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Kühne Logistics University started in Hamburg

Daniel Dumke — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 12:02:00 +0000

With the Kühne Logistics University (KLU) there has been another addition to Hamburgs rich educational environment in logistics and supply chain management. Others include the Hamburg University and the Hamburg University of Technology.
The new university is located in the growing business center of Hamburg (Hafencity), close to the harbor and the city center.
The BVL stated in a news report that the first 26 students from 14 countries already started in their masters program. At the full stage it is planned to have about 450 students in the two departments (“Logistics” and “Business Administration and Entrepreneurship”).

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Creating a Reference Tree from an existing PDF Collection

Daniel Dumke — Tue, 11 May 2010 04:37:00 +0000

I am currently in the Snowballing Phase of the Systematic Review approach (explained here). So I already have accumulated a amount of papers (most of them as PDF files) for my current research goals using a keyword search on several databases (Econis, EBSCOhost and ScienceDirect, etc.).

Problem

Now I thought about how to proceed with the analysis of the references mentioned in the papers I already found. I was afraid, that the amount of work necessary, to make a manual analysis of all papers available in my library and manually would be just overwhelming.
My calculation was as follows: My library for this goal consists of 200+ papers, let’s assume each with 15 references, thereof seven already in my library. From the remaining eight references per paper, three are going to be relevant for my research.

So in sum I would have to screen over 3000 references (for relevance for my research goal and for existence in my library) and have to manually copy and paste 600 papers into a database search engine.
Even if I am very fast it sounds like hours of monotone, uninteresting labor.

Solution

Usually in those situations I try to rely on the internet to help me with a tool, but after I made a thorough search I did not find anything which could help me with my problem.

So at the moment I am reactivating my Python skills and learning something about regular expression to turn something like this quote from a PDF:

Spira, L.F. and Page, M. (2002), “Risk management: the reinvention of internal control and the changing role of internal audit”, Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Vol. 16 No. 4, pp. 640-61.
Steele, P. and Court, B. (1996), Profitable Purchasing Strategies: A Manager’s Guide for Improving Organizational Competitiveness through the Skills of Purchasing, McGraw-Hill, London.
Tchankova, L. (2002), “Risk identification – basic stage in risk management”, Environmental Management and Health, Vol. 13 No. 3, pp. 290-7.
Treleven, M. and Schweikhart, S.B. (1988), “A risk/benefit analysis of sourcing strategies: single vs multiple sourcing”, Journal of Operations Management, Vol. 7 No. 4, pp. 93-114.

Into a list of author-year-title-combinations which can be automatically compared to my existing library (using Papers) and made into a search query at Google Scholar or a similar database.

Status

At the moment I am making good progress with the core pattern matching. The open questions are how to read from the PDF files and how to compare the results to my existing library (using title and author or only title).
I will post update.

Future work could then analyze the possibility to create a reference tree connecting the literature within a library to show “connections of thought” between them.

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Cranfield Systematic Review Approach

Daniel Dumke — Sun, 09 May 2010 09:51:00 +0000

My professor gave me the hint to look for a systematic literature review approach which has been used at Cranfield University in the UK. Actually I found the description of a methodology to be used for a “systematic review”, that can be quite useful. It relies on six principles.

The approach addresses one or more clearly specified question
Involvement of many participants
The goal is to find all published and unpublished studies on a specific topic
Criteria for selection of studies are designed a priori and documented
Findings are summarized in a transparent and accessible format
Synthesis of the findings is necessary to make clear which parts of the questions can be answered and which parts are not known

These goals are achieved by following a ten step process:

Design a review plan and -protocol
It should contain the research strategy, including review questions, study selection criteria, procedures for data extration and synthesis, and a timetable
Review group
which consists of a) advisors, giving strategic advise and b) supporters, helping in the day to day analysis
Review question(s)
Formultate the review questions according to the CIMO method, including context, intervention of an actor, mechanisms at work, outcome of the intervention
Search
use different search strategies (defined in the review plan) eg. protocol driven, snow balling and personal knowledge
Select relevant studies
use the predefined criteria for selecting the relevant literature
Rate the quality of the studies
Extract information
systematically collect the information from the studies selected
Synthesis findings
Reporting
Describe an analysis of the field, present what is known and not yet known
Inform research, policy and practice

Conclusion

Using this approach has many advantages over “just reading the papers”. The major drawback though is, that it needs experience and patience to create the review plan. All necessary research questions have to be raised already at the beginning of the endeavor, since only this can provide for a consistent analysis of the literature.

Reference:

Cranfield Systematic Review

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Supply Chain Manager of the Future

Daniel Dumke — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 14:50:00 +0000

“Management Development and the Supply Chain Manager of the Future” by J. Mangan and M. Christopher (2005) aims to bridge the gap between current offerings of knowledge providers (eg. universities), current capabilities of users (eg. students and managers) and buyers (aka. companies).First it seems to be a good idea to get an impression of the demographics of the current supply chain managers. The Supply Chain Management Research Group at Ohio State found in a study, that nearly 95 percent of the supply chain managers are male, median age of managers 39 and about 20% have an additional professional qualification (eg. APICS). It’s also quite interesting to note that the average time the managers worked in the field of supply chain management is about 18 years combined with a high job rotation.

It is also highlighted how these SC-professionals gain the foundation of their knowledge.

In decreasing order of frequency: formal college, in-house training, seminar / workshop, ‘on the job’, and in-house training with an external trainer. Three major institutions are identified to support the professional education. First, so called professional bodies (like CSCMP), second, tertiary education at universities and lastly, publicly funded centres of excellence (like The MIT – Zaragoza International Logistics Program).

The authors argue that the current business transformation processes lead to a special need for experience and education for supply chain managers (this is taken from Christopher, 2004). For example:

The transformation from supplier-centric to customer-centric SCM, leads to the design of customer-driven supply chains, therefore a manager needs market understanding and customer insight.

In their own research they asked the provider-side (universities) what key changes they see to enhance the education. These are the main topics:

Specific logistics competencies are required for emerging markets.
Courses need to be more practical.
Multimodal nature of logistics and SCM needs to be highlighted more.
Need to differentiate between different learners.
Focus on processes and flows.
In-class exercises.
Best practice exists within certain companies.

The goal is to train the future supply chain manager to acquire the knowledge in the following areas:

General

Finance
IT
Management / Strategy

Logistics & Supply Chain Management

Operations
Focus on processes / flows
Legal, security and international trade
Multimodal logistics
Logistics in emerging markets

Competencies / Skills

Analytical
Interpersonal
Leadership
Change management
Project management

Conclusion

On the plus side the article summarizes the literature about the key qualifications, knowledge and skills which are necessary for supply chain managers to cope with the requirements of a changing business.

But on the other side the research part seems to be unilaterally focussing on the provider side, and there especially on the universities. Not only is one of the three randomly selected (?) public funded institutions located at the Hull University (home of the lead author), but also one of the research questions “What are the optimum approaches for career development?” was posed only to the provider side. I guess the result (Masters degree is listed first) does not come as a surprise.

Reference:

Mangan, J., & Christopher, M. (2005). Management development and the supply chain manager of the future The International Journal of Logistics Management, 16 (2), 178-191 DOI: 10.1108/09574090510634494

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Supply Chain Conferences 2010

Daniel Dumke — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 18:04:00 +0000

Update: For all the conferences of 2012 please have a look at Supply Chain Conferences 2012

The new year has arrived. Time for contemplation and time for making plans for the new year.
Some things can and should be planned quite soon. One thing is the Logistics and Supply Chain conference schedule for the year 2010.

2010 Conferences (SCM, Logistics)
Name	Location	Start	End	Fee	Internet
FMI 2010 Supply Chain Conference	Phoenix, AZ, USA	31.01.2010	02.02.2010	USD 1’995	guest.cvent.com/EVENTS
CSCMP Europe 2010	Rotterdam, Netherlands	25.03.2010	26.03.2010	EUR 750	cscmp.org/events/europe-conference
8th International Heinz Nixdorf Symposium	Paderborn, Germany	21.04.2010	22.04.2010	EUR 300 (before March 31)	wwwhni.uni-paderborn.de
POMS 21st Annual Conference	Vancouver, Canada	07.05.2010	10.05.2010	USD 520 (before February 16)	www.pomsmeetings.org
19th Annual IPSERA Conference	Lappeenranta, Finland	16.05.2010	19.05.2010	EUR 495 (before January 30)	www.lut.fi/en/ipsera2010/
EurOMA 2010	Porto, Portugal	06.06.2010	09.06.2010	EUR 600 (before May 17)	www.euroma2010.org
SCLEurope	Prague, Czech Republic	07.06.2010	09.06.2010	GBP 1295	www.scleurope.com
NOFOMA Conference 2010	Kolding, Denmark	10.06.2010	11.06.2010	EUR 555 (before May 15)	www.nofoma.net
Supply Chain Management SIG 2010 Conference	Haifa, Israel	27.06.2010		tbd.	msom.technion.ac.il
15th International Symposium on Logistics (ISL 2010)	Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia	04.07.2010	07.07.2010	tbd.	www.isl21.net
Hamburg International Conference of Logistics	Hamburg, Germany	02.09.2010	03.09.2010	tbd.	www.hicl.org
CSCMP Annual Global Conference	San Diego, CA, USA	26.09.2010	29.09.2010	USD 1’640	cscmpconference.org
International Conference on Logistics Reseach (RIRL)	Bordeaux, France	30.09.2010	01.10.2010	tbd.	www.rirl.bem.edu

I have personally attended the HICL (Hamburg International Conference of Logistics) in 2009 and was impressed by the interesting tracks and presentations.

Now suppose you have limited resources (presumably time and/or money) so you are not able to attend all conferences. So how to decide on which conferences to go? Have you tried the PCAF formula yet?

Please enhance as needed. You can use the comments section for that.

EDIT: I am preparing a analysis of this years major topic trends. Updates soon.

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Web Ressources on Supply Chain Management

Daniel Dumke — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 17:54:00 +0000

I finally received my credentials for the University Intranet so I am now able to start using some databases and get access to more articles online. But there are several other resources about Supply Chain Management online.

Kicking it of isn’t easy. So read what is hot or not at the interorganisational.org, which is a good start to get a first taste. So after some research now I had already found most of the articles in the SCRM section selected there. I missed some I liked very much, like “Perspectives in supply chain risk management” (Tang, 2006)

Just yesterday I stumbled up on husdal.com a great page about Supply Chain Vulnerability with literally hundreds of article reviews on related subjects. I also found one on “Risk in supply networks” (Harland, 2003), which summarizes the article exhaustively.

For the audiophiles I also found a podcast on Supply Chain Management from the Cranfield University. Cranfield is a postgrad-only University with one of the best teacher / student ratios in the UK. Beside the podcast there seem to be some interesting conferences organized at Cranfield.

Reference:

Tang, C. (2006). Perspectives in supply chain risk management☆ International Journal of Production Economics, 103 (2), 451-488 DOI: 10.1016/j.ijpe.2005.12.006

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