Disruption Management Framework in a Global Logistics

Abstract

Global Logistics is concerned with both material distribution into the production process and product distribution to the customers across country borders. In particular, global logistics involves many trading partners including exporters, forwarders, truckers, customs, carriers, and importers. Disruptions in global logistics are the major contributor to the large average and variance of transit time. These disruptions are due to the limited visibility of milestone events to the trading partners resulting in inaccurate tracking of materials. The main consequence is that the supply chain partners are forced to hold more buffer-stock and to expedite reproduction and transportation of extra materials. In this paper we propose a two stage framework to recover efficiently and effectively from global logistics disruptions thereby streamlining the flows of goods. As a first phase, for the discovery of global logistics disruption, the framework of testbed is developed to provide a virtual logistics environment. And then, for the recovery of global logistics disruption, the simulation approach is proposed.