After decades of research and technological innovations to reduce transportation-related noise (yes, the most quoted book is from 1987, and there are even journals dedicated to noise control), Britain’s RoSPA suggests the unthinkable: they want electric cars to be forced to make more noise (in the Feb 2013 issue of “Care on the Road”)! Déjà vu? Sounds like a sequel to “Who killed the electric car?“…
Gyöngyi
“A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars. It’s where the rich use public transportation.”
Spotted at TEDxYouth@Seattle’s FB site.
Gyöngyi
Just when I wrote that we are in suspense with the rankings the new ISI impact factors came out. Here’s the verdict for a variety of journals – again, this is a selected few related to logistics, operations management, supply chain management, transportation, you name it – the stuff we write about on this blog. In alphabetical order, with the 5-year in brackets:
Computers and Operations Research: 1.720 (1.984)
Decision Science: 1.359 (3.146)
European Journal of Operations Research: 1.815 (2.277)
Interfaces: 0.843 (1.048)
International Journal of Logistics Management: 0.841
International Journal of Logistics: Research and Applications: 0.357
International Journal of Operations and Production Management: 1.127 (1.993)
International Journal of Physical Distribution and Logistics Management: 1.038
International Journal of Production Economics: 1.720 (2.384)
International Journal of Production Research: 1.115 (1.367)
Journal of Business Logistics: 2.352
Journal of Operations Management: 4.382 (6.012)
Journal of Purchasing and Supply Management: 1.061
Journal of Supply Chain Management: 2.650
Journal of Transport Geography: 2.538 (2.973)
Management Science: 1.733 (3.304)
Omega: 3.338 (3.622)
Operations Research Letters: 0.537 (0.821)
Production and Operations Management: 1.301 (2.259)
Supply Chain Management: An International Journal: 1.535 (2.404)
Transport Policy: 1.719
Transportation Research Part A: 2.354 (2.705)
Transportation Research Part B: 2.856 (3.393)
Transportation Research Part C: 1.957 (2.284)
Transportation Research Part D: 1.659 (1.777)
Transportation Research Part E: 1.648 (2.126)
Transportation Research Part F: 1.989
Transportation Research Record: 0.471 (0.608)
Transportation Science: 1.507 (2.107)
Transportation: 1.023 (2.074)
Overall, some ups and downs, and some new journals (e.g. IJLM) in the ranking.
Gyöngyi
The EU likes to focus on CO2 emissions (only), but it is time to consider the social impacts of transportation as well. Jones and Lucas (2012) summarise it rather well, outlining the social impact to consist of accessibility (vs. severance), health- and finance-related outcomes and community-related impacts. Some highlights are the discussion of
- coercive walking, when you don’t really have a choice and walking actually causes stress,
- the intrinsic value and enjoyment of travel,
- the role of social networks in activity-travel planning (vs. social exclusion), and issues of the
- fear of crime.
Interesting from a geography angle is the trifold discussion of distribution effects across space, time, but also across socio-demographic patterns. More on the equity and public health aspects are to be found in the entire special issue of the Journal of Transport Geography – definitely worth a read.
Gyöngyi
NOFOMA 2012 went out with a bang. Suitably, the Nordic logistics conference was held on a vessel (part of the hotel was a cruise ship). The conference itself was quite a journey in time, it took us back to history – great playing cards and medieval banquet – as well as came back to the future, to trade and transport development to future Nokia phones.
And it was quite a package: “die hard” doctoral students followed a course before and another after the conference. But it was worth it 
Check out the pics on the NOFOMA webpage!
Gyöngyi
Posted in Conferences, Logistics, Nofoma, PhD, Supply Chain Management, Transport geography
Tagged research, transportation
There are some jobs that are around to fix problems. It is good to know a good dentist, banker, insurance agent, or logistician – but would you want to be the one people only call if they have a problem to solve? At some point I wrote about the truck driver image of logistics, perhaps more fitting is one of a jack of all trades (in its original positive meaning*) as described in this blog. And here’s a recipe to the answer on what it actually means to be a logistician: McLogistics (in Swedish, but google translate my help )
No wonder there is still a confusion as for whether SCM is an umbrella term or to be equalled with logistics. With all these image problems, who wouldn’t want to be a supply chain manager instead?
Gyöngyi
*Funnily enough “jack of all trades” seems to suffer from a similar positive to negative transition in meaning as “Mädchen für alles”…
There is a nice infographic circulating about the history of logistics & SCM, according to which logistics education on the university level started as early as 1919. Here it comes (click on it to get to the original site):
The infographic puts the origins of logistics to about 1898, which our French friends may contest when referring to Napoleon’s general Antoine Henri de Jomini who allegedly coined the term as early as 1838. Military logistics, that is, even still referred to on the website of the French defence. Here are some nice quotes (in English) to him and also others about logistics. Enjoy!
Gyöngyi
