Guest editorial

• Date: 14 August 2017
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/IJLM-05-2017-0139
• Pages: 781-781
• Published date: 14 August 2017
• Author: Peter McCullen
• Subject Matter: Management science & operations,Logistics

ISL 20

Guest editorial

The 20th International Symposium on Logistics was held in the beautiful and ancient

University of Bologna, Italy from 5 to 8 July 2015. Focussing on the theme of “Designing

responsible and innovative global supply chains”, the conference was attended by

113 delegates from 26 countries, representing perspectives from Europe, Asia,

North American and Australia/New Zealand. The conference included a fascinating

tour of the Ducati Motorcycle factory, where cellular manufacturing principles were being

employed to produce a broad range of high-performance machines. Of the 92 papers

presented at the conference, 23 were shortlisted for development into a journal article and

19 full papers were submitted.

This issue contains five articles developed from conference presentations. The article

by Penazzi, Accorsi, Ferrari, Manzini and Dunstall addresses job shop design in food

processing, in a business context requiring increased variety and responsiveness. A discrete

event simulation approach has been developed, to support decision making via scenario

modelling and what-if analyses, as managers seek to optimise cost, quality, energy consumption

(carbon emissions) and food safety.

The conference’s responsibility theme is explored by Nilsson, Sternberg and Klaas-Wissing

who have researched the relationship between 3PL environmental policies and the approaches

taken by their road haulagecontractors. Theinnovative supply chain design theme is reflected

in Dapiran andKam’s investigation into product returns management. In an area where value

and retailer margin can so easily be destroyed, they have researched the interactions between

supplier, retailer and 3PL, identifying six drivers for developing and appropr iating value.

Warehouse managers face complex decisions that affect the customer service and cost

performance of warehouse operations. Increasing the number of order pickers can improve

customer service, but can also cause congestion and inefficiency via “picker blocking”.

Franzke, Grosse, Glock and Elbert have developed an agent-based simulation model to help

managers to understand the interactions between routing policies, storage assignment, and

number of pickers employed, with a view to optimising performance through design.

Environmental concerns are further developed in the field of reverse logistics for charity

retailers in research by Pal, which reveals a number of interesting and sophisticated ways of

adding and capturing value in used clothing supply chains.

Please be inspired by these papers which address important topics, and employing a

variety of research methodologies, in the challenging and multi-disciplinary field of logistics

and supply chain management.

Peter McCullen

Brighton Business School, University of Brighton, Brighton, UK

The International Journal of

Logistics Management

Vol. 28 No. 3, 2017

p. 781

© Emerald PublishingLimited

0957-4093

DOI 10.1108/IJLM-05-2017-0139

781

Guest editorial