Logistics

The increasing globalization gives western companies great new opportunities. Especially China gained increasing importance as a sourcing market in the last years. Despite these opportunities, a retreat of many companies from China could be witnessed recently. Among other factors, this is due to the fact that western companies cannot exert enough influence on the performance and price of their suppliers. This article presents tools and processes to successfully face this challenge and improve the own position of power as a customer.

In this paper we show an integrative solution to freight traffic reduction. Beside telematic systems we also regard software for planning and control of swap bodies in the area of courier express and parcel provider. The objective is to design a decision support tool for transport planning to support users to solve their daily problems of tour planning. The software prototype introduced in this contribution was provided in the context of the BMWi promoted project Inwest and will be evaluated in field test in third quarter of 2009.

In this paper we introduced in transport planning based on evolutionary algorithms. The objective is to design a decision support tool for transport planning manager to support the planning process. An important criterion is to minimize the transportation (km) by using this tool. The prototype introduced in this paper was tested with real business data to check the suitability for transportation planning. Furthermore, different settings for the evolutionary algorithm are experimentally studied their utility is verified with statistical tests.

The market-oriented product development describes a focusing of needs, which leads ideally to high product quality and profitability. In the context of “Digital Factory” this paper focuses on the integrated product and process design, which is oriented to the physical part of the product. Due to the high product complexity, shorter product life cycles and increased competition situation is the product development faced with new challenges. Both the speed and the quality of planning should be improved further. Only the combination of organizational approaches and information technologies like for example “Simultaneous Engineering” and the “Digital Factory” promises a sufficient increase of planning efficiency. The following paper deals with existing methodologies and promising approaches in the field of “Digital Factory” against the background of an integrated product and process design. Referring to the requirements of logistics planning, an early integration of ...

Modern information technolgies are essential for efficient processes in logistics. Concepts which base intensively on IT have become known as e-logistics. This article discusses the idea of e-logistics and relates it to different concepts within services in logistics. Therefore necessary technologies to realise e-logistics are introduced. As an example the technologies and developments of tracking-and-tracing are detailed.

To excel global players have to satisfy a multitude of requirements nowadays. Contradicting targets have to be resolved by value chain design on a regular basis, taking into consideration the complex setting of necessary decisions. This article explains how to identify and evaluate measures showcasing the source process.

The increasing competitive pressure leads to a reduction of the depth of value creation and therefore to a rising importance of suppliers. Additionally, globalization is the cause for a tighter international network in production. Asymmetries in interests can obstruct a cooperation between companies and may endanger the commercial success. The article describes asymmetries in interests in the cooperation with local as well as Chinese suppliers.

China plays as a production site as well as supply market and as market for final products for European and American companies an increasing role. The attractiveness for logistics service providers is caused by the gigantic market potential and an enormous market increase. The rise of outsourcing activities of shippers is of special relevance for logistics service providers. Enterprises in the logistics sector are confronted with considerable challenges like quantity and quality of the logistics infrastructure or Guanxi.

Firms are acting more and more in networks, especially in industrial supply chains. Planning and controlling activities are realized in that supply chains e.g. for optimization of inventories. Apart from such advantages there are special risks in supply chains. In that case it is necessary to detect, to estimate and to regulate risks. Processes of control, alignment and regulation are not defined and established so far.

„Available to Promise“ can be regarded as the core concept of Supply Chain Management. It has become an integer part of modern software tools like SAP/APO and is being implemented in a growing number of companies. The author works out the potentialities and possible limitations of this concept and explains what remains to be done in order to make this risk management approach complete.