Supporting transcorporate logistics by collaborative performance measurement in industrial logistics networks (diss.)

Researchers: 

Dr. R. Hieber

Partners:

ESEC SA

Financed by:

ESEC SA

Motivation:

Since the early 1980s, there has been an increasing interest in the concept of supply chain man-agement (SCM) to improve performance across the entire industrial logistics network and hence, over these two decades, supply chain management has become a standard part of the business literature and research agendas. Companies that have already streamlined their internal busi-ness processes are now working on optimizing their external relationships to their business partners by using new information and communication technology (ICT) and initiating innovative logistics concepts. From this realization emerged the concept 'supply chain management', which is concerned with the strategic approach of dealing with logistics planning and operation on an integrated basis.

The scientific objective of the dissertation project is to make a contribution to the improvement of transcorporate logistics in industrial networks. Based on existing approaches and techniques of performance measurement, an integral model should be developed to enable and support the transcorporate performance measurement. The following steps support this objective:

• Characteristic features for describing the relevant dimensions of a logistics network must be determined to demonstrate the crucial specialties as well as to characterize the current inte-gral logistics state of a network. This must be on a high level to guarantee the adaptability to logistics networks, regardless of industry branch, type and size.
• Based on the complexity and uniqueness of logistics networks, a framework for a scaleable, adaptive and systematic approach for performance measurement should be provided, which extends the existing approaches to a more integral approach and encompasses all relevant dimensions of a logistics network. The focus hereby will be mainly on strategic high level per-formance indicators.
• Guidelines should be proposed, which facilitate the implementation of the recommended framework.

Results:

In the first step, respective logistics characteristic features of industrial networks in the relevant dimensions of collaboration, coordination and configuration have been identified, which then allowed the specification of the current state of transcorporate logistics as well as the classifica-tion of different types of networks. Based upon these characteristic features, a common network understanding and logistics knowledge between the logistics partners can be achieved. In the second step, current performance measurement approaches were evaluated with respect to their appropriateness for supporting a balanced, integrated, and collaborative network performance measurement approach, i.e., to prevent single local optimization instead of striving for a global network optimum. Most advanced in this area is the SCOR model, which therefore served as a basis for the new integral model proposed for performance measurement. However, to overcome its identified shortcomings, the new two-phase integral model, consisting of generic high-level and aggregated corporate performance indicators as well as including specific implementation guidelines, has been developed.