In the future process and service innovations will gain further importance in practice and research. Even today, market winners need them to obtain advantage in competition. In this context logistics and supply chain management are key enablers. Innovations in these areas will allow supply chains to increase their efficiency significantly and help to create further innovations in different areas. This volume, edited by Wolfgang Kersten, Thorsten Blecker and Cornelius Herstatt provides insights into new concepts and innovations in the areas of logistics management concepts, supply chain planning and design, supply chain management driven innovations, risk and sustainability management and regional innovations for logistics. The book for ambitious innovators in logistics! In addition, it offers valuable insights into the status of logistic supply chain management for lecturers and students.

In this book, Nizar Abdelkafi defines variety-induced complexity from the perspectives of the company, supply chain and customers. The author develops a sequence model and a key metrics system for the management of internal complexity, proposes a matrix-based tool that identifies the causes of complexity in mass customization supply chains and conducts an explorative study at a Germany-based company. Furthermore he identifies features, to use in online configuration systems to reduce the complexity that customers face during the product selection process.

Today, there is a huge variety of logistics networks – ranging from very simple locally oriented chains to internationally operating complex systems. This volume, edited by Thorsten Blecker, Wolfgang Kersten and Carsten Gertz provides a valuable insight into: new concepts for transportation and supply chain management, latest findings in the area of distribution management, pioneering technologies for logistics such as Auto-ID and more. With this book you will learn how to manage existing nodes in different fields of logistics.

This monograph by Jason Shiu Kong Lau aims at investigating appropriate levels of information sharing, which can yield benefits close to full information sharing. The book deals with the investigation of appropriate levels of information sharing; the associated coordination methods in three supply chain problems: inventory replenishment, distributed project scheduling and rescheduling; the establishing of a framework for investigating impacts of sharing production information among enterprises in supply chains. Through the use of multi-agent-based approach to modeling supply chains, this book shows that appropriate levels of information sharing performs close to, or even better than full information sharing. This work provides insights to improve performance of the supply chains in which full information sharing and centralized problem solving are not practical. With the aid of Internet and multi-agent technologies, practitioners in small and medium-sized enterprises can reduce barriers and costs of sharing information and, hence, implementing supply chain management.

Nowadays the supply chain management framework is improved continuously by new elements like quality or risk management. This volume, edited by Wolfgang Kersten, Thorsten Blecker and Heike Flämig provides a valuable insight into: latest findings in the area of global logistics, new concepts for product induced logistics strategies, quality and risk management for logistics and supply chains, the challenge of sustainability, performance and capacity management. With this volume you will learn how to optimize the management of existing networks in different fields of logistics.