Supply chain management and transport logistics

 

Why supply chain management and transport logistics?

The urgent need for a book on supply chain management and transport logistics

(or simply supply chain logistics) can be illustrated with a number of questions regarding state-of-the-art developments in the field of logistics and supply chain management (SCM).

• Are you aware that over 90 percent of international trade volume is carried across seas and waterways, and consequently over 90 percent of supply chains involve port and transport logistics?

• Are you aware that manufacturing and transportation each generated the same average of 14 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions in 2006?

• Do you understand why it is important to study supply chain management together with transport logistics? What is the difference between supply

chain logistics and manufacturing logistics?

• Do you know the difference between firm-focal and port-focal logistics? (Note: Economic globalization is bringing about an inevitable trend toward port/airportfocused logistics, with firm-based logistics/SCM as building blocks.)

• Are supply chain logistics and supply chain management the same thing?

Although complete answers to these questions are still being explored, the most important and innovative developments in this regard are embedded throughout this book. In short, the answers are based on the following findings:

• Globalization is not a prediction; it is an inevitable reality.

• Globalization is underpinned by two technological innovations: containerization and the Internet, on which the “World’s Factory” and the Wal-Mart Economy are founded.

• Globalization consists of two dimensions: global manufacturing and global services, with logistics as the vital link between the two.