logistics

An integrated operational transportation planning within a freight forwarding company demands a multilevel planning process involving several stages of decision makers. Interactions among the involved autonomous workers generate conflicts. The barriers created by such conflicts should be removed in order to generate a positive emergence of the planning processes. On the basis of theoretical frames for conflict management the possibilities of coping with the conflicts arising in the freight forwarding company are introduced.

Up to now there are few approaches to an evaluation of information in logistics. However, with the increasing establishment of logistics as a corporate leadership function and a visible increase of the focus on company spanning control of supplier-buyer relationships as part of Supply Chain Management, we also see an increase in the need for an evaluation of information. This article attempts to give first thoughts about an economic evaluation of information in logistics and also attempts to substantiate the need for continued research in this subject area. The presented approach is the Total Logistics Information Value which consist of the company specific contributions of information logistics to the Economic Value Added on the one hand, and the information logistically relevant value added by the suppliers on the other hand.

Today globalization is a common challenge companies have to cope with. Cost aspects are still playing an essential role in this context. To ensure a long-term profitability, companies also have to consider non-monetary factors like core-competences. Besides globalization the increasing rate of ramp-ups caused by decreasing product life-cycles is a big challenge for companies. This article will introduce approaches to deal with the conflict of objectives between cost-reduction, safe-guarding of core-competences and ramp-up of production systems.

Globalisation, shorter product life cycles and mass customization are only some keywords which describe the logistics branch. They lead to modified general conditions in the industry and to effects on the employment. Fields of activities and responsibilities are changed as well as demands on further education. Although logistics companies have realized theses changes, they still do not take them into account in their personnel planning. The article shows the interdependencies between general trends in logistics and organisation science and their effects on quantitative and qualitative effects on employment.

For the implementation of autonomous control of transport processes it is tried to transfer well known and approved routing protocols from data communication to transport problems. Here structural differences between data and transportation networks prevent a direct transfer of the protocols, so that several different, particularly adapted protocols with different targets must cooperate in transportation networks. In the following a concept for autonomous controlled transport networks, called “Distributed Logistics Routing Protocol”, is introduced, developed at the CRC 637 “Autonomous Control of Logistic Processes” in Bremen.

Many companies have difficulties managing the recent situation of competition. Some companies achieve only small cost savings through the use of rationalization strategies. Network cooperations, however, offer many possibilities to successfully take advantage of efficiency increasing synergy effects. All participating companies can concentrate harder on their core business and achieve other features in cooperation with partner companies. This development concerns major enterprises as well as medium-sized businesses. While Outsourcing can be seen as a routine job for major enterprises, it poses problems for medium-sized businesses. These companies are lacking the necessary experience as well as tools to evaluate Outsourcing. This contribution points out the problems, that are related to Outsourcing in medium-sized businesses and demonstrates solutions.

Industrial companies as well as small and medium sized enterprises engage themselves more and more in international production networks. Each networkpartner aims on building and maintaining business relationships to the best partner for any specific task. This leads to an increasing amount of goods being transported from partner to partner and leads to an immense logistics effort. These logistics tasks are responsible for major cost blocks in most companies. Organisations will have to react to the increasing demand for on time delivery with organisational as well as technological solutions to maintain their competitive advantage.

Producing companies are increasingly facing external dynamics. To remain successful in the long run their management will have to keep up to this challenge. Thus it is important to choose and implement the right concepts and instruments to deal with dynamics. This article offers an overview on different approaches and a closer insight into the concept of Supply Chain Event Management.

The globalization of markets and the increasing connectivity of IT enhance the dynamic and complexity of worldwide competition. Logistics becomes and essential competitive differentiator. But small and medium sized enterprises (SME) have difficulties to implement innovative solutions. This article shows how service provider can increase the competitiveness by taking over logistics modules from SME.

Constant business change and shortcomings in logistics systems implementation require more efficient methods and instruments for translating new logistics concepts and technologies into daily operations of organizations. In the scope of process-oriented implementation management a new controlling approach is pointed out, which merges the factors of success and potential barriers in today’s business practice. With a specific Balanced-Implementation-Scorecard project managers are thus given an innovative instrument qualified for precisely intervening in and controlling the whole process of logistics modernisation to increase the efficiency of their implementation.