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This article has been withdrawn as it was published elsewhere and accidentally duplicated. The original article can be seen here: 10.1108/eb014434. When citing the article, please cite: Dag Ericsson, (1978), “The Development of Materials Administration”, International Journal of Physical Distribution & Materials Management, Vol. 9 Iss: 1, pp. 13 - 28.

There are two, or to be more accurate, three different ways of conceiving the concept of Materials Administration. (1) MA can be conceived of as a philosophy aiming at improved effectiveness and efficiency in the company, i.e. as a rationalisation approach among others. (2) MA can be conceived of as an organisational concept focusing on organisational restructuring for increased co‐ordination of the materials flow. (3) MA can be conceived of as a combination of 1 and 2 above starting with an efficiency increasing rationalisation approach which later also has consequences for the organisational structure. According to the author's experience, the third conception is the most realistic. It has, in many cases, been possible to achieve considerable cost reduction in the materials flow without organisational changes. In other cases, however, it has been necessary to adapt and develop the organisation in order to achieve the objectives which were set.

Over the years billions of dollars have been invested in new and more advanced production and handling equipment and in computer systems for the efficient control and utilisation of the resources.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to empirically test whether a “one size fits all” strategy fits the fashion e-commerce business and second, to evaluate whether consumer returns are a central aspect of the creation of profitability and, if so, to discuss the role of returns management (RM) in the supply chain strategy.

Transactional sales and return data were analysed and used to categorise customers based on their buying and returning behaviours, measuring each customer's net contribution margins.

The e-commerce business collects a vast quantity of data, but these data are seldom used for the development of service differentiation. This study analysed behaviour patterns and determined that the segmentation of customers on the basis of both sales and return patterns can facilitate a differentiated service delivery approach.

This research empirically supports the theory that customer buying and returning behaviours can be used to appropriately categorise customers and thereby guide the development of a more differentiated service approach.

The findings support a differentiated service delivery system that utilises a more dynamic approach, conserving resources and linking the supply chain and/or organisational strategies with customers' buying and returning behaviours to avoid over and underservicing customers.

Consumer returns are often viewed as a negative aspect of doing business; interestingly, however, the authors revealed that the most profitable customer is a repeat customer who frequently returns goods.

The management philosophy of Management by Holistics (MbH) is addressed, where attention is paid to achieve a balance between four vital resources: human, capital, materials and information. The approach focuses on the fact that “the whole is greater than the sum of the parts” and is based on the conviction that everyone in an organisation needs clear‐cut goals. A model for the implementation of this management approach is defined with reference to Swedish industry.

The purpose of this paper is to increase the understanding of demand chain management (DCM) by investigating how it has been structured and executed in an international manufacturing company.

The main emphasis has been on producing descriptive results and the applied research strategy has been an embedded single case study. The case organization originates from Sweden, but it has significant international presence. Empirical data have been collected mainly from in‐depth interviews with key persons representing senior management in the case company.

This research shows that DCM is about developing synergies between the demand creation and the demand fulfillment processes. A completely implemented DCM approach should incorporate all the major demand creation and fulfillment processes. This kind of fully implemented approach probably does not exist in real life today but some companies have started to develop versions including some of the major processes, and this research provides an example of this. The ultimate goal of DCM is to gain competitive advantages by differentiating not only the products, but also the delivery process. This is necessary in markets characterized of intensive competition, high product variety, large amounts of customer‐adapted products, and short product life cycles. It can be concluded that DCM is not another name for demand driven supply chains (SCs) or a fad. It is rather a way to finally benefit from decade long marketing discussions on how to achieve customer focus. It highlights the interplay between marketing and supply chain management (SCM) as an enabler of value creation.

This research work is limited to one Swedish company; however, the case company has large international presence and is in top three in their industry measured by sales, which provides some ground for the generalization of the research.

This paper gives an insight for managers and practitioners to the value of coordinating marketing and SCM to develop a truly customer‐driven organization and SC.

Several studies have addressed the synergies between marketing and SCM but failed to address how to in some detail realize this in practice. This paper contributes by discussing how to realize this coordination in practice.

When David Farmer began his career in purchasing education, “academic” was a word he fought shy of. Now he is recognised as the foremost purchasing “academic” in the UK today. In this article he talks about the transformation that has taken place in attitudes to purchasing education and looks to the future.

The librarian and researcher have to be able to uncover specific articles in their areas of interest. This Bibliography is designed to help. Volume IV, like Volume III, contains features to help the reader to retrieve relevant literature from MCB University Press' considerable output. Each entry within has been indexed according to author(s) and the Fifth Edition of the SCIMP/SCAMP Thesaurus. The latter thus provides a full subject index to facilitate rapid retrieval. Each article or book is assigned its own unique number and this is used in both the subject and author index. This Volume indexes 29 journals indicating the depth, coverage and expansion of MCB's portfolio.

EVERY reader who ever served in the forces of the Crown will know that charge those footsloggers were convinced was the Sergeant's delight: Dumb Insolence. This was brought against a man who failed to reply when spoken to. (We must admit that if you did answer, he might find another charge or at least bellow at you “SHUT UP!”.)

In the last four years, since Volume I of this Bibliography first appeared, there has been an explosion of literature in all the main functional areas of business. This wealth of material poses problems for the researcher in management studies — and, of course, for the librarian: uncovering what has been written in any one area is not an easy task. This volume aims to help the librarian and the researcher overcome some of the immediate problems of identification of material. It is an annotated bibliography of management, drawing on the wide variety of literature produced by MCB University Press. Over the last four years, MCB University Press has produced an extensive range of books and serial publications covering most of the established and many of the developing areas of management. This volume, in conjunction with Volume I, provides a guide to all the material published so far.