There are a number of interesting new books on the SCM course book market, e.g. HUBS’ co-operative effort of a book on “global logistics and supply chain management“. Having said so, it is always difficult to find THE course book on SCM. Apart from mastering the content, a course-book should be well written, and ideally, be easy to adopt in a particular class. The last bit is tricky as it depends on the level of the class, the focus of the course, as well as e.g. regional interests in particular topics.
Thus a bit more than a year ago we discussed the issue of demand management related to course books. Things obviously changed since then - although publishing houses still visit us way after we have to make our decisions for the next year, some have implemented Árni’s idea of customised books on demand. Apparently a big hit in the US, custom publishing is now entering the European market as well. This will certainly facilitate innovative courses and a differentiation in the “course market”, plus the adaptation of course materials to questions of particular regional interest.
Out of curiosity, has any of you SCM educators used this kind of a system? What are your experiences with it?
Gyöngyi
Categories: Book review · Education & Management Development · Supply Chain Management
Emerald has apparently renewed its user interface, as has Elsevier ScienceDirect - the latter adding a neat feature of showing “related articles” to any given one you’ve found. This really helps in finding articles in otherwise less obviously related journals that are anyway related. What a great idea!
Gyöngyi
… who has just found sthg really interesting in the Journal of Computational and Applied Mathematics and in Management Accounting Research, which are honestly not the ones I’d usually look at…
Categories: Academic journals · Academic publications
Wow, the research group (and quite an impressive one) on green logistics has caught up! It’s not that long time ago it has been established, and now you can already find several reports and working papers on their website. Definitely worth while to check it out!
Gyöngyi
Categories: Academic publications · Sustainability
Finally someone is taking web 2.0, 3.0 and x.0 seriously and wants to write a handbook on its use and implications for research, including social and cultural as well as ethical issues that might arise.
Chapter proposals are due on Apr 5, 2008 and should be sent to San Murugesan (san1@internode.on.net).
Gyöngyi
Categories: Call for papers · Popular science
February 21, 2008 · 1 Comment
Bloom’s Taxonomy to classify forms of learning was a frequent reference at a teaching competence programme I attended some years ago; a simple pyramid in several layers. But has technology changed the means educators — or more imporantly, students — can access to facilitate learning experience?
The notion of Faculty 2.0 discussed here was a welcome for educators that have not grown up with the same type or access to technology as their students. This piece on TeacherTube — Pay Attention — is a brief but gentle overview of core learning objectives and how our view on and experience with technology may differ.
Árni
Categories: Education & Management Development
February 14, 2008 · 1 Comment
It’s always funny to read about outraged customers on days like today (it also goes for any other bigger celebration, V-Day just being one of them). You order sthg to be delivered ON the day, and it never gets to you - or arrives a week later etc. No wonder that you are outraged and in extreme cases, swear to never buy sthg from the particular company again.
It’s even funnier to read the responses of companies. Too large orders. The supply chain cannot cope… ??? It’s not as if V-Day wouldn’t be predictable. It happens the same day every year. In that sense it is even easier than reacting to the first snow of the year (which even Helsinki hasn’t seen much of this year). Even buying behaviour is predictable: cards, flowers and chocolate, not much else. (However, chocolate lovers might want to look at this article on labour issues in the chocolate supply chain before making their choice. The same goes for flowers.)
There is a case to be made for retailers and distribution channels at large: concepts such as vendor managed inventory, or plainly, increased SC transparency might be called for. No wonder there are no supplies if POS data and/or even simple forecasts aren’t shared. But there is also a case to be made for chocolate manufacturers - V-Day happens every year, and even if your orders don’t reflect it, you can count on consumers wanting more of your stuff. Outsmarting wholesalers and retailers might not be a bad idea in this case. Both up- and downstream - where are the lessons learned from the bullwhip effect?
Gyöngyi
Categories: Socks and sandals · Supply Chain Management
Chain, lean, agile, power…are few but many metaphors in SCM, that contribute to clarity and confusion.
Few months ago I took on a project that implied more change management than I’d ever expected. I contacted a colleague for an advice, who liased with an independent supply chain scholar from Northern Minnesota. Following was suggested:
In program/project design and re-design work I have stumbled upon an effective technique to “change the rules.”
When someone mumbles: “No, that can’t be done, it will never work;” tilt your head back slowly and then laugh loudly.
After a pause, look at your watch and say: “my conference call to Kiev is scheduled to start in 5 minutes;” then turn quickly and walk away.
Kiev is calling several times a week.
A further development of this is the Thelma & Louise approach to change in organisations. In stead of champions and change agens…you need a Thelma and a Louise (and a Brad Pitt?).
Árni
Categories: Socks and sandals · supply chain
February 13, 2008 · 1 Comment
This is certainly a different kind of journal article in a transportation journal: Jain and Lyon’s (200 
“The gift of travel time“, going through whether you see travelling (esp. to work) as a burden or a “time out”… Time geography meets transportation research in a truly unique (and entertaining) way.
If you get into it and want to analyse your travels even further, try McDonald’s (forthcoming) article that explains adults’ transportation behaviour by their children’s routes and choices.
So who affects your daily routes, modal choices, and perceptions of transportation?
Gyöngyi
Categories: Academic publications · Socks and sandals
For anyone in performance measurement, it is not a surprise that KPI drive actual behaviour. This is apparently (again, not surprisingly) also the case in academia, as this Times Higher Education article suggests: the REF in the UK measuring academic productivity by citation indices lead to an increase in self-citations. There are two reasons this might be worrying for logisticians - (a) if institutions look at citation databases but logistics journals are not even listed (though this is being worked on), and (b) as it contradicts anything we’ve been preaching about performance measurement for a long time. Not to mention research ethics…
Gyöngyi
Categories: Academic publications · Supply Chain Management
