1.1 The Purposes of This Book
This original purpose of this book was to produce a celebration of the multiplicity of talents held within the Logistics and Operations Management (LOM) Section of Cardiff Business School. The expertise within this group of 40 or so scholars ranges across logistics, operations management, supply chain management, procurement, transport, port management, and related disciplines. It is therefore testimony to individual and collective endeavour, to unity and diversity, and to the unending quest for insight and understanding.
The book remains a celebration of teaching and research. In the period since 2010 the LOM Section has been able to secure significant research funding and partnership with a wide range of business and government organisations. Some research projects such as ASTUTE, funded via the European Union and running for ten years, have resulted in the engagement of LOM staff with multiple stakeholders. In this activity the LOM Section has participated in the creation or saving of hundreds of jobs across the âdevelopmentâ regions of Wales. Some projects are centred on âkeystoneâ companies. Notable here is Panalpina, where the relationship has grown over the years to become vitally important for both parties. The resulting Panalpina Research Centre has provided the platform to attract further investment, notably in inventory forecasting for a wide range of applications. Others in the âroll callâ of significant support include Yeo Valley, WEFO, H2020, EPSRC, and a great many KTP fellowships.
The book has other purposes. We hope that it serves as a useful, if eclectic, guide to the burgeoning world of LOM. It is a taster menu. We have not sought comprehensive coverage across all our disciplines any more than we have sought to plumb the depths of a specific subject. Rather, authors were given the opportunity to write about the subject or theme that interested them, to give a flavour of the research and teaching that we provide.
We hope also that the book serves as foundation course text book. The book is here to show students the many doors into the subjects we cover, and perhaps also to open one or two of those doors enough for students to take a look inside. It is not a ponderous trudge through each and every part of a syllabus. Apart from the monotony of such an approach, our teaching thrives on contemporary research, and so the content of our degree courses and modules evolves in parallel with that research. A pure and traditional textbook would rapidly become out of date.
The book is further intended as a marketing initiative. In an era when university finances have been under scrutiny as never before, and when students have a plethora of choices to make when considering courses and institutions, this book brings together in one place a statement of our activities. We do not regard students as customers or consumers. We do regard students as people eager to learn, willing to challenge, and keen to make their own mark in the world. This book therefore gives those students a sense of how we could assist in their pathway to making a difference.
The result is a unique compilation. As far as we are aware, nobody has quite attempted such a project before. As editors of academic collections know all too well, the task of marshalling the contributions is immense. It is an indicator of the degree of mutual respect and sense of shared purpose that in this book there was an overwhelming level of support from staff in the LOM Section. That this support was forthcoming despite the lack of recognition or value accorded to book chapters in the UK Research Excellence Framework, or in academic recruitment and promotions, is a further indicator of the collective will.
1.2 Scope: Breadth, Depth, and Selectivity
A little background is required here. Cardiff Business School emerged out of the ashes of a bankrupt university. Restructured and merged with a smaller but more vibrant technology-focussed institution, the organisation that became Cardiff University inevitably reflected the original constituent entities. Cardiff Business School was the largest single part of the new university, and in time grew further by, among other things, absorbing the Maritime Studies Department. Further transfers of staff followed from the School of Engineering. The LOM Section then came to be comprised of scholars with backgrounds in lean management, systems dynamics and modelling, logistics, transport, port policy, maritime law, shipping economics, supply chain management, and forecasting. This disparate grouping of disciplines and academic traditions could easily have become the foundation for conflict rather than creativity.
In terms of breadth, the book reflects the wide range of staff interests and the constitution of the LOM Section as a whole. There is a core of quantitative management science and operations research, working with advanced mathematics and models, but largely doing so with an applied focus. The maritime and transport tradition has continued, though we no longer actually teach prospective captains on ship simulators! Meanwhile, as the student intake has expanded, so has the portfolio of activities. New specialisms have emerged, though not all can be encompassed within this one book. As a result, we now teach three core M.Sc. programmes: LOM; Marine Policy and Shipping Management; and Sustainable Supply Chain Management. A feature of the staff in the Section is international diversity. We include academics from the UK, Ireland, China, Greece, Libya, Romania, and Turkeyâto name but a few. Again, the book at times echoes this international diversity and outlook.
Special mention must go to the applied character of much that is undertaken in the LOM Section of Cardiff Business School. In an era when universities are increasingly judged and rewarded on the basis of their measurable contribution to society, the book even includes authors or case studies from some of the companies with which we are engaged. Chapter 5 by Eyres and Syntetos on 3D Printing, and Chapter 7 by Demir et al. on vehicle routing are good examples. The co-production of knowledge to mutual benefit is often discussed in academic circles, but not so often made tangible. Our research and engagement therefore are more than a one-way flow of information and insight from âusâ to âthemâ.
With authors given a free rein to interpret the brief of âprovide a chapter on your subject that will illuminate that subject and engage a diverse range of readersâ it is inevitable that very different outcomes have emerged. Some of the authors look back on the historical development of their subject, and the role of the LOM Section (or its forebears) in developing the subject. Chapters 15 and 18 by Beresford and Pettit give an evolutionary account of research, teaching and engagement in Humanitarian Aid and Ports respectively. Some take a perspective of âpast, present, and futureâ, as is shown in Chapter 7 by Demir et al. with respect to vehicle routing. Others have chosen to provide a narrow account of developments at the emerging research frontier for their subject, as is the case in Chapter 8 by Wang in relation to dynamical modelling.
Some have attempted a broad sweep across their subject, by no means an easy task given the proliferation of scholarship and publication in recent years. In this vein, Geng in Chapter 10 provides a literature review of Green Supply Chain Management in Asia for example. Others have stepped back from the detail and the ânoiseâ of contemporary research to provide a more reflective philosophical account of their subjectâas is the case with Nieuwenhuis in Chapter 3.
For all the authors, a key challenge has been to select their subject, or to define the boundaries around their subject. For some, the boundary is defined by technological applications: in Chapter 5 Eyres and Syntetos focus their attention on the impact of 3D Printing (or additive manufacturing) on supply chain relationships for example, while Mason in Chapter 19 explores in detail how online shopping for groceries works in the case of Ocado in the UK. For others the boundaries have been defined by active or recent research projects. Wang et al. in Chapter 16 give a robust categorisation of retail clothing returns and reverse logistics that arose out of a project in Sweden for example.
Emergent themes within a subject are also a means of selecting a focus for the chapters. In the case of Rodrigues et al. in Chapter 13 the theme of horizontal logistics collaboration is explored. This is becoming an important theme for many supply chains as a means to mitigate the environmental and economic costs of logistics. This concern with future supply structures also defines the contribution in Chapter 12 by Purvis et al. looking at resilient supply, as well as Wells in Chapter 6 in an examination of zero carbon logistics, while Chapter 4 (also by Wells) considers business model innovation in logistics and distribution.
A consequence of the inter-penetration of spatially defined markets, the emergence of global supply chains, and the separation of the point of production from the point of consumption has been the growing significance of logistics and physical distribution. It is no accident then that, for example, the growth rate in the total tonnage of goods moved by sea has been greater than global GDP growth. In parallel, the emergence of Internet retailing and the associated rapid order fulfilment systems has greatly increased the importance of more local logistics and distribution. In both instances, operational excellence has become a key to corporate competitiveness. Yet, paradoxically, as the âworldâ of LOM has expanded, so too have the pressures to identify, account for and ultimately remedy a growing range of environmental and social concerns. These themes are interwoven i...