Guest editorial

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/IJLM-05-2020-355
• Pages: 289-290
• Date: 16 October 2020
• Published date: 16 October 2020
• Author: Shams Rahman,Nyoman Pujawan
• Subject Matter: Logistics,Management science & operations

Guest editorial

Papers from the 23rd International Symposium on Logistics (ISL)

The first International Symposium on Logistics (ISL) was held in Nottingham, UK, in 1993.

Over the past two and half decades ISL has turned into one of the main international

platforms for discussing and disseminating research, practices and innovative ideas in

supply chain and logistics management.

The 23rd ISL was held in Bali, Indonesia from 8 to 11 July 2018. The conference theme,

“Big Data Enabled Supply Chain Innovations”, which emphasised on the creation and

maximization of value from an increasingly massive and unstructured data and gain

competitive advantage. It covered various areas of the conference theme including Big Data

and Supply Chain Analytics; Technology and ICT in Supply Chains; Complexity, Risk and

Uncertainty; Globalisation and Supply Chain Performance; and Supply Chain Skills, Training

and Education.

The 23rd symposium attracted delegates from over 26 different nations around the world

who were scheduled to present 71 papers. Of the total number of papers presented at the

symposium, 17 were short listed by a sub-panel of the ISL International Advisory Committee.

A meticulous process was followed in shortlisting the papers which involved reading the

papers and attending presentations by the members of the sub-panel and assessing session

chairs’feedback. An initial desk review was then undertaken by the guest editors and authors

of 14 papers were invited to submit the extended versions of their papers following the

submission guidelines of the International Journal of Logistics Management. Finally, three

papers were accepted following the peer-review process and the editorial policy of this

journal.

In the first paper, Childerhouse et al. note that New Zealand’s log export supply chain has

low resilience; in most cases the closure of a port significantly constrains export capacity.

Therefore, to enhance the resilience, they model the aggregate-level resilience of New

Zealand’s log export logistical network using linear programming and then evaluate

operational cons traints and validate the capacit yof operational flows fr om forests to ports

using discrete event simulation. Childerhouse et al. demonstrates that strategically

increasing redundancy can be complimented with operational flexibility to enhance

network resilience in the long term. However, the requirement for large quantities of

empirical data relating to operational flows limited the simulation component of this study

toasingleregion.

The identification of alternative supply routes, with the objective of not only minimising

cost, and risk of delivery but also to find new market opportunities, had always been a critical

problem in supply chain research. In the second paper Keltto and Woo adopts a market-

oriented approach by incorporating both earnings and costs, including opportunity costs, to

evaluate the profitability of the Northern Sea Route (NSR) as a shipping lane from the

financial perspective of shipping companies under post 2020 sulphur regulations. In this

study the profitability of the NSR is assessed for a Handymax Medium Range tanker vessel

using scenarios in combination with spot market earning levels, the regulation compliance

method and destination ports. Results suggest that the required freight rates from the Arctic

trade to justify the transit to the NSR are higher than the actual agreed rates in the past, which

Guest editorial

289

This paper forms part of a special section “ISL 2018 23rd Symposium on Logistics”, guest edited by

Shams Rahman and Nyoman Pujawan.

The International Journal of

Logistics Management

Vol. 31 No. 2, 2020

pp. 289-290

© Emerald Publishing Limited

0957-4093

DOI 10.1108/IJLM-05-2020-355