Recent trends in logistics

Abstract

All the foregoing chapters presented some of the commonly known areas in transportation and logistics. This chapter presents some of the most recent topics or areas in logistics that have become very popular and have gained importance from the practitioner’s point of view. The intent of this chapter is not to cover all of the latest concepts or trends in logistics but to highlight some of the important aspects of certain key topics. For an extensive and detailed discussion of recent topics, readers are referred to the appropriate references listed or the further reading section at the end of this chapter. The following five topics are presented in this chapter:

• • third-party logistics — the reasons for outsourcing, a process for implementing third-party logistics, and some of the impediments to third-party logistics are addressed;

• • benchmarking — different types of benchmarking and the process of benchmarking are presented;

• • reverse logistics — the need for environmentally responsible logistics or reverse logistics, the options for implementing reverse logistics and the steps required to implement reverse logistics are discussed;

• • global logistics — flows in global logistics and a generic model for the global supply chain are presented;

• • virtual warehousing — an introduction to virtual warehousing is presented.