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Logistics research: a 50 years’ march of ideas

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Logistics Research

Abstract

Logistics—as a field of the Applied Sciences addressing issues from the worlds of business and the economy—is now more than 50 years old. This essay makes an effort to review, reflect, and interpret what researchers have done and thought in this field so far, what kind of impact their ideas apparently made, and where the “march of ideas” about logistics research might lead in the future. The first part of the review presents data that recently have become available about the quantitative impact of logistics in an international comparison between countries. From this review some hypotheses are derived about the growth opportunities for the field in the future and the challenge of maintaining the dynamics of the development of logistics in maturing, post-industrial economies. In the second part the qualitative evolution of scientific logistical thinking—the “march of ideas” of the last 50 years—is reviewed, mapped and, again, interpreted with respect to the question, where the “next” challenges, new ideas, and directions may be found to further advance the “Science of Logistics”.

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Notes

  1. This analysis was based primarily on data assembled or estimated about “national logistics expenditures” by Bowersox and Calantone [8] and Bowersox et al. [9], Armstrong et al. [2], Wilson [38, 83].

  2. In the German language “material” logistics is of often referred to as “TUL” logistics (=Transport, Umschlag, Lagerung). Sheffi and Klaus [67] referred to this as “PPP”-logistics, i.e. logistics as the sum of physical “Placing” activities—transporting, moving objects from one point in a geography to another—of “Pacing”—taking care of the time-related activities of storing, buffering, warehousing, inventory keeping—and “Parsing”—arranging and rearranging objects by parcelling, deconsolidating, picking/packing, sorting, consolidating. This notion of material logistics traces back to Marshall’s [50] and Weld’s [78] discussion of the creation of economic “utilities”.

  3. This chart was originally published in Klaus [39; p. 346]. Countries are identified by their international vehicle license plate symbols Trend-lines have been added for the argument following.

  4. Some of the variance around the trend line in Fig. 1 may be explained by the very different geographical structures of these countries. Geographically spread out countries like the US and Sweden with significant amounts of natural resources to be moved require above average transportation expense. Geographically compact, very densely populated and resource-poor countries such as Switzerland and Denmark are below average.

  5. An additional factor explaining the relatively low spending on logistics in "poorer" countries, of course, which is not accounted for in Fig. 1, is a relatively lower wage cost level—but the general trend shown will not be affected.

  6. This relationship will be more complicated in reality, because it is also contingent on the typical value density factors in an industry. For the purpose of this discussion these additional contingencies are neglected.

  7. See footnote 2 above!

  8. Such as the “functional”, “physical distribution”, “supply chain/cross-functional” and a “global supply network” phase. Recent examples are in Baumgarten [5] and Ballou [6].

  9. The choice of these criteria is inspired by Rheinberger’s [63] argument that the study of the development of scientific knowledge should reflect to historical context and the means and methodologies through which the process of knowledge generation takes place. The analysis is deliberately qualitative and interpretive rather than based on formal methodology (as, e.g. in Charvet’s [13] recent article).

  10. Described by Keith [35] in an article of the same title!

  11. The first monograph of this kind in Germany, possibly in all of Europe, was Pfohl’s [56] dissertation.

  12. A frequently quoted early source is Lewis [45], which demonstrated the savings potentials which can be realized by taking a “total cost” perspective.

  13. Early examples are Morgenstern’s [51] “Note on the Formulation of the Theory of Logistics“ and publications by the RAND Corporation (e.g. [25]).

  14. e.g. Wallace [76]. This concern also was the basis of the impressive growth of ERP software providers such as SAP.

  15. Examples are in Sasser [64]. A discussion about the most recent logistics segment taking up the “industrialization“ path—after the parcel—and international express services, LTL services, worldwide container-line services seems to become the truckload-industry as discussed in Klaus and Müller [37].

  16. Compare the definition of Intralogistics by CeMAT, the world’s e world’s leading fair for Intralogistics based at Hannover.

  17. i.e. the subtitle of his 1988/1978 book!

  18. Goldratt [26] novel “The Goal“which claims to have sold more than a million copies may be considered the best-selling book on logistics of all time.

  19. Wildemann was the first to popularize the concept in German industry, helping to start the “just-in-time revolution” in European industry too.

  20. The influential American “Council of Logistics Management (CLM)” renamed themselves in 2005 to “Council of Supply Chain Management (CSCMP)”, implying that “logistics” covers a subset of SCM-issues only. A recent discussion of this perspective is in Frankel et al. [24]. In this paper, as will become clear, “Logistics” and “Flow Management” are considered to be the broader, more generic concepts, and SCM is one—if very important—field of application of logistical concepts and ideas.

  21. It may be critically noted in this context, that some authors and practitioners are applying the new “SCM” terminology when they deal with nothing but the long familiar narrower logistical issues of procurement in dyadic supplier–manufacturer relationships or of manufacturer–customer relationships, leaving open the question whether there is truly new content of ideas in their uses of the SCM terminology.

  22. Hopp [30] used this term for his recent book publication.

  23. To help advance the convergence and integration of these streams of research is the mission which the Logistics Research journal has given itself.

  24. Most of those issues have been addressed in one way or another already, but.

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    Peter Klaus

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Klaus, P. Logistics research: a 50 years’ march of ideas. Logist. Res. 1, 53–65 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12159-008-0009-y

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