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Trade restrictions; border crossing difficulties, and company organizational structures have limited historical cross‐border distribution activity. The result, generally, is two or three independent distribution systems to support North American logistics operations. With the completion of the US‐Canada Free Trade Act, many of these limitations are being reduced. It is now time for firms to refine their distribution networks to respond to this new environment. The major changes that firms must consider are distribution centre locations and manufacturing supply points. The factors that influence these changes are country/market integration, duty levels, and cross‐border transportation rates. Reports on the results of food industry simulations that consider multiple levels of integration, duties, and cross‐border rates. The results compare the number of distribution centres and the total cost of each network, and generally indicate that there are no significant changes in distribution system network design resulting from US‐Canada Free Trade. The minor changes which are observed include Toronto serving the Eastern US and Seattle serving Western Canada. The cost differences are not significant. The results also indicate that there is no significant economic motivation for cross‐border logistics activity until duties are eliminated and cross‐border transportation rates decline by 10 per cent.

One strategy that can offer substantial transportation performance improvement is freight consolidation. Freight consolidation refers to the practice of aggregating customer orders over space and/or time until a specified minimum total shipment weight/volume is accumulated and/or a maximum holding time for the oldest customer order is reached. The aggregated customer orders are then shipped together.

While it is widely believed that information technology is a major differentiator of logistics performance, there has been limited research that empirically tests or characterizes this relationship. The current research investigates the relationship between logistics information technology (LIT) and logistics service performance. The objective of this research is to develop a framework for managers to understand logistics information technology applications and to justify LIT expenditures. The results offer direction for characterizing logistics information technology. The research describes how internal logistics information integration and customer integration can influence customer service performance. These results begin to dimensionalize logistics information technology and the impact it has on strategy and performance.

This paper compares firms purchasing and/or selling food products internationally to those with domestic supply chains in order to determine if international firms: place greater managerial importance on security; and are more likely to engage supply chain partners in security‐related verification and information exchange. The purpose of this paper is to explore the link between security initiatives and firm performance in terms of security outcomes, product quality, and customer service.

A series of one‐way ANOVA tests are used to assess the differences between firms with international and domestic supply chains. Additionally, cluster analysis is conducted to group firms based on their performance levels.

Initial results indicate respondents with international supply chains perceive that their firms place more importance on security and are more likely to assess the security procedures of supply chain partners. Results further indicate that, in general, respondents in international firms perceive better security performance is achieved in terms of the ability to detect and recover from security incidents. Once firms are grouped by performance, respondents in the high‐performance cluster, represented predominantly by international firms, perceived significantly higher performance in the areas examined.

This paper is the first to compare, the differences in security measures employed by firms maintaining internationally oriented as opposed to domestically oriented supply chains and also relates the implementation of supply chain security measures to security and firm performance.

This paper reports simulation research that empirically investigates and compares supply chain performance under varying conditions of information exchange and demand uncertainty. Specifically, the research objective is to quantitatively document the characteristics and performance impact of information exchange among supply chain entities. The findings suggest that the response‐based supply chain model consistently outperforms the anticipatory model in terms of customer service delivered under conditions of both low and high demand variation. Comparisons of inventory holdings across supply chain models demonstrate that the retailers' inventory burden is significantly lower in the response‐based scenario. The inventory savings enjoyed by retailers in the response‐based model are substantial enough to lower system‐wide inventories. In sum, the study supports the feasibility of achieving both improved service and lower inventories as a result of information sharing.

Logistics information technology (IT) can be a significant source of competitive advantages. Examines logistics IT practices for different industries and global regions and identifies any IT gaps between world class logistics firms and their more average (baseline) counterparts. Overall, the merchandising firms were perceived to have a lead over the manufacturing firms for most of the nine logistics IT issues probed. Among the baseline firms, the European firms seemingly outperformed the North American and Pacific Rim firms in the five‐year improvement in LIS capability, LIS resource share increase, and the adequacy of LIS in meeting the firm’s requirements. The North American firms took a significant lead in issues related to EDI, barcode, and real time communications. However, all these baseline firms probably have to look up to the world class logistics firms for excellency in major IT practice, confirming the notion that being world class does make a difference.

Activity‐based costing (ABC) is a tool used by managers to more closely approximate the “true costs” of operations. The application of ABC in logistics is more commonplace today than just a few years ago, though still far short of universal. Sound tracking of operational costs is critical when pursuing the logistics objective of providing desired customer service at the lowest total cost. This research illustrates an actual application of ABC to reverse logistics activities performed across supply chain organizations. More specifically, a case study of a Michigan beverage distributor and retailer that collect empty beverage containers for recycling purposes is presented. The case study demonstrates the ABC application in detail and discusses the re‐engineering of supply chain‐wide processes resulting from the analysis.

Information technology has been among the foremost topics within the logistics literature of recent years. However, there has been little empirical evidence relating logistics information system (LIS) capabilities to logistics competence. Seeks to close this gap in the research, identify particular LIS capabilities that contribute most to logistics competence, and develop an understanding of the relationship between LIS development strategy and logistics competence. A review of the LIS literature identifies relevant issues. The research findings suggest four conclusions: world class firms perceive both their logistics operating and planning systems as highly capable; internally controlled characteristics generally receive higher evaluations than criteria requiring external co‐ordination; overall logistics competence is primarily influenced by logistics operating timeliness, usage driven formatting, and flexibility; and LIS development strategy does not significantly influence performance evaluations.

The chemical industry is struggling to improve its supply chain performance, and improved asset utilization may help get the industry headed in the right direction. Since most chemical firms own or lease their rail fleets, rail utilization can have a substantial impact on overall asset utilization. The paper aims to focus on current managerial processes and situational factors that impact railcar asset performance.

Rail car cycle data are analyzed, focusing on major sources of variation in transit inventory as railcars move from plant to customer and back.

Findings include the importance of establishing and adhering to policies regarding supply chain practices; substantial differences exist between hopper and tank car performance; distance is not a major predictor of total cycle time variance; and vendor‐managed inventory relationships can operate with less customer inventory.

This paper addresses only one component of supply chain performance: railcar cycle time. Further analysis is needed to investigate differences between hopper car and tank car transit times. Additional research should also involve the railroad companies as participants in chemical firms' supply chains.

The paper provides several practical recommendations for chemical company supply chain managers relating to process controls, focusing on large customer accounts, managing transit time and variation of rail cars between plant and factory. The findings and recommendations can be applied across many industries.

This paper focuses on supply chain practices in the chemical industry, which has been slow to adopt supply chain practices. In particular, this paper investigates railcar coordination as one means of enhancing supply chain performance, reducing both inventory and transportation assets.

Aims to conceptualize flexible logistics programs and information connectivity as two important aspects of logistics flexibility and to examine the role of information connectivity in making flexible logistics programs successful.

A hierarchical regression model is used to test the research hypotheses.

The results suggest that flexible logistics programs are strongly related to all performance dimensions, and that information connectivity fully mediates the relationship between flexible logistics programs and asset productivity and partially mediates the relationship between flexible logistics programs and delivery competence.

Future theoretical research can develop a detailed conceptualization of logistics flexibility. In this paper, the constructs are developed utilizing an exploratory factor analysis approach. Future research utilizing confirmatory factor analysis approach will allow a better validation of the performance constructs. The paper also considers that studies that link flexible logistics program, information connectivity and performance in a structural equations modeling framework will further enrich one's understanding. In this framework, flexible logistics programs can be considered as a latent variable comprising several individual resource level flexibility measures.

This research highlights the need for organizational structure, role dependencies and a proactive preparedness in terms of managerial policies. The concept of special programs for accommodating changing customer requirements exemplifies the importance for a firm to be aware of shifting demand characteristics and the ability to tailor service delivery accordingly.

An examination of the research questions sheds some light on logistics flexibility as a critical component of logistics capability. With this study logistics flexibility is characterized in terms of flexible logistics programs and information connectivity and hypotheses are tested that link these aspects with performance. It is believed that this enhances and enriches the existing logistics literature and presents avenues for further investigation. Meanwhile, testing the link presents managerial insights for prudent decision making. An investigation of the role of information connectivity provides directions for firms to align their information system strategies with their flexibility‐oriented planning decisions.