Guest editorial
Marianne Jahre Research Professor at BI Norwegian School of Management and Head of Centre for the Construction Industry. She received her PhD in Logistics in 1995 at Chalmers University of Technology. Her current research interests include resource development, integration and design of logistics and construction networks, reverse logistics and packaging. She has published in journals including International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management, International Journal of Logistics:Research and Applications and Journal of Chain and Network Science.
Gøran PerssonProfessor of Business Logistics at the Norwegian School of Management in Oslo. He received his MSc and Tech.lic. at the University of Lund in Sweden. His current research interests include collaboration, logistics strategy, and supply chain management. He has written or edited several books on business logistics and supply management, and he has published in several journals, including The International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management. He was the first to receive the Logistics Management Award in Norway in 1990 (the LOGMA-award), and in 1993 he received the Norwegian Purchasing Award by the Norwegian Purchasing Association.
The 18th annual NOFOMA Conference was hosted by the Department of Strategy and Logistics at BI Norwegian School of Management in Oslo in 2006. The conference was once again a success with over 100 participants and approximately 70 presentations. Preceding the main conference the NORDLOG Doctoral Workshop and Educator's Day were organised. The NORDLOG Doctoral Workshop was jointly organised by BI and the Norwegian Defence Staff College and held in historic surroundings at Akershus Fortress.
The theme of the 2006 conference was “Logistics in the new valley”because we wanted to encourage contributions on logistics and SCM in new settings and new applications, such as relief logistics and logistics in large-scale projects. We also especially invited researchers within operations management to submit papers to a special track organised for this particular logistics/SCM approach. As it turned out, a number of papers within this stream of research were submitted and presented, making the conference more “complete”with regards to logistics. The particular focus on variation of approaches,themes, settings, and methodologies for this year's conference also had implications for the final decisions concerning best paper awards and the selection of papers to be included in this special issue.
Unlike many other conferences, authors can choose between two types of submissions – a “work-in-progress” paper or a full paper for proceedings competing for the best-paper-award and publication in the special issue of IJPDLM. Of the papers submitted, 35 came out of the double-blind review process as full papers, with an additional 32 work-in-progress papers. General impressions from the reviews are that papers have improved in quality. Many interesting topics were covered, and most papers were well written and based on good literature reviews as well as sound empirical evidence. We are certain that the opportunity for awards and also for being chosen for a special issue are part of the reason for improved quality and would like to express our sincere gratitude to IJPDLM for once again publishing a special issue on NOFOMA. We would also like to thank all the reviewers who have been involved in the process, and we want to thank Schencker for once again sponsoring the awards.
The task of selecting the best papers was challenging, with many good papers to choose from! Based on the review-process, the ten papers with the best evaluations were selected for an additional review by the Scientific Committee. Further, each member of the Committee was given the opportunity to scan all full-papers for additional “finalists”. After intense discussions the Committee agreed on two papers in each of the two categories. These four papers were selected for the special issue as was an additional paper.
The two papers that received awards for best paper are different in approach,theme, and design. One concerns an important and relatively new research area within logistics; relief logistics. “Humanitarian logistics in disaster relief operations” by Kovács and Spens from the Swedish School of Economics and Business Administration (Hanken) in Finland aims to further the understanding of planning and carrying out logistics operations in the complex area of disaster relief. The characteristics of humanitarian logistics are described and discussed, and a framework is created that distinguishes the actors, phases, and logistical processes of disaster relief. This is an excellent literature review that can help all of us within the logistics area– academics and practitioners alike – to broaden our horizon and to get a structured overview of a highly relevant and interesting field. From topics point of view this is the most exciting paper at the conference. We urge you all to read it. In the paper “Inventory control in environments with short lead times” the author Stig-Arne Mattsson from Lund University discusses and suggests improvements and modifications of currently used inventory control models in order to make them more applicable in practice. This is a highly relevant, well-structured, and well-written paper. From a practical as well as theoretical point of view, the paper is characterized by focus and stringency and represents a valuable contribution to our understanding regarding the application of models in our ERP-systems. Hence, from an application point of view, the Scientific Committee regarded this paper as the best.
The two best papers written by PhD students are also very different. Astrid Vigtil, soon to finish her PhD thesis at Norwegian University of Science and Technology reports on a multiple case study of Vendor Managed Inventory in her paper “Information exchange in vendor managed inventory”. The study takes its starting point in three questions; what kind of regular demand data the suppliers would require, what are the transfer means and frequency that should be applied for the required information, and what is the role of an advance shipment notice from the supplier to the customer. This is a relevant topic covered in a well-carried out study, and a well-written paper, which from a practical point of view, we consider one of the best papers at the conference. The other doctoral paper called “Participant observation in logistics research. Experiences from an RFID implementation study” is written by Henrik Pålsson from Lund University. As the paper points out, participant observation studies are rather uncommon in logistics research. The paper may inspire further research using this method. The Committee wants to reward the courage of carrying out this study. From a methodological point of view the paper is the most exciting at the conference.
The final paper to be included in this special issue is written by a research group consisting of Aas, Gribkovskaia, Halskau and Shlopak at Molde University College. The purpose of the paper called “Routing of supply vessels to petroleum installations” is to investigate how an offshore installation's limited storage capacity affects the routing of the supply vessels aiming at creating efficient routes. A mixed integer linear programming model that contains constraints reflecting storage requirement problems is tested on real-life sized instances based on data. The paper shows insight into a real-life routing problem that has previously not been discussed or modelled in the vehicle routing literature, and is a fine example of applied operations research.
We hope you will enjoy the trip into some “new valleys” of logistics research. For more information on NOFOMA, please visit the web site: www.nofoma.org
Marianne Jahre and Gøran PerssonGuest Editors
