This review addresses supply chain management issues specific to Internet fulfillment in a multi-channel environment. It provides a systematic overview of managerial planning tasks and corresponding quantitative models. Our objective is to twofold, namely to enhance the understanding of multi-channel e-fulfillment by documenting the current state of affairs, and to inspire fruitful future research by identifying gaps between relevant managerial issues and available academic literature.

The pig husbandry is an important economic sector. Major changes occurred in the last decade. As a result, farmers came together to introduce the ‘Eco-label pig’, meeting the strong consumer and governmental call for high quality, animal friendly and environmentally friendly food. The market for Eco-label food will grow enormously in the next years, asking for the development of an efficient and effective supply chain consisting of farmers, slaughter houses, wholesalers and retailers. We present some mathematical models to support decision-making and evaluation of a large number of growth scenarios, using cost minimization given a number of Eco-label conditions.

This paper deals with the application of information technology (IT) in circular supply chains (CSCs). We consider information on the installed base critical, and present an illustrative example. Next we discuss a framework of different kinds of value contained in a return, and IT-applications useful in supporting its recovery or neutralisation in case of negative externalities. Also we show which kind of CSC is needed for which kind of return. We illustrate our work by three real life case studies

Sharing information between multiple parties in a multi-modal logistics chain can potentially improve coordination within the chain. However, information sharing also requires the participation and collaboration of multiple parties whose goals are not always aligned with each other. This paper describes experiences from the ongoing implementation of a Logistics Hub system for a transport supply chain directed by Vos Logistics. Interviews with participants in the logistics chain were conducted to analyse the Hub, its implementation process, and its effect on performance of the supply chain. Figure 1: Current financial flows in the chain. 1.3 Research questions and approach While implementation of the Hub was proceeding, Connekt by the beginning of 2002 requested the Erasmus University Rotterdam to conduct a study on the implementation and benefits of the Hub. In this research we focus on three main questions (Table 1). Table 1. Research questions Nr Question Paper section 1 What information, financial and logistics processes take place in the Vos supply chain? 2 2 How will processes change and what performance improvements are expected/realized as a result of the hub? 3 3 What are success factors for implementing a hub for supporting transport chains? 4 Our research approach includes literature study, semi-structured interviews with the supply chain parties involved and Informore, analysis of the hub software design and of actual operational data after the hub goes into operation. The first round consisted of seven semi-structured interviews in five organisations participating in the Hub. A second round of interviews will be conducted as the participants start to use the Hub (anticipated mid 2003). A number of inward adapters, to enable automatic confirmation messages to the Hub, still need to be finalized and discussions on pricing agreements are still ongoing. This paper thus represents an intermediate set of research results. However, the results of the first scan already include several interesting findings and lessons learned. 1.4 Outline of the paper The remaining sections of the paper address the three research questions sequentially. Section 2 describes the current Vos container transport chain and the proposed design of the hub. Section 3 briefly discusses expected performance improvement as a result of a hub. Section 4 highlights some of the implementation issues identified. Section 5 presents conclusions and reflections. 2 THE CURRENT VOS SUPPLY CHAIN 2.1 Current physical flows The logistics chain in this study involves the transport of maritime containers from a hinterland terminal in Veendam (Northern part of the Netherlands) through the port of Rotterdam. We describe in this section the current physical and information flows in some detail and some of the limits of the current situation. In Figure 1 the main arrow represents a simplified image of the physical container flow and financial flows. In reality, many variations of this flow can occur. The container flow directed by Vos between Veendam and Rotterdam involves about 100 full containers daily. At the same time, a similar number of empty containers are moved from Rotterdam to Veendam to replenish the container stock in Veendam. A train shuttle transports full containers between Veendam and Rotterdam on a daily schedule. Currently, Vos batches its daily shipments into one daily trainload. The train shuttle to and from Veendam is managed by the train operator (ACTS) and its load capacity is booked by Vos at an earlier stage. Seaterminal

article Share on Supporting return flows in the supply chain Authors: Jos van Hillegersberg Erasmus Univ., The Netherlands Erasmus Univ., The NetherlandsView Profile , Rob Zuidwijk Erasmus Univ., The Netherlands Erasmus Univ., The NetherlandsView Profile , Jo van Nunen Erasmus Univ., The Netherlands Erasmus Univ., The NetherlandsView Profile , Diana van Eijk IBM, The Netherlands IBM, The NetherlandsView Profile Authors Info & Claims Communications of the ACMVolume 44Issue 6June 2001 pp 74–79https://doi.org/10.1145/376134.376172Published:01 June 2001Publication History 25citation2,649DownloadsMetricsTotal Citations25Total Downloads2,649Last 12 Months116Last 6 weeks12 Get Citation AlertsNew Citation Alert added!This alert has been successfully added and will be sent to:You will be notified whenever a record that you have chosen has been cited.To manage your alert preferences, click on the button below.Manage my Alerts New Citation Alert!Please log in to your account Save to BinderSave to BinderCreate a New BinderNameCancelCreateExport CitationPublisher SiteGet Access

E-commerce for reverse logistics is an area of web applications that has been active and progressing aggressively, especially in the US, though it has not been explicitly recognised until now. It has given reverse logistics in general and especially remanufacturing of parts and re-use of surplus goods an important stimulus. However, existing E-commerce models are rather restricted and represent simply the migration of conventionally practices over the Web.

(1999). Etude exploratoire sur le commerce electronique lie a la reverse logistics. Logistique & Management: Vol. 7, No. 2, pp. 27-36.

Most of the optimization models proposed in the literature for evaluating the layout of a logistics distribution network consider a static demand pattern, which then leads to a single-period problem. Hence, the adequacy of those models is limited to situations where the demand pattern exhibits no remarkable variations throughout the planning horizon. We propose a dynamic model including many relevant issues which play a role when evaluating a logistics distribution network. In addition to dealing with dynamic demand patterns, our model includes aspects related to the inventory policy (in contrast with the static models). Heuristic solution approaches are presented for particular cases of this model and insight is given for the general model.

Growing environmental concern has called much attention to industrial recovery of used products and materials. Driven by customer expectations and legislative regulation, manufacturers are held responsible to an increasing extent for the entire lifecycle of their products. From a logistics perspective, take-back and recovery of used products leads to additional goods flows from the users back to the sphere of producers, "Reverse Logistics" addresses the management of these flows opposite to the conventional supply chain flows. In this paper we consider Reverse Logistics from a distribution management perspective. We review major issues and concepts and discuss upcoming decision problems, paying special attention to logistics network design. Moreover, we point out both specific characteristics of Reverse Logistics and parallels with traditional logistics contexts. We illustrate our analysis with a number of examples based on recent case studies.

The process of creating competitive logistics networks is often very complex: a range of alternative networks needs to be developed, analyzed and compared; a wide variety of quantitative and qualitative criteria are considered and several parties with differing functional backgrounds and differing disciplines are involved. To reduce this complexity, we present a framework for logistics network design, which, as we have experienced, enhances the quality of the design process as well as the quality of the resulting network. After analyzing previous research, we present our framework for logistics network design. The framework starts with an analysis of external and internal developments and uncertainties. Via this analysis, business choices are made on entrepreneurial topics, technological issues, organizational aspects and human resource questions. These business choices are combined into scenarios and lead to the developments of alternative logistics networks. In the development and in the evaluation of alternative logistics networks, the decision support system SLAM plays an important role. The final steps in the framework are the final selection of a logistics network, the authorization and the implementation and review of this selected network.

This presentation will give an overview of the important trends in international distribution, the challenging opportunities companies are offered, the type of decisions that have to be made and the type of distribution problems that can be solved with the assistance of Decision Support Systems.

In international logistics, the topic of redesigning logistic networks of production and distribution is of high current interest. This redesign process can be supported by a Decision Support System (DSS), which is developed to assist management teams in discussing alternative logistic structures. One of the most difficult and time consuming elements in using such a DSS, is gathering the relevant data. In the past the collection of data was very time consuming. However, nowadays a lot of basic-data are electronically available. One specific element in preparing alternative international logistic network is the level of detail of data you need or want to use: a balance has to be found between the level of detail of the data gathered and the accurateness of the calculations by e.g. an LP model within the DSS. Moreover an adequate level of aggregation in the management reports has to be defined. The selection of the appropriate aggregation level is a new challenge for DSSs. In this article, we present an overview of existing and new upperbounds for the error in total costs, caused by aggregation of customers to customer-groups. Experimental results on these bounds are showed.

In this paper we consider several variants of the standard successive-approximation method for (semi) Markov decision processes with unbounded rewards. Wessels and van Nunen have shown that a class of variants can be generated by randomized stopping times, where the probability of “stopping” the process at timen is independent of the actions taken up to timen. In this paper we allow the stopping time to depend on the actions as well as the states. This makes it possible to extend the class of solution techniques in such a way that properties of the reward and transition structure depending on the actions can be exploited in the development of appropriate successive-approximation methods. For a special actions-dependent stopping time the corresponding algorithm possesses the so-called “equal-row-sum” property, which can be used, for example, to transform semi-Markov decision processes into ordinary Markov decision processes. Moreover, the equal-row-sum transformation allows for good extrapolation to upper and lower bounds and elimination of non-optimal actions.

In this paper, we focus our attention on business models supporting e-commerce for reverse logistics activities covering a wide spectrum of economic sectors. In addition, this paper examines the long-term relationship between E-commerce and the economic aspects of markets. The potential of E-commerce to create a homogeneous, electronic market for used products and parts open to all interested parties is examined in our study with respect to the identification of those critical factors that would enable the successful implementation of such an electronic marketplace. Some preliminary results are outlined and a prototype of an electronic marketplace for used computers is being developed.

This article surveys the recently emerged field of reverse logistics. The management of return flows induced by the various forms of reuse of products and materials in industrial production processes has received growing attention throughout this decade. Many authors have proposed quantitative models taking those changes in the logistics envir- onment into account. However, no general framework has been suggested yet. Therefore the time seems right for a sys- tematic overview of the issues arising in the context of reverse logistics. In this paper we subdivide the field into three main areas, namely distribution planning, inventory control, and production planning. For each of these we discuss the implications of the emerging reuse efforts, review the mathematical models proposed in the literature, and point out the areas in need of further research. Special attention is paid to differences and/or similarities with classical 'forward' lo- gistics methods. © 1997 Elsevier Science B.V. Keyword~': Survey; Modelling; Product recovery; Logistics