Institute for Logistics and Supply Chain Management

Program Overview: This program offers knowledge value to the government and industry through measurement and analysis. The methodology will involve the innovative design of survey instruments to elicit the information. In turn, this program will feed into the Logistics City Program where new business models are developed.

Primary Research Focus and Content: The Logistics Insights Program focuses on global developments and trends in the Supply Chain, particularly as globalisation has significant impact on the design and management of Supply Chains. Increasing global trading is changing the nature of firms, where the complexity of business environments has forced companies to form collaborative agreements with their suppliers, buyers, competitors, and allies. The impact of these developments on transport and logistics needs further research. Research of integration of global supply chains is a further extension. This program provides a series of measures of the Australian logistics industry from several perspectives, such as training and skills, leadership etc.

Industry Relevance: One of the major problems is that the logistics industry currently experiences difficulty in attracting and retaining qualified staff, and there is a need to monitor the skill and competency requirements in today’s fast evolving logistics industry, given ongoing technology innovations. There is also a need to build relational or “prescriptive” (rather than “descriptive”) models for measuring and monitoring for example, skills identification and skills matching. Logistics and supply chain operators need to stay abreast of their performance in terms of the appropriate metrics used and benchmarks against industry standards. On an industry and governmental level, the logistics industry’s economic health needs to be measured as well.