AbstractUrban logistics activities, while essential to the development of cities, also contribute to congestion and pollution if poorly managed. Synchronizing the last mile of delivery is critical, but challenging to implement. Collaboration between the stakeholders is thus needed and timely to improve the efficiency of last mile delivery in a growing city while advancing environmental sustainability. This paper is an exploratory study undertaken in Singapore, to identify the motivations and barriers to collaboration in urban logistics, which may influence a stakeholder's decision to participate. Our initial results suggest that the expected benefits (motivation) and the competitive intelligence risks (barrier) influence the participation decision.Keywords: urban logisticssynchronized last milesurveycollaborationSingapore
This paper presents a decision support system named the Tanker Operations Planning System (TOPS). It is a user-friendly software with an advanced routing and scheduling algorithm to automate and aid the operational decision making process. It considers the key operations constraints faced by the tanker owners. The advanced routing and scheduling algorithm embedded in the decision engine uses heuristics to solve industrial scale problems under actual operating conditions. Besides, TOPS can easily generate the routing, scheduling, stowage plan and the financial reports, and it can process a large number of orders online as well. In addition, TOPS can be conveniently modified for evaluation purposes or to suit the preference of the tanker owners. In essence, TOPS is an effective optimization-based decision support system to assist the parcel tanker carriers to systematically and objectively plan vessel routes and schedules with the goal of maximizing profits and fleet utilization in a structured manner. Drawing from actual data provided by a tanker company operating in the Asia Pacific, our simulation results show that TOPS can generate a cost effective routing and scheduling plan of a large scale problem to within a practically acceptable time of around 10–20 minutes.
As the reverse supply chain for sustainability reasons has been attracting increasing attention, this theoretical work focuses on the governance mode of reverse logistics. It is a less explored sub-field in the reverse supply chain literature where manufacturers, distributors, and retailers have important roles in the chain governance. Manufacturers often engage professional third-party logistics (3PLs) firms to manage their products due to the complexity, variety, and trade compliance of such products. While such engagement can reduce the burden of product management for the manufacturers, the potential loss of competitive advantage or a conflict of interest can affect the manufacturers' reputation and profitability. Based on the literature as well as our initial fieldwork in several industries, we develop a research framework to explore the governance choice of manufacturers for reverse logistics, and examine the factors affecting the preference between self-governance and the outsourcing to third parties such as the 3PLs.
This paper discusses the feasibility of third party governance on the buyer, manufacturer and supplier triad, through a literature review and an in-depth discussion. We argue that comparing between manufacturer and third party governance, third party governance can function well only if the supply chain is characterized by a low intensity of interaction and the knowledge exchanged is mainly low-tech and transactional. On the contrary, manufacturer governance would be more appropriate if intensive interaction exists among chain members and there are high-tech contents in the knowledge sharing. Furthermore, the leverage and monitoring ability of the chain governor over chain members are critical for its governance effectiveness.
Abstract An increase in business overheads due to the enterprise dynamics is postulated to be a cubic function of the area between the actual response of a company in the supply chain and a theoretical neutral axis, where demand equals supply. Reduction of these dynamics has become critical to the competitiveness of the company and even the whole supply chain. The impact of seven causal factors on the dynamic performance of a generic supply chain simulation with reference to the beer game is studied, guidelines for supply chain re‐engineering in order to reduce such dynamics are provided, and coordination dynamics in networking organizational structure are identified. It is then shown that reduction of coordination dynamics is an alternative solution to structural re‐engineering, e.g. shortening manufacturing and transport lead times. Explores the dynamic performance of both centralized and decentralized coordination mechanisms and proposes that there is no essential difference in performance; the latter is more flexible and allows for autonomy of different companies if it is well coordinated. Finally, proposes a decentralized coordination method by using a market mechanism.
Game-based learning has been introduced as an interactive tool to facilitate learning and training processes in various fields, including supply chain management (SCM).Most of these games are specifically designed to focus on certain scenarios and concepts.For example, the original beer distribution game focuses on a single product supply chain without considering capacity and process reliability into account.This creates challenges for extending the games to cover other concepts in SCM.To tackle this problem, we propose a board game, titled ThinkLog, as a face-to-face extendable framework to facilitate learning in SCM.It can be extended to generate different scenarios for various concepts in SCM without changing the basic game structure.Using this principle, we have extended the basic version of ThinkLog to two other scenarios, namely: humanitarian logistics and urban logistics, by simply modifying the rule of the game.Each scenario would have different learning objectives embedded in the gameplay.The game is also complemented with a computer-based application (digital application) to enhance the overall learning experience and collect relevant data (data gathering) during a game session.These three scenarios have been evaluated on four-interactive sessions with government officials and policy-makers in Indonesia.Each session has been consistent in its acceptance of the game as a tool to facilitate learning in SCM, regardless of the scenarios that we played.Our learning objective evaluation also shows that the game is effective in deepening the players' understanding of SCM concepts.
Humanitarian logistics has recently gained increasing attention from both academics and practitioners. Although various research groups have addressed theoretical and technical developments in humanitarian logistics, only a limited number of those can actually be generalized, extended, accessed, and understood by non-technical practitioners. To tackle these challenges, we develop a simulation model for humanitarian logistics preparedness and a simulation-based serious game to raise awareness and provide accessibility on humanitarian logistics research to a wider audience. The simulation model aims to optimize the network configuration for prepositioning stocks of life-saving goods in Indonesia, while the game aims to provide a risk-free environment where players can craft various strategies to plan and deploy effective humanitarian operations.
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