Logistics Management

Sustainability has increasingly become a central business focus in times when most societies realize the harmful influence of industries on both the environment and human health. Not only policy makers demand pro-active performance from companies but also various members within supply chains expect their business partners to reduce their negative impacts on the environment and the society. Exposed to increasing competitive pressure firms are often forced to adapt their business behaviour to economic considerations. The transport and logistics sector in particular is characterized by high competition and price sensitivity. Transport is the fastest growing sector in terms of the consumption of energy and the production of greenhouse gases in the European Union. Following a multiple case study approach, the paper compares the Austrian transport and logistics sector with the sectors of production of building material and wholesaling. It aims at providing some insight as to why there are differences in the environmental performances between the sectors. This is done by identifying the specific characteristics of the transport and logistics sector concerning environmental protection and explaining the respective influencing factors. The data of each case study was analysed anonymously for each company and sector, followed by a cross-sector analysis. The findings showed that there is general awareness for sustainability across all sectors; however, the respective behaviours differ considerably. Finally, we propose implications for improving the environmental behaviour of transport and logistics companies and suggest topics for further research.

Continuous globalization and requirements for sustainable products increases the risks for companies for reputation damages through sustainability violations in their supplier networks. Therefore effective management of sustainability risks is essential for companies. This paper aims at identifying factors that enable companies to implement an effective risk management system with regard to social, environmental and economic risks of their supply chain. A model is elaborated that represents the internal enablers that promote the development of an effective sustainability risk management system within the supplier network. Afterwards this model has been operationalized and validated by using semi-structured interviews with experts from one enterprise. It was determined that besides supply chain complexity the support of the top management is decisive for initiating and establishing necessary processes as well as for the provision of the necessary resources which in turn enables implementing an effective risk management system regarding sustainability risks from the supply chain.

The increasing volumes of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from transport and the negative effects of congestion, noise and accidents lead to the search for new transport alternatives in Europe. These alternatives take into account the negative impacts of transport on environment and society in addition to minimization of the transport costs. If these additional aspects are considered, it is in many cases advantageous to use intermodal transport instead of choosing a direct transport by truck. However, this is still not the case in practice since the road transport is the most preferred transport mode in the EU. The purpose of this paper is to create an evaluation framework including various criteria for comparing different transport alternatives. The criteria combine economic factors including transport costs, inventory costs and time with external effects expressed in costs of GHG emissions, air pollution, accidents, noise and congestion. The framework is used for evaluation of transport alternatives between Vienna and Istanbul including road transport, rail transport, inland waterway transport (IWT) and short sea shipping (SSS).

A decision support framework is presented to facilitate the political decision maker by finding an emission minimal and economic reasonable long-term policy strategy for the regulation of the (bio-) fuel sector. Thus, a dynamic, bi-criteria, technology and blending model is developed to optimize economic and ecological objectives simultaneously. As result, the Pareto efficient frontier of eco-efficient solutions is calculated. The model is applied to a case study of the German (bio-) diesel market.

Sustainability is identified as a major gap in humanitarian logistics research literature. Although humanitarian supply chains are designed for speed and sustainability is of minor concern, environmentally-friendly behavior (e.g. through reduction of transportation emissions and avoidance of non-degradable materials) should be a long-term concern as it may ultimately affect more vulnerable regions. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how greenhouse gas emissions can be measured along the supply chain of common relief items in humanitarian logistics. We analyze the CO

2

emissions of selected supply chains using Life Cycle Assessments based on data provided by the French Red Cross. We calculate the CO

2

emissions of relief items from ‘cradle to grave’ including production, transportation, warehousing and disposal. Using these calculations, we show that transporting relief items causes the majority of emissions; however, transportation modes may not always be changed as the main purpose of humanitarian supply chains is speed. Nevertheless, strategic and efficient pre-positioning of main items will translate into less transportation and thus reducing the environmental impact. The study also shows that initiatives for “greening” item production and disposal can improve the overall carbon efficiency of humanitarian supply chains.

Production systems which include remanufacturing induce complex planning problems for manufacturers. One major challenge is correctly forecasting the date when used products will return, how many used products will return, and in which condition the returned products will be. Based on a review of current literature, this paper aims to identify gaps in academic research regarding the modeling of product returns for remanufacturing. It will focus on quantitative models, in which the quantity of returned products is either a decision variable (DV) or directly depends on other decision variables, such acquisition prices, i.e., the quantity of products returned can be influenced by decision makers. Subsequently, we will propose a new approach to incorporate consumers into Closed Loop Supply Chains (CLSC), in order to more precisely forecast product returns. The proposed voucher system, a time-dependent buy-back-offer on the part of the Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM), is designed to influence consumers’ return behavior. Finally, using game theory for quantitative modeling, this approach will permit a closer examination of the problems regarding dynamic production planning with remanufacturing options.

In this paper, we apply fuzzy set theory to a single-manufacturer single-retailer supply chain, where both players try to determine their optimal pricing and advertising decisions. The interaction between manufacturer and retailer is analyzed by means of a Stackelberg game. Moreover, a vertical cooperative advertising program is considered, which represents a financial agreement where the manufacturer offers to share a certain fraction of his retailer’s advertising expenditures. Even though this topic gained substantial interest in recent years’ operations research literature and studies reveal that results strongly depend on demand parameters, most analyses are limited to deterministic model formulations. Here, fuzzy set theory has the advantage that it is not only able to incorporate the uncertainty of demand parameters into analysis. Furthermore, it enables us to take into consideration the experience of decision makers, which is often not expressed numerically, but rather in vague linguistic terms.

Prognosis of future transport volumes and modal split scenarios are a research field with major implications in transport policy and business practice alike. Therefore major decision frameworks as e.g. infrastructure investments or policy concepts as for example the EU commission white book are based on expectations regarding transport volume developments. But these calculations are mainly based on transport demand and only in very limited approaches on transport supply, assuming that in the very competitive transport markets there will always be capacity for supply adjustments to demand changes. Expected demographic changes in European countries as for example Germany will probably render this paradigm invalid—as already today i.e. truck drivers are sought but not readily found. Therefore this contribution outlines a first quantitative approach in transport simulation including demographic change restrictions e.g. regarding the number of available truck drivers. Implications on the modal split are tested and reported with a cost-minimizing GAMS model in order to explore expected implications on transport markets.

Risks are part of every business operation and can never be avoided completely. To minimize the danger of corporate crisis, a conscientious and responsible approach to the handling of risks and the resulting impact on business is essential. Unforeseen events pose an especially great challenge for companies and require quick decision-making and immediate reactions. This paper presents a way of structuring decision problems as part of a concept for accelerated decision-making in the context of response to risk. The locus of our research is freight villages, which represent a typical example of logistics agglomerations, and the focus of our research are their business processes, which mainly consist of storage, transport and handling of freight.

Due to an ever increasing complexity, modern supply chains have to make use of Decision Support Systems to focus on the one hand on cost savings and on the other hand on a high customer orientation. This is especially difficult due to different service and costs expectations that have to be taken into account jointly to fulfill the customer expectations more precisely. While the need for a differentiated service fulfillment is generally acknowledged, little research exists to date addressing how an organization can identify different economical and logistical viable groups of a customer base for different logistical problem statements. Therefore, this paper seeks to enhance the knowledge in this area by the application and evaluation of a relative new data clustering algorithm based on Self Organizing Maps and comparing it to a standard data clustering algorithm based on the K-Means algorithm in the context of the research domain of supply chain segmentation.

Increasing production requirements have strengthened the academic interest for planning approaches that generate reliable delivery promises. An extended batch capable-to-promise approach is presented in this paper which includes preventive and reactive measures to increase planning robustness. We extend existing approaches by considering both, proposals for delivery dates that deviate from the original order specifications and customers’ reactions to these modifications, in the model. To verify the impacts of the extended planning approach it is numerically analyzed on the basis of real-world data of a manufacturer of customized leisure products.

The distribution of furniture is subject to a variety of practical constraints. The different skill profiles of the driving crew, the consideration of a heterogeneous fleet and more classifies the decision problem as a rich vehicle routing problem. The objective of this contribution is not to provide new solution methods on the operational level, but rather to investigate the surrounding planning process in which the vehicle routing decision is embedded and which can have a more or less constraining impact on the problems to be solved operationally. We consider different variants of the order fulfillment process and, based on data from a real life case, compare the resulting operational solutions, which are generated using a software package for vehicle routing. Conclusions regarding the trade-off between customer service and cost savings are drawn.

Spare parts logistics deal with several challenges by provisioning the spare part to the end customer due to the sporadic characteristics of the demand. Thereby, the processes and information flows of several spare parts supply chain actors have to be coordinated. To provide a common understanding of all relevant processes and information flows in a spare parts supply chain we develop a reference model for spare parts logistics and identify the central elements. The processes and information flows described in this article cover the initiation of an order to the provisioning of a spare part. After the development, the reference model can form the basis for business process reengineering and investigation of the IT-support for spare parts logistics.

Value added services in combination with the utilization of innovative information and communication-technologies are a valuable source for differentiation of logistics service providers. To examine the orientation of logistics companies towards these aspects and to analyze their usage of formalized processes for the development of new services, a study among the German logistics industry was conducted. The study is based soundly in the theories of the Resource-based view, the Service-dominant logic and the concept of service engineering. With regard to the current market situation the main research results reveal a controversy: On the one hand, logistics service providers have realized the potential of both information and communication-technologies and value added services. On the other hand, they still lack formal development procedures. Closing this gap will be a challenging task for the management of the future.

In this paper we present a system that monitors cargo compartments in transport vehicles in near real-time using RGB-D sensors (Asus Xtion Pro Live, Microsoft Kinect). The main component of this sensor system is a 3D analysis module that determines relevant logistical parameters of cargo compartment conditions such as free load meters, free cargo space and volume of cargo. Wireless GPRS technology transmits the results data to a central server along with GPS positioning. The latest information on a vehicle’s location and its cargo compartment parameters are always available to dispatchers, thus enabling them to route vehicles flexibly based on incoming transportation orders. The mobile sensor system’s easy and fast integration in the process make it extremely practicable. We also developed a calibration method based on simple planar markers.

This paper presents a study that investigates the implementation of RFID projects in German and Swiss retail supply chains from a qualitative perspective. The semi-structured interviews with experts from companies in the retail supply chain sector enabled us to gain insights into the problems RFID implementations have to face, as well as the benefits associated with them. In conjunction with a literature review, this allows us to identify the future challenges and potential of RFID applications in the retail industry.

The Panama Canal is of great importance in international maritime freight transport. With the completion of the locks currently being constructed this importance will increase significantly more as the locks are designed to serve the Post-Panama Class vessels. This will thus lead to changes of worldwide shipping routes due to the fact that completely new and more (cost) efficient connections in transcontinental maritime freight transport will be feasible. This especially affects the Caribbean region so that logistical structures have to be adapted appropriately. In this paper the routes that are likely to change are presented and then a multi-level (and functionally differentiated) harbor network will be outlined. The objective is to establish sustainable shipping routes leading through the Caribbean to ensure an efficient supply of goods in the region in the long-term.

Driven by globalization and increasing world trade volumes most European seaports have seen significant growth rates especially in container traffic over the period from 2000 to 2008. With regard to the future growth perspectives, most European container ports have carried out ambitious plans for the extension of container handling capacities. Due to the economic crisis in 2008 and the inherent stagnation of container volumes after the recovery 2010 the terminal landscape can be characterized by overcapacities. Further plans for the provision of additional container facilities such as in Wilhelmshaven (Jade-Weser-Port), Southern UK (London Gateway) and Rotterdam (Maasvlakte II) as well as the upgrade and optimization of existing handling facilities are supposed to intensify the inter-port competition in Northern Europe. Therefore, the hinterland access of the ports will gain importance as competitive element.

Existing literature has covered carrier selection criteria in various surveys asking shippers to rate or rank selection criteria, but rarely modeled the final impact of criteria on the selection decision or even expected market shares of liner services. This paper examines the decision processes leading to a container liner service selection. Based on a series of qualitative interviews the paper maps the various paths that ocean container carrier decisions follow and illustrates the ocean carrier tender process in detail. From the process examination we develop implications for discrete choice experiments that could be used by researchers to develop choice modeling studies.

According to recent studies, the key obstacles for the low acceptance of rail transport by logistics service providers refer mainly to uneasy conditions for network access. These obstacles relate particularly to interface processes and physical movements. Hence, ground breaking supply chain specific business innovations including new solutions in rail logistics are required in order to win more users for a significant shift towards using rail for transport. This paper reports about a concept with which one can cope with the significant increase of seaport hinterland transport in Germany by using the rail. At present, German hinterland transports by rail are organized as direct transports between seaport terminals and more than 140 inland terminals. Their performances and expansion limitations are similar to any non-network transport service structure. For planning new infrastructures, a new innovative supply chain approach is suggested, incl. the development of an innovative regional rail distribution transport network with innovative access designs. This approach will support a significant shift to rail transport at short distances in hinterland regions.

Currently the logistics related business processes are arranged error-prone and inefficient because of media disruptions at interfaces between the SC actors. A central goal is to largely exclude existing media disruptions through the implementation of a mediator. The presented work-in-progress article discusses the research project SMART SC—eBusiness Standardization in the maritime Supply Chain (SMART SC is funded by the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology within the framework of the initiative eStandards. The research project has a large application-oriented focus with the goal of improving the efficiency of cross-company data communications in the maritime supply chain with respect to the road-related container traffic. The research project is running since 01.04.2012 and has a duration of three years. The first milestone was achieved in April 2013. The research project is a collaborative project between the partners a.i.o. IT for Logistics GmbH, dbh Logistics IT AG, i2dm consulting & development GmbH, Institute of Shipping Economics and Logistics (Project co-ordinator) and JadeWeserPort Zone Logistics GmbH & Co. KG.), which focuses on the sustainable improvement of inter-company communication structures in the port-related supply chain to increase national competitiveness in the international freight transport through the cross-company use of eBusiness standards. Data, information and documents accompanying the physical flow of goods must be exchanged in the cloud efficiently and with a minimal error rate between the participating companies in the supply chain, which presents an increasingly challenge with growing international transport volumes. The aim of SMART SC is to increase the efficiency of existing logistics processes along the entire container-related value chain in import and export to improve the performance of the physical processes (transport, handling, storage, etc.) through the harmonization of information, communication transaction means.

In all member countries of the European Union, legislation on driving and working hours of persons engaged in road transportation are prescribed by legal acts whose rules are to some extend different in case that a vehicle is manned by one single driver (single manning) or in case that the vehicle is manned by a team of two drivers (double manning). In this paper, we analyze the productivity of the two alternative operating modes (single and multi manning). The body of legislation for driving and working times is presented and a cost function for driver and vehicle deployment is proposed. Within a quantitative analysis, the costs for fulfilling a given transportation task are determined in dependence of the choice of the applied operating mode. The productivity of both operating modes is evaluated and contrasted by considering the total costs of transportation fulfillment. Thereby, it is possible to identify characteristics of transportation tasks which should advantageously be executed by single manning and characteristics of those tasks which are preferentially suitable for double manning.

In the Skill Vehicle Routing Problem (Skill VRP), each vehicle is assigned a skill, representing its qualification. A vehicle is able to serve a node if its skill is sufficiently large regarding the skill requirement of the node. In this paper, we move the focus of the cost-oriented Skill VRP to time-related aspects. To that end, we add time window restrictions and, secondly, design an alternative, time-oriented, objective function. This problem extension is motivated by an application in the airport ground control where time issues play a major role. We present a mathematical model and carry out an extensive numerical study that includes load-balancing aspects as well as a multi-objective analysis.

The option to leave containers at customer locations (decoupling) and pick them up later by any other vehicle is analyzed for hinterland transportation scenarios. Several test instances are considered in order to estimate the positive effect of decoupling containers and vehicles. The solutions of the proposed test instances are determined by a tabu search approach for hinterland container transportation which includes vehicle routing and scheduling and empty container repositioning simultaneously. The impact of the width of time windows on the frequency and profitability of decoupling containers is analyzed by considering data sets with tight and wide time windows. Additionally, solutions for the minimization of travel distances and the vehicles’ total operating time are compared and opposed to solutions for cost minimization. The computational results show that the option of decoupling containers and vehicles leads to improved solutions regardless of the underlying objective function.

In recent years, the number of challenges for courier, express and parcel services has grown. Today, service providers deal with dynamic changes and uncertainty. Customers can request service at any point of time in the whole service region. Technologies like Global Positioning Systems allow a more detailed and dynamic routing. Furthermore, historical data can be used to anticipate future events. To tackle the new challenges and to utilize the new resources, we suggest modeling customer locations as spatial random variables. This allows a more detailed and therefore efficient routing and decision making. Nevertheless, it requires more complex methods to anticipate future demands, because the straightforward application of graph theoretical approaches is not possible. For an exemplary problem setting in the Euclidean Plane (EP), we introduce a new anticipatory cost benefit heuristic (CBH). Additionally, we adjust techniques of approximate dynamic programming (ADP) and compare the results of CBH and ADP with a myopic approach and an optimal ex post solution. Here, both ADP and CBH outperform the myopic approach.

A distributed uncapacitated lot-sizing problem with rivaling agents (DULR) is introduced. The DULR considers concurrent items, i.e., items that can be produced by more than one agent. The agents are self-interested and have private information. They coordinate their local plans in order to find a joint global plan which minimizes total cost. The individual plans are coordinated by a collaborative planning approach based on simulated annealing. In addition to some well-known techniques a production responsibility assignment procedure and Shapley compensation payments computed by means of a modified characteristic function are incorporated. The proposed solution approach outperforms a reference value in 206 out of 272 new DULR instances. The approach is more efficient on small instances than on medium sized instances.

We study an

interactive

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approach

to the Inventory Routing Problem (IRP) with the goal of supporting the decision maker (DM). Combining the supply chain management aspects ‘inventory management’

and

‘transportation’ into a simultaneous model can lead to beneficial cost reductions for both the supplier and the customer. A preference model, namely the reference point, is introduced to elicit individual preference information of the experts. Then, a subsequent

interactive

-

approach

is developed to solve the dynamic IRP. The comparison of the interactive-approach with an

a posteriori

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approach

shows the applicability and the achieved speedup of the focused search. We also consider an

extended interactive

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approach

for the benchmark test instances that is meaningful in terms of including a reservation point as a ‘natural’ convergence criterion.

Although strategic outsourcing concepts for collaborative, flexible and innovative contract models in logistics are often discussed, research and practice require more holistic models and no further task-oriented arrangements (Vitasek and Manrodt in Strateg Outsourcing Int J 5:4−14, 2012) Performance-based contracting (PBC) provides an effective approach to confirm partnerships with common purposes and high value-in-use for customers. Based on contracting theory, economical requirements and specific PBC principles, a conceptual framework is developed to establish robust outsourcing relationships in logistics arrangements. The key aspect is to identify alternatives in logistics performance-based contracting (LPBC) and to deliver individual solutions for application on different restrictions and specific customer requirements. Therefore, the purpose of the paper is to develop a morphological box (MB) to enable a holistic contract design for implementing LPBC. The MB bridges the methodical gap of incomplete contract design frameworks in logistics with integration of both supplier’s and customer’s point of view. Moreover, it supports both academics and practitioners with a heterogeneous business model based on existing established models in logistics outsourcing, which results in a wide acceptance and efficient synergies.

Purpose—The purpose of this paper is to explore the strategic nature of a current legislative initiative on supranational (European Union) level, which suggests the reform of public procurement law to better support joint political objectives. It represents one stage of an on-going research initiative aimed at providing a framework for a systematic understanding of the linkages between public policy making and public procurement strategies. Design/methodology/approach-Articles published between 2002 and 2012 in ten selected journals from supply management and public administration journals are analyzed and classified using an analytical framework for public supply strategies. Findings—The results show that most of the literature on public procurement strategies relates to the strategy content of legal, procedural or macro-economic (environmental) dimensions of the strategy framework. Largely undiscovered is the strategy content on a category level and the linkto other functional strategies. Additionally the strategy process, the making of policies and public procurement strategies, although addressed in literature, are still hardly explained. Implications—From the analytical framework, propositions for future research are presented through a research roadmap for public procurement strategies. Originality/value—By distinguishing several dimensions of public procurement strategies, the paper provides a framework for future research to enhance knowledge related to public procurement strategies and to develop a better alignment of political, legal, and economic initiatives of a public procurement reform.

Automotive Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) are constantly establishing new manufacturing plants in various countries. The establishment of new plants offers plenty of opportunities to the OEM but at the same time the problem to integrate these new plants into its global production and logistics network is posed. One way of handling this problem is to outsource some of the needed capabilities (macro level business functions, e.g. warehouse management) to Logistics Service Providers (LSPs). The OEM is then faced with the question, which capabilities to outsource when establishing a new plant. The LSP on the other hand has to evaluate which products and services to offer to an OEM. The purpose of this paper is to outline the development of a methodology based on techniques from Enterprise Architecture (EA) and more specifically Capability-based Planning (CBP) that helps answer these questions.

The occurrences of drug shortages and product recalls have increased in recent years. One reason is the characteristic of the pharmaceutical supply chain itself: being lean and highly complex and, therefore, more vulnerable to any local disturbances. Despite that, the special characteristic of the pharmaceutical supply chain is not integrated appropriately in supply chain risk management yet. This paper analyzes the impact of drug shortages and product recalls on the pharmaceutical manufacture using event study methodology. Statistical significant abnormal stock returns were found for product recalls, as well as signs of negative impacts of drug shortages.

With this paper, we want to add to the existing discussion on retail store execution and retail store operations by emphasizing on how shelf-ready-packaging (SRP) impacts the shelf-filling-process and consequently the on-shelf-availability (OSA). The discussion includes a theoretical conceptualization of the interrelationships between SRP, OSA and instore logistics based on literature analysis as well as a discussion of the results of two empirical field studies.

Recently the authors have explored strategic, tactical and operative key success factors for the humanitarian supply chain. Moreover, they have developed and tested a holistic and applicable performance measurement system for the humanitarian supply chain. Based on these results the impact of key success factors on performance is investigated: An impact model of key success factors on key performance indicators is developed and formulated. The evaluation of the model will be based on sequential qualitative system analysis for a first testing and analytical insights. Findings reveal that performance measurement in humanitarian logistics and humanitarian supply chains is still an open area of research, especially compared to the commercial logistics and supply chain sector. Moreover, it highlights how to identify and measure success in humanitarian supply chains. The results help humanitarian logistics and humanitarian supply chain actors to conduct further research in this area and to develop key performance indicators and measurement frameworks that suit the humanitarian logistics sector.

Humanitarian logistics assessment aims at quickly gathering accurate information about a disaster-affected area. This includes information about the infrastructure and logistic resources which are required to execute a humanitarian operation. Assessment thus provides a decision basis, e.g. to plan aid deliveries. Despite its relevance, assessment has hardly been researched. This paper structures practical knowledge and makes it accessible to the research community. Accordingly, it is based on documents from practice, exploring assessment tools and guidelines of humanitarian aid organizations regarding infrastructure and logistic resources. Furthermore, it structures the knowledge contained in them. Inductive Category Development, a qualitative research approach, is used to split the documents into comparable information fragments. On that foundation, we consider three assessment phases: preparedness, rapid response and on-going response. We give an example to illustrate which information to assess during each phase and explain how the assessments in these phases are connected. The findings provide a foundation for developing comprehensive theories on infrastructure and logistic resource assessments, as well as impulses for humanitarian aid organizations to standardize their assessment tools. The standardization can increase the speed of assessment and facilitates information sharing between organizations.

Main target of product design is to develop excellent products, while considering a multitude of optimization goals which can overlap; be contrary or interdependent. Hereby, a large variety of Design for Excellence (DfX) techniques is available to support product developer. The approaches focus mostly on new products and a specific virtue or life phase. A major part of work is the further development of existing products which are not yet in focus of current DfX-approaches. Therefore, within the contribution a decision support system for “Re-Design for X” of production processes instead of products is developed with the aim of a holistic integration of criteria from different scientific perspectives by using a case study from semiconductor production.

To meet the rising demand for excellent logistics service, companies leverage the influence of product design. In this paper, the current state of logistics’ integration into the automotive industry’s product development process is examined with special regard to the after-sales division. The operative result of such measures is illustrated via case example. The embodiment of core enablers and initial problems and challenges is examined to highlight key factors of both success and failure and assist interested companies in implementing the ideas described here.

India is currently experiencing a brisk rate of economic development, with sustained GDP growth rates and a corresponding increase in freight volume forecasts for the foreseeable future. For these growth rates to be realised, an extensive and efficient infrastructure network is a pre-requisite. Hence, building a world class logistics infrastructure is a key requirement to global competitiveness. Despite the compelling evidence, a number of challenges and obstacles remain before significant improvements can be achieved. The use of serious games is a way to raise the awareness and understanding of a scenario such as this at both a business school and executive training level. For example, through simulations in a gaming environment, one can investigate how specific technologies can be used as support and/or how different infrastructure development strategies impact on its environment. Through gaming, participants can experience the boundaries and challenges facing supply chain stakeholders in India, as well as seek to tackle and overcome some of these issues. Hence, this paper discusses the design and development of a serious game based on supply chain infrastructure development in India.

Logistics services are increasingly complex and knowledge intensive in today’s dynamic competitive environment. Knowledge assets have become critical for logistics enterprises to attain performance goals. Thus, it is crucial to implement the knowledge management (KM) for developing sustainable competitive advantages. KM research and implementation have grown rapidly in recent years. So far, various disciplines have studied KM from their own perspectives. However, there is only limited systematic effort to study the interfaces and the collaboration of KM from an interdisciplinary perspective. The goal of this paper is to identify the interface of KM in logistics from the perspectives of these disciplines: business studies and economics, production engineering, computer and information technology. For each discipline, the difference of the concepts as well as three key aspects of KM namely knowledge representation, acquisition and application will be described by means of literature review. Furthermore, this paper introduces a four stage model, which applies the collaborative KM in logistics and presents the connection from an interdisciplinary perspective. The connection shows that different disciplines can cooperate together in KM process, from objective setting, planning and execution to feedback phase. This paper will stimulate more discussions of KM from multidisciplinary viewpoints and implicates the importance of collaboration in KM practice. The model gives a guideline to logistic enterprises to apply their KM, for different functions, departments, and business processes, as a collaborative project with perspectives of different disciplines.

Over the past decade, several research initiatives have researched and proposed innovative solutions for transport logistics, but the level of adoption in the transport industry has been low, in particular in comparison with other industry sectors. This is on one side related to the transport industry itself, facing issues like market fragmentation, price pressure and a high degree of outsourcing, and on the other caused by a lack in dissemination strategies towards relevant stakeholders being indentified in several logistics innovation projects. The EU-funded project Loginn—Logistic Innovation Uptake aims at coordinating and supporting research, technology and development (RTD) projects in the logistics area to improve their capabilities to bridge the gap between pilot implementation and marketable solutions. At the same time, the project aims at disseminating innovative logistics practices, technologies and business models to the logistics community, thus establishing an information hub for logistics innovation and contributing to education and training of logistics enterprises’ employees. Based on the research results, Loginn will develop a “Logistics Innovation Action Plan” for Europe.

This paper discusses the primary and secondary qualifications for logistics jobs in two different labor markets (business logistics and logistics service providers). For this purpose, a theoretical frame of reference was developed in which two samples of job postings representing more than 1,400 logistics jobs in Germany, were screened. Our empirical findings show that professional experience is the most important qualifier for an employment position in logistics. Depending on the hierarchy level of the posted position, additional education or managerial experience is required.