Business Processes, Logistics & Information Systems (LIS)

Research area

Logistics and supply chain management in interaction with information and communication systems.

Keywords

Logistics, Supply Chain Management, Transportation, Inventories, Terminal Operations, Sustainability, Procurement, Public Transport, Business Networks, Information and Communication Systems and Technologies

Mission of the programme

The aim of the LIS research group is to be at the forefront of the developments of logistics and supply chain management in interaction with information and communication systems and to make a major contribution both to management science and to management practice.

Current programme coordinators

	Prof.dr.ir. R. Dekker		Prof.dr.ir. M.B.M. de Koster
	Prof.dr. S.L. van de Velde		Prof.dr. ir. H.W.G.M. van Heck
	Prof.dr. A.P.M. Wagelmans

Background of the programme

The domain of the programme is that of logistics and supply chain management in interaction with information and communication systems. Managing supply chains is a complex and challenging task, due to the current business trends of expanding product variety, shortening product life cycles, increasing outsourcing, globalisation of business, and the continuous advances in information and communication technology. Supply chain management has emerged as one of the major areas for companies to gain sustainable competitive advantage. Logistics and supply chain management are important to the Netherlands, a country that is ranked 4th in the world according to the 2010 Logistics Performance Index of the Worldbank, and 7th in world trade (2009). Due to its natural geographical location, a large part of American and Asian multinational companies’ distribution centres in Western-Europe are located in the Netherlands. The trend of outsourcing and off-shoring production to the Far East has strengthened the position of the Netherlands, and Rotterdam in particular, as the logistics gateway to Europe. The logistics sector employs over 750,000 people and is adding about EUR 40 billion to the Dutch gross domestic product. In order to realise this turnover, logistics knowledge is increasingly important and our research aims to provide it. The Netherlands, and Rotterdam in particular, are therefore an ideal place to carry out academic research on logistics and supply chain management. This implies that our programme is inspired by real-life problems. We aim to combine an applied focus with rigorous research and we are increasingly successful in doing this. In the past years our top international journal publication productivity has increased strongly and is competitive at a global level. The programme grew out of several separate research programmes, carried out at RSM and ESE, on logistics, operations research, information systems, and computer science. These programmes were merged at the start of ERIM.