Integral Logistics Management — Operations Management and Supply Chain Management Within and Across Companies

Course 1 – Logistics, Operations, and Supply Chain Management

Intended learning outcomes: Describe basic definitions, issues, and challenges. Identify business partners and business objects. Explain strategies in the entrepreneurial context. Disclose how performance is measured.



Logistics, operations, and supply chain management deal with the management of systems that determine the performance of an enterprise or among companies as well as with the corresponding planning & control of daily business operations. These tasks are still managed by human beings who, through intuition and based on experience, find creative solutions. People have unique strategic and operational management abilities, in that they can fill in the blanks accurately and react flexibly to specific situations. However, if processes become more complex, frequent, and rapid, intuition alone does not suffice. Prior experience can also be misleading. In large companies and in transcorporate supply chains, moreover, there are many people involved in the processes, both simultaneously and in sequence. They differ in their experience, knowledge, and intuition. Therefore, logistics, operations, and supply chain management stand in the field of tension of the various stakeholders and contra­dictory objectives of the company or supply chain.

It is here that the scientific approach of Integral Logistics Management comes into play. After defining basic concepts, issues, and challenges (Section 1.1) and the related business ob­jects (Section 1.2), we examine this field of tension in Section 1.3, paying attention to the various aspects of flexibility, as they represent potentials for future benefits. To measure performance, enterprises or supply chains must select appropri­ate performance indicators (Section 1.4) that relate to the business objects and objectives. These measures allow firms to evaluate the degree to which objectives are reached and to analyze related causes.


Course 1: Sections and their intended learning outcomes

  • Course 1 – Logistics, Operations, and Supply Chain Management

    Intended learning outcomes: Describe basic definitions, issues, and challenges. Identify business partners and business objects. Explain strategies in the entrepreneurial context. Disclose how performance is measured.

  • 1.1 Basic Definitions, Issues, and Challenges

    Intended learning outcomes: Produce an overview on terms of the working environment and of business life. Explain service orientation in the classical industry, product orientation in the service industry, and the industrial product-service system. Disclose the product life cycle, the synchronization of supply and demand, and the role of inventories. Produce an overview on supply chain management, the role of planning and control as well as the SCOR model.

  • 1.2 Business Objects

    Intended learning outcomes: Present business-partner, and order-related business objects in detail. Explain product-related, process-related, and resource-related business objects. Produce an overview on rough-cut business objects.

  • 1.3 Logistics, Operations and Supply Chain Management Strategies in the Entrepreneurial Context

    Intended learning outcomes: Differentiate between various entrepreneurial objectives in a company and in a supply chain. Explain resolving conflicting entrepreneurial objectives. Describe the customer order penetration point (OPP) and the coordination with product and process design. Produce an overview on the target area flexibility: investments in enabling organizations, processes, basic technologies, and technologies toward personalized production.

  • 1.4 Performance Indicators and Performance Measurement

    Intended learning outcomes: Present the basics of the measurement, meaning, and practical applicability of logistics performance indicators. Describe performance indicators in the target areas of quality, costs, delivery, and flexibility. Produce an overview on performance indicators of the primary entrepreneurial objective.

  • 1.5 Summary

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  • 1.6 Keywords

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  • 1.7 Scenarios and Exercises

    Intended learning outcomes: Describe improvements in meeting entrepreneurial objectives. Differentiate between entrepreneurial objectives and the ROI. Assessing the Economic Value Added (EVA) of Supply Chain Initiatives. Derive rough-cut business objects from detailed business objects.