Question

Select an industry and using the format presented on pages 4 and 5 of your textbook, describe the value chain of that industry. I suggest using examples of specific companies to illustrate each individual step in the value chain.

Answer 1

Abstract

There has been consensus that logistics as well as supply chain management is a vital research field, yet with few literature reviews on this topic. This paper sets out to propose some hot issues in the current research, through a review of related literature from the perspective of operations management. In addition, we generate some insights and future research directions in this field.

1. Introduction

Organizations adopt numerous business improvement methodologies to improve business performance. Logistics as well as supply chain management has been regarded to be the crucial factor for the companies to obtain competitive edge. In fact, logistics as well as supply chain management has received attention since the early 1980s, yet conceptually the management of supply chains is not particularly well understood, and many authors have highlighted the necessity of clear definitional constructs and conceptual frameworks on supply chain management. In this paper, we provide a tutorial on the current research of operations management of logistics and supply chain. We first clarify the conception of logistics and supply chain management in this paper, which defines the scope of our related research papers. The core of this paper is that we provide several hot issues in this field with examples to show how these researches contribute from different research angles. Finally, we conclude the paper with the insights obtained from our analysis and future study directions in this field.

The paper is organized as follows. In the next section, we specify the definitions of the terms of logistics and supply chain used in our paper, with a comparison between these two popular conceptions. In Section 3, which is the core section of this paper, we provide several hot topics in current research with detailed examples. In Section 4, we provide insights and further research directions.

2. Conception and Scope

2.1. Logistics

Logistics is the management of the flow of goods between the point of origin and the point of consumption in order to meet some requirements, for example, of customers or corporations. The resources managed in logistics can include physical items, such as food, materials, animals, equipment, and liquids, as well as abstract items, such as time, information, particles, and energy. The logistics of physical items usually involves the integration of information flow, material handling, production, packaging, inventory, transportation, warehousing, and often security. The complexity of logistics can be modeled, analyzed, visualized, and optimized by dedicated simulation software. The minimization of the use of resources is a common motivation in logistics for import and export.

Note that the above definition of logistics is not unified, although it might be indeed, in current environment, a commonly acknowledged one. For example, Council of Logistics Management (now renamed as Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals) referred to logistics as “the process of planning, implementing, and controlling the efficient, effective flow and storage of goods, services, and related information from point of origin to point of consumption for the purpose of conforming to customer requirements,” which includes inbound, outbound, internal, and external movements and return of materials for environmental purposes.

As we can see, the concept of logistics focuses on the product flow, which is the meaning by which this word has been translated in Chinese. It also puts emphasis on the activities of handling product, which include the storage, transportation, distribution, and packaging and processing. Although business logistics involves many activities, the traditional research of operations management on logistics mainly relates to the fields of logistics facility, transportation, and inventory planning.

2.2. Supply Chain

Compared to “logistics,” there appears to be even less consensus on the definition of the term “supply ch