for different logistics service attributes — such as price and delivery performance — vary greatly between customer groups represented by these models. Strategically, our findings provide the management of a third-party logistics provider with a logical starting point from which to determine the goals that are set for their operations, particularly in choosing the customer segments to service

Minority Recruitment in the Prostate Cancer Prevention Trial

Abstract available at publisher's web site

Bestial metamorphoses: Blake’s variations on trans-human change in Dante’s Hell

William Blake’s engagement with Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy (1824-7) illuminates the convergence of Classical and Christian iconography at the heart of Blake’s bestiary. Oswald Spengler coined the term ‘pseudomorphosis’ to ‘denote the unwilling conformity of a new and dynamic culture to the forms and formulas of an older culture’. Erwin Panofsky took up the concept to investigate divergences in form and content between text and image in the medieval translation of classical literature and visual culture. Against Spengler’s dramatic take on the fight towards form, and Panofsky’s recuperation of medium divergence in cultural translation, Theodor W. Adorno read pseudomorphosis as a medium’s imitation of another medium, an uncritical ‘stage in the process of convergence’. Drawing on the iconological school’s analysis of the pseudomorphic articulations of cultural transmission, I wish to explore Blake’s monsters as Christian reinventions of classical mythology. Dante’s emblematic bestiary reinvents monsters from classical literature in a series of transgressions of the boundaries of species. This essay will draw on the debated concept of pseudomorphosis to explore the dialectic tension between assimilation, parody, and disintegration of form in Blake’s reinvention of Dante’s visions of hell. Classical sculptures used as prototypes of the human ideal are subjected to a series of demonic inversions. Hybrid forms and transformations culminate in the reversible serpent metamorphoses that express the bestial condition of the thieves in Cantos XXIV and XXV of Inferno. The multiplication of images Blake devotes to this case of transhuman change indicates its key place in the interminglings between man and beast in his approach to the Commedia. This chapter explores Blake’s serpent sequence and the possibilities of metamorphosis as a way of interrogating alternative models of animal human encounter. The frame of punishment suggests that Dante’s bestial metamorphoses represent a series of transgressions of boundaries. However, Blake’s versions bring to light alternative possibilities in the handling of species, showing coexistence or overlaps, intermediate steps in a continuum, fusion through commingling. Metamorphosis itself changes with acts of translation – between languages, genres, and media