Background: The management of healthcare supply chains (HSCs) involves complex logistical challenges across storage, transportation, and distribution. Methods: This study proposes a mixed-methods research framework to assess healthcare logistics management and identify improvement priorities in Thailand’s HSC. A structured questionnaire survey is conducted among six stakeholder groups, yielding 358 valid responses. Six healthcare logistics management dimensions, comprising 29 assessment items, are evaluated: personnel, documentation systems, product distribution, storage facilities, inventory management, and complaints and returns. Quantitative data are examined using descriptive statistics and the Borda Count method to assess stakeholder agreement and prioritize logistics management dimensions. Qualitative responses are analyzed through content analysis to identify operational challenges, supplemented by stakeholder suggestions for improvement. Results: The findings indicate high stakeholder agreement regarding the importance of the evaluated dimensions, with transportation, storage and inventory management, personnel, and facilities emerging as key priorities. Qualitative findings highlight challenges involving temperature control, infrastructure constraints, workforce competency, and communication. Conclusions: Integrating these findings, five evidence-informed policy recommendations are developed to address operational procedures, traceability, transportation reliability, storage management, and emergency preparedness. The proposed framework provides a systematic approach to assessing healthcare logistics requirements and supporting policy development and refinement of healthcare logistics management standards.
Background: Attending a concert, festival, art exhibition, sporting event, or other cultural or entertainment event is an enjoyable experience. These events can provide several hours or even days of recreation, often accompanied by food, beverages, and various additional amenities. However, behind this short-term enjoyment lies the complex planning and management of numerous processes and flows, all essential to the smooth execution of the event. This study addresses the critical role of logistics in the planning and execution of cultural and entertainment events. Methods: To illustrate the importance of logistics in large-scale events, this paper adopts a case study approach, using Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour as an example of one of the most extensive and logistically demanding global concert tours. Results: Despite the growing interest in event logistics (EL), the logistical requirements and material flows of music tours remain underexplored, even though their complexity and geographical dispersion closely correspond to the challenges addressed in city logistics (CL) and supply chain management (SCM). Conclusions: The findings demonstrate that EL can be effectively analyzed by integrating the concepts of EL, CL, and SCM into a unified analytical framework applicable to large-scale music tours and similar events.
Background: Single windows, customs risk management, authorized economic operator (AEO) programs and port community systems are expected to lower cross-border logistics friction. Evidence on how much friction they remove is abundant; evidence on where the surviving friction settles, and who absorbs it, is scarce. Peru, with mature facilitation instruments yet weak logistics performance, is the case examined. Methods: Twenty sessions—thirteen institutional interviews and seven roundtables and workshops with border agencies, port, airport, warehouse and postal operators and exporter associations (2611 speaker turns, 137,984 words)—were analyzed through codebook thematic analysis with two coding rounds, a negative-case search and intercoder verification (κ = 0.881 for codability, 0.824 aggregate). Results: Facilitation did not eliminate friction but redistributed it along three coupled pathways: institutional (the digital instrument stops at each agency’s boundary), material (digital coordination runs on nodes whose physical capacity nobody coordinates) and segment-based (trust devices reward operators who already comply). Six node-level mechanisms are documented, and predictability proved codable (κ = 0.712) and concerned decisions more than durations. Conclusions: The Friction Redistribution Framework is proposed as a diagnostic and a set of grounded hypotheses: for each instrument, where residual friction lands, who absorbs it and which indicator would reveal it.
Background: This study develops the Logistics Sustainability Kuznets Curve (LSKC) to examine whether the relationship between logistics performance and transport carbon intensity changes across levels of logistics capability. Methods: An unbalanced panel of 565 observations from 126 economies across six World Bank Logistics Performance Index (LPI) waves (2010–2023) was analysed using linear, quadratic, two-way fixed-effects, endpoint-slope, exploratory breakpoint, nonlinear income, and robustness specifications. Transport energy CO2 emissions per million US dollars of GDP measure transport-wide rather than freight-only emissions. Results: The preferred fixed-effects estimates indicate a positive lower-end slope and downward curvature, with an implied turning point at LPI 3.55. The upper-end slope is negative but statistically insignificant. Adding nonlinear income produces a negative LPI-squared coefficient significant at the 5% level, while squared income remains insignificant. An exploratory breakpoint near LPI 3.05 suggests moderation, although the slope change is insignificant and the subsequent slope remains positive. Excluding 2023 reduces precision, while winsorisation preserves the nonlinear pattern. Conclusions: Findings support an expansion stage and emerging efficiency transition but do not establish a mature declining stage. The evidence suggests a logistics-specific nonlinear association without confirming a universal inverted U-shaped relationship.
Background: Inventory management for perishable products is challenging because demand variability, forecast reliability, shelf life, and batch constraints must be considered jointly. This study develops a data-driven decision-support framework for a small dairy manufacturer with limited historical inventory records. Methods: Nineteen stock-keeping units were analyzed using monthly data from September 2024 to June 2026, with July and August 2026 reserved for post-period validation. ABC analysis, demand variability, trend estimation, K-means clustering, Ward validation, and chronological forecasting models were combined with differentiated replenishment rules. Results: Four demand-pattern clusters were identified and supported by Ward clustering (adjusted Rand index = 0.8308). Random Forest achieved the best internal WAPE (27.28%), but this advantage did not persist externally, where Naive achieved 22.99%, damped Holt 26.20%, and Random Forest 30.23%. Historical demand variability was positively associated with external forecast error. Scenario analysis showed that adaptive forecast governance reduced two-month WAPE relative to maintaining a fixed Random Forest model. Conclusions: The framework supports adaptive, differentiated inventory governance by integrating economic priority, demand behavior, forecast performance, shelf life, and batch constraints without assuming unavailable optimal inventory parameters.
