The department of Decision and Information Sciences is part of the ERIM LIS research group. The aim of our research is to be at the forefront of the developments of Logistics and Supply Chain management in interaction with Information and Communication Systems and make a major contribution both to management science and to management practice
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,globalization 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. Due to its natural geographical location,the Netherlands and in particular Rotterdamserve as a gateway to a large market in Western-Europe.About 55% of American and Asian multinational companies’distribution centres inWestern-Europe are located in the Netherlands1.Between 2003 and 2005 the number of logistics jobs offered by these multinationals grew by 20% annually2.The trend of outsourcing and off-shoring production to the Far East has enforced the position of the Netherlands as the logistics gateway to Europe. The logistics sector employs over 400,000 Dutch people and is adding about USD 22 billion to the Dutch gross domestic product. Knowledge is increasing as an important factor in logistics and our research aims to provide it.
Within the Netherlands we aim to contribute significantly to the leading role as a gateway to Europe. Much of our logistics research is inspired by the new opportunities of innovative information and communication systems and technologies. The research is inter-disciplinary (taking into account research paradigms from operations research, logistics, supply chain management, information systems, computer science, and human factors). The research programme is organized around five focus research themes of supply chain management. These themes are problem oriented and since our approach is often problem oriented the themes often interact with each other and together form a coherent body of knowledge. Therefore, most of the researchers contribute to several research themes.
The research themes are:
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Supply chain optimization and planning
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Closed-loop supply chain management
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Terminal optimization
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Transportation management
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Smart business networks
