This book explains concepts and techniques for business analytics and demonstrate them on real life applications for managers and practitioners. It illustrates how machine learning and optimization techniques can be used to implement intelligent business automation systems. The book examines business problems concerning supply chain, marketing & CRM, financial, manufacturing and human resources functions and supplies solutions in Python.

This book examines the challenges and opportunities arising from an assortment of technologies as they relate to Operations Management and Finance. The book contains primers on operations, finance, and their interface. After that, each section contains chapters in the categories of theory, applications, case studies, and teaching resources. These technologies and business models include Big Data and Analytics, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Blockchain, IoT, 3D printing, sharing platforms, crowdfunding, and crowdsourcing. The balance between theory, applications, and teaching materials make this book an interesting read for academics and practitioners in operations and finance who are curious about the role of new technologies. The book is an attractive choice for PhD-level courses and for self-study.

Maritime transport is the transport of people or goods by water. It is the backbone of world trade and globalization. Twenty-four hours a day and all year round, ships carry cargoes to all corners of the globe. Maritime Transport focuses on the operational side of this important industry, covering many topics such as sea traffic currents, passenger transport, short sea shipping and dangerous cargoes. Parts one and two of Maritime Transport present the concepts, theory and background information, then part three presents more complex and deeper issues such as the maritime transportation of the future. It covers topics such as intelligent shipping, data exchange at sea and maritime security. In addition, the book includes fascinating case studies and examples, such as maritime transport in the Baltic sea, ship strategies in Norway and Greece and the benefits of slow steaming. At the end of each chapter there are questions that will help students to gain a deeper understanding of the many topics covered.

This book encompasses the macro-factors pertaining to the overall development in logistics technologies and facilities, region-specific policies and plans, industry-wide transformation in transport, manufacturing, commerce, and agriculture in China. Specifically, it describes policies and practices in China's high-quality development of logistics, China's business environment construction in logistics, and progress of port logistics in China. It also highlights the applications and prospects of blockchain technology in China's logistics industry in the year 2019. The expositions on and analyses of these subjects are based on the latest available sources and statistical data. As with the previous volumes, the ultimate aim of this book is to present a timely portrait of the rapid growth of China's logistics market and the status quo of its logistics industry. In so doing, the book offers an in-depth analysis of critical issues involved in the ongoing dynamic and multi-faceted development and provides a valuable reference resource for interested readers in the academic and professional fields.

This book helps the reader to identify how different organizations in the context of diverse societies deploy their resources and leverage their capabilities to achieve better performance of its various labor skills, marketing, social responsibility and management capacity. Intelligent Logistics is a complex phenomenon that has become critical for companies to reach their development locally and internationally. On the one hand, macro-factors and market structure influence in business competitiveness, but also in a regional or sector context. The internal aspects and the use of various business tools contribute to the ability to create value in an organization. It is of utmost importance to understand the relevance of crucial aspects in the technological future that should be known and implemented by the Z generation of its incidence in the use of organizational models linked to artificial intelligence. Every innovative aspect in the use of new technologies for the distribution of goods and services will be crucial in a globalized world. An avant-garde society will require improved decision-making regarding Logistics 4.0 and its implementation in our lives respecting the environment and being sustainable together with invaluable principles of generating tacit knowledge for future generations.

This invaluable book covers all aspects of procurement, from drafting and using contracts to procurement strategies for privately financed projects. It is written from a construction perspective, and uses examples from other industries where appropriate.This essential book offer presents guidance, explanations and case studies to help the reader comprehend the strengths and weaknesses and realistic meanings and outcomes of the stages in the development of an effective procurement strategy.

For any business involved in today's supply chains, logistics services are critical. Companies have to decide whether to retain their own logistics operations or place their trust in third-party suppliers. This potential move away from the traditional approach of managing these processes internally can lead to improved service and reduced cost although this isn't always the case. The Logistics Outsourcing Handbook provides step by step guidance on the process of logistics outsourcing and explains how to apply this information for commercial success. Vital advice is given on benchmarking existing operations, how to shortlist companies, produce a request for a proposal, choose the optimum supplier and implement and manage the contract. The Logistics Outsourcing Handbook analyses outsourcing from both an industry wide perspective, while also drilling down into specific individual considerations. The book provides valuable guidance in terms of contractual relationships, cost models and the integration of information technology systems. By analysing current statistics and surveys, looking into factors behind why contracts are awarded and terminated important insights can be acquired. This book contains tools, models, online resources and case studies on the outsourced relationships of companies including Intel KFC and BA to further develop the reader's knowledge which makes this book an informative and essential resource.

This Open-Access-Book analyzes the acceptance of sustainable freight transport and suggests a new framework for policy measures to decarbonize freight transport. Despite intense political endeavors, the environmental performance of the transport system has not improved in the previous years. It seems that the existing measures are not sufficient to motivate transport users to implement sustainable freight transport strategies. The case of three different strategies for sustainable freight transport is studied: horizontal collaboration in a Physical Internet network, multimodal freight transport and liquefied natural gas (LNG) as alternative truck fuel. Each of these three strategies falls within a different pillar of the avoid-shift-reduce framework. The determinants of acceptance and suggested policy measures in this study reflect transport users' needs towards sustainable freight transport. This should support policy makers and the logistics industry to implement sustainable practices and achieve the ambitious emission targets by decarbonizing freight transport.

The management of logistics and supply chain operations is of vital importance in the defence sector. Defence Logistics looks at established theories and their practical utility, providing insights into current thinking for postgraduate and undergraduate students, lecturers, researchers, practitioners and professionals through real-life case studies. Defence Logistics focuses on key areas of logistics and supply chain management in context, such as sustainability, inventory management, resilience, procurement, information systems and crisis response. This comprehensive and up-to-the-minute collection includes contributions from international academics from a range of universities, academies and defence schools, along with practitioners who are currently working in the field of defence logistics.

Macrologistics is a strategic view of logistics as a production factor on national scales to support a shift towards sustainability. The book details logistics' evolution from a functional discipline to a value chain optimiser and, ultimately, an enabler of sustainability, including the evolution of metrics to support this shift. Macrologistics instrumentation involves striving towards the lowest total cost of ownership for national economies where, to improve decision-making, these costs should ultimately include the societal and ecological costs incurred due to logistics activities.

From Logistics Strategy To Macrologistics represents macrologistics research outputs for a number of developing economies, identifying distinctive macrologistics policy and infrastructure investments themes to address national logistics challenges in developing economies. The book culminates in a discussion on the potential future role of logistics to support the shift to a more sustainable society, where an acceptance of a degrowth paradigm might be required, and even advisable, for a more secure, fulfilling future. Logistics (and economics) scholars, researchers and practitioners should steer their work towards contributing to the development of an ecologically sustainable society, where resources and returns are shared widely, sustainably and equitably.

This book aims to investigate a long-term strategy for sustainable urban logistics. The literature evidence exhibits that considerable research on urban logistics lacks long-term planning and rarely considers the urban spatial development and integration of urban distribution innovations. Currently, 11 distribution innovations can be used for future sustainable urban freight transport. According to a systematic discussion, this book formulates the conceptual model of Sustainable Inner-urban Intermodal Transportation (SIUIT) for future urban logistics. Moreover, a comprehensive analysis illustrates that future integrations of distribution innovations comprise operational and technological integration. To this end, the morphological analysis method is employed to discuss their feasible solutions based on the SIUIT model. After that, combined with the trend exploration of urban spatial development on large- and megacities, this book constructs the 2.x Modula & Sustainable Urban Freight Network to improve the flexibility of the future sustainable logistics transformation. About the AuthorDr. rer. pol. Zhangyuan He graduated from the University of Bremen. He currently undertakes postdoctoral research at the School of Urban Planning and Design, Peking University.

This book is a compilation of advanced research and applications on robotic item picking and warehouse automation for e-commerce applications. The works in this book are based on results that came out of the Amazon Robotics Challenge from 2015-2017, which focused on fully automated item picking in a warehouse setting, a topic that has been assumed too complicated to solve or has been reduced to a more tractable form of bin picking or single-item table top picking. The book's contributions reveal some of the top solutions presented from the 50 participant teams. Each solution works to address the time-constraint, accuracy, complexity, and other difficulties that come with warehouse item picking. The book covers topics such as grasping and gripper design, vision and other forms of sensing, actuation and robot design, motion planning, optimization, machine learning and artificial intelligence, software engineering, and system integration, among others. Through this book, the authors describe how robot systems are built from the ground up to do a specific task, in this case, item picking in a warehouse setting. The compiled works come from the best robotics research institutions and companies globally.

Many manufacturing and distribution companies are moving from the traditional 'forecast push MRP' to demand-driven supply chain management (SCM). Demand-driven SCM is an 'end-to-end' supply chain planning and replenishment process that enables companies to achieve their planned service levels from up to half the average level of inventory and requiring significantly less throughput capacity - irrespective of the level of demand volatility or lead-time length. Demand-Driven Supply Chain Management is the go-to source for industry supply chain/operations executives and students. It describes the 'what, how and why' of the demand-driven SCM process. The key themes in the book are: what is demand-driven? why is demand-driven so effective? how to operate a demand-driven supply chain? and how to adopt the demand-driven process in your company? Readers can quickly grasp the essential concepts from one of numerous self-contained sections that present the book's key concepts from different perspectives. Online resources available include full-colour figures.

An award-winning journalist's investigation into Amazon's true impact on inequality. The market value of Amazon.com has exceeded one trillion dollars. In 2020, its annual revenue increased by over 100 billion dollars. As the company insinuates itself ever further into our lives, Alec MacGillis investigates how it is reshaping society. With empathy and breadth, he tells the stories of those who've thrived and struggled in this rapidly changing environment, and shows how Amazon has even become a force in Washington, DC. The result is an intimate account of contemporary capitalism: its drive to innovate, its dark, pitiless magic, and its remaking of our world with every click.

Based on the eponymous symposium and exhibition, Fulfilled: Architecture, Excess, and Desire considers the role of architecture in a culture shaped by the excessive manufacturing and assuagement of desire. Until the term became synonymous with Amazon warehouses, the concept of fulfilment described the achievement of a desire - sometimes tangible, often psychological or spiritual. With the rapid growth of e-commerce, our understanding of fulfilment has evolved to reflect a seemingly endless cycle of desire and gratification - one whose continuity hinges on our willingness to overlook the cultural, economic, and environmental impacts of our ever-increasing expectation of quick and efficient fulfilment. A closer look at fulfilment reveals a social, typological, formal, aesthetic, and economic practice constructed collectively through both digital and physical interactions. It is a cultural practice which evolves like a language, both universally transferable and contextually specific. As a symposium, exhibition, and now publication, this project aims to draw out these new arrangements, sticky relationships, and material by-products of cultural production and to ask again the age-old question, "What does it mean to be fulfilled?" This book examines the architecture of fulfilment through three lenses: logistical, material, and cultural fulfilment. Each reveals the new forms of architectural practice and research that are possible, typical, and even surreptitiously encouraged in the age of Amazon. Fulfilment networks are not invisible systems; they are tangible objects - warehouses, suburban houses, parking lots, cardboard boxes, shopping malls, mechanical systems, shipping containers - with which architects necessarily interact. From political mapping and questions of labour to digital and physical storage typologies, contemporary architects learn from and work critically within the architecture of fulfilment. Their interests and approaches include the material and environmental shortcomings of global logistics and the formal, representational, and cultural potentials of a culture of excess. This book highlights architecture's unique capacity to offer methodologies for confronting an increasingly ambiguous, alienating world and produce new knowledge and unexpected solutions that go beyond the dichotomies of rural and urban territories. Featuring new texts and visual work by more than a dozen contemporary architects: Ana Miljacki - Boston, MA; Ang Li - Boston, MA; Ashley Bigham - Columbus, OH; Cristina Goberna Pesudo - Madrid, Spain; Curtis Roth - Columbus, OH; Jesse LeCavalier - Toronto, Canada; John McMorrough - Ann Arbor, MI; Keith Krumwiede - San Francisco, CA; Laida Aguirre - Ann Arbor, MI; Leigha Dennis - New York, NY; Lluis Alexandre Casanovas Blanco - Barcelona, Spain; Michelle Chang - Boston, MA; Miles Gertler - Toronto, Canada; Mira Henry & Matthew Au (Current Interests) - Los Angeles, CA

The Logistics and Supply Chain Toolkit provides practical tools for warehouse, inventory and transport managers and students to help them tackle the challenges of logistics and supply chain management. It is full of practical ideas and information to optimise the management of logistics and supply chain processes. The Logistics and Supply Chain Toolkit offers solutions and plans spanning across a variety of sub-disciplines such as warehousing, logistics, supply chain management, inventory and outsourcing. Each toolkit addresses key principles within its area of discipline, providing the reader with a precision approach to be used in complex and sensitive circumstances. The toolkit presents a number of major management tools such as Fortna's Product Flow Smart Design, SMART, DMAIC and Gantt charts. General management, performance management and problem-solving tools have also been included to provide a broader, transferable scope of tools for the reader.

This book explains supply chain management (SCM) using the strategy-structure-process-performance (SSPP) framework. Utilizing this well-known framework of contingency theory in the areas of strategic management and organizational design, SCM is firmly positioned among management theories. The author specifically proposes a theoretical foundation of SCM that will be relevant to such areas as operations management, logistics management, purchasing management, and marketing. Both the static and dynamic sides of SCM are reported. On the static side, supply chain strategies are divided into three patterns: efficiency-oriented, responsiveness-oriented, and the hybrid efficiency- and responsiveness-oriented pattern. For each strategy, suitable internal and external supply chain structures and processes are proposed. On the dynamic side, the big issue is to overcome performance trade-offs. Based on theories of organizational change, process change, and dynamic capabilities, the book presents a model of supply chain process change. On structure, the focus is on the role of an SCM steering department. Illustrative cases are included from such diverse industries as automobiles (Toyota and Nissan ), personal computers (Fujitsu), office equipment (Ricoh), air-conditioning (Daikin), tobacco (Japan Tobacco), chemicals and cosmetics (Kao), and casual fashion (Fast Retailing and Inditex).The strategy and organization of SCM is systematically presented on the basis of the SSPP framework. In particular, the relationships among three management elements-strategy, structure, and process-can be identified in an SCM context. From many of the cases contained in this volume, there emerges an understanding of how to analyze the success and failure factors of SCM using the SSPP framework. In addition, the reader sees not only the static side SCM such as process operation but also its dynamic side such as process innovation and process improvement.

Using numerous real-life examples from global technology corporations, and with a foreword from Tim Curran the Chief Executive Officer of the Global Technology Distribution Council, Technology Distribution Channels explores the chain that makes technology products and services available for market and explains how to make the most of each step of the process. By defining the role and significance of the various partners involved, including distributors, wholesalers and final-tier channel players, it provides a clear understanding of the entire go-to-market process, whilst also explaining channel partners' business models and how to engage with them for effective market access. Technology Distribution Channels covers both the tactical and strategic dimensions of channel economics as well as containing information on accessing and servicing markets and customers, controlling brands, integrating web and online channels, building the value proposition and creating differentiation. As the only approved text book for the Global Technology Distribution Council's Accreditations, Technology Distribution Channels contains expert guidance for both the Certificate and the Diploma programs. Comprehensive and clear, Technology Distribution Channels provides readers with the knowledge needed to improve their business model to ensure maximum market exposure and successful product delivery.

Logistics is a complex industry that exposes employees to a whole variety of risks. These include not only accidents on the road and deaths and injuries resulting from unsafe use of forklifts, but also the consequences of poor fire safety, long-term health risks due to poor manual handling technique and problems relating to mental health. Many thousands of incidents are recorded every year. This book examines each aspect of health and safety in turn, with a focus on warehousing and transportation. Health and Safety in Logistics informs managers about potential hazards found in the industry and explains in detail how they can make the workplace as safe as possible.

Seventy percent of the planet is covered by water, and ninety percent of global economic trade is transported by sea. The oceans are inextricably linked with food security and the global economy. Technology and the Blue Economy examines the vital role that technology plays in developing the blue economy. It provides a clear, accessible picture of the current and future potential of technology within different sectors in the blue economy, such as offshore energy, ports and harbours, shipping, maritime surveillance and cyber security.

Technology and the Blue Economy looks at the disruption of established business models through case studies of leading innovators, examining development issues, what they have learned and how they have transformed their current ways of working within their organizations. Along with actionable takeaways at the end of each section, readers will learn from and be inspired by the front-line experiences of Blue Economy innovators.

Dieses Buch nimmt eine grundlegende Einfuhrung in die Logistik und eine Einordnung der Logistik in den Wertschoepfungsprozess vor. Dabei wird auch der Frage nachgegangen, in welcher Beziehung Logistik(management) und Supply Chain Management stehen. Neben Begriffen und Strukturen in der Logistik werden auch Prozessaspekte behandelt. Ziel ist es, in kompakter Form das moderne Logistikverstandnis, das uber die reine physische Abwicklung von Gutertransporten, Umschlag und Lagerung hinausgeht, aufzuzeigen. Logistik wird dabei sowohl aus der Sicht einer Managementkonzeption als auch aus der Sicht der technischen Dimensionen behandelt. Jedes Kapitel enthalt Lernziele sowie zahlreiche UEbungsaufgaben mit ausfuhrlichen Loesungen zum Selbststudium und zur optimalen Prufungsvorbereitung.

Using e-business technologies to manage supply chains increases the efficiency and performance of logistics, production, distribution and other related activities. E-Business and Supply Chain Integration explains how a number of tools can be used to produce an e-supply chain and achieve higher productivity. This essential book examines supply chain theories along with real life cases and examples from industry to illustrate how e-business can enhance supply chain integration and highlights the negative outcomes when it is poorly managed. Dr Ozlem Bak and a team of expert contributors from practice and academia assess the impact of e-business on numerous different sectors, such as automotive, healthcare, logistics, higher education, and professional services. E-Business and Supply Chain Integration explains the strategic implications of new technologies and provides guidance on effective supply chains in e-businesses.

"Logistic Core Operations with SAP" not only provides an overview of core logistics processes and functionality-it also shows how SAP's Business Suite covers logistic core operations, what features are supported, and which systems can be used to implement end-to-end processes in the following logistic core disciplines: Procurement, Distribution, Transportation, Warehouse Logistics and Inventory Management, and Compliance and Reporting. In this context the authors not only explain their integration, the organizational set-up, and master data, but also which solution fits best for a particular business need. This book serves as a solid foundation for understanding SAP software. No matter whether you are a student or a manager involved in an SAP implementation, the authors go far beyond traditional function and feature descriptions, helping you ask the right questions, providing answers, and making recommendations. The book assists you in understanding SAP terminology, concepts and technological components as well as their closed-loop integration. Written in a clear, straight-forward style and using practical examples, it contains valuable tips, illustrative screenshots and flowcharts, as well as best practices-showing how business requirements are mapped into software functionality.