Innovation in Logistics

Abstract

The aim of this thesis is to review scientific literature on the topic of logistics innovation. In particular, the purpose of the work is to analyze what techniques and methods are actually introduced at companies to improve its logistics, identifying the most innovative elements. The search is based on the consultation of specialized articles in logistics, selected from the computerized database from the library of Politecnico di Milano (Portale de la Risorse Elettroniche / Banche Dati / ISI Web of Knowledge). To begin with this study, it must be clear what is the innovation in logistics. That is why this report begins with an introduction (Section 1) with the definitions of the terms innovation and logistics. Then the report continues talking about Innovation in logistics (Section 2). A number of explanations about what factors influence innovation can be found in the literature. In this section, I have recourse to the existing literature and to my own arguments for modeling innovation in logistics; with the aim of discover what factors influence innovation in logistics. Finally, this part attempts to make a classification of some innovations in logistics in a particular areas. Subsequently, selected issues and papers on the topic will be described, analyzed and classified to outline the main trends and topics related to innovation in logistics (Sections 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7). Then in Section 8, the report studies some real cases about the introduction in different companies of some of the technologies explained in section 7. These cases of study are analyzed in order to obtain a model for each of the tecnologies. These models always start from the basic model for innovation in logistics. Finally, Section 9 analyzes the information from a survey sent to several companies. With this information we can try to discover what are the “trendy or fashion” innovations in logistics. This part begins by explaining how the questionnaire was designed, and then all the information obtained is analyzed. This section ends for modelling the adoption of each of the technologies with the information obtained by the surveyed companies.