Purpose – To analyse logistical innovations from 1984 to 2003. Design/methodology/approach – The approach concerned analysing the use of patents retrieved from major patent databases to create a picture of logistical innovations. Findings – Confirmation that the use of patent statistics can depict an overall picture of technological innovation in the logistics sector. Logistics firms can be inn...

The trends and recent changes in logistics lead to complex and partially conflicting requirements on logistic planning and control systems. Due to the lack of efficiency of currently available strategies and methodologies, a new paradigm for logistics planning and control is required. An emerging approach is the analysis and design of autonomous logistic processes. Agents represent a modern app...

New logistics models – physical internet, pooling, control towers, reusable containers management – require an item-level traceability of physical shipping units that is independent of the partners involved in the supply chains. Current information systems architectures match this need by interfacing heterogeneous systems with each other. Such architecture can’t meet the challenges brought by n...

Fierce competition in today’s global markets, the introduction of products with shorter and shorter design and life cycles, and heightened expectation of customers have forced business enterprises to invest in, and focus much attention on their supply chains. This, coupled with advances and evolution in the fields of information systems, communication and transportation technologies (for exampl...

Determining optimal routes for given freight is a core decision in logistics. In intermodal logistics, freight routing has to consider the interfaces between different modes of transportation, such as hand-over offsets, load changes, and organizational procedures. We study this problem from the perspective of Service-Oriented Computing (SOC). We (1) propose representing intermodal transport sys...

This paper proposes an efficient data collection algorithm for active RFID systems. The algorithm can be used for ubiquitous services in maritime logistics adaptation. Conventional algorithms use slotted aloha in ISO 18000-7 or CSMA/CA in DASH 7 mode 2. They show poor throughput performance because they collect all tags at every wakeup round. The proposed algorithm, adapted to maritime logistic...

Nowadays, due to the increasing complexity and expansion of supply chains, logistics is becoming a more strategic activity for firms in terms of both time and cost performance. In this paper, the coordination in a logistics services market based on vehicle consolidation policy is considered. In particular, three coordination policies characterized by different levels of collaboration among the ...

Location-based Services (LBS) [1] have already started their market penetration process and several platforms capable of running LBS are available. With the number of LBS increasing, the current development is targeting consumer applications, although LBS have a high potential for enhancing business processes in companies as well. Considering business process optimization, one concept recently ...

Supply Chain Management and Logistics involves optimizing the delivery of goods, services and information from supplier to customer. An effective supply chain makes companies competitive and profitable. Information is essential to making optimal supply chain decisions because it provides the global scope needed to make optimal decisions. Information technology (IT) provides the tools together t...

3 The need for more flexible, adaptable and customer-oriented warehouse operations has been increasingly identified as an important issue by today’s warehouse companies due to the rapidly changing preferences of the customers that use their services. Motivated by manufacturing and other logistics operations, in this paper we argue on the potential application of product intelligence in warehous...