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• 25 Apr 2023

How SHEIN and Temu Conquered Fast Fashion—and Forged a New Business Model

The platforms SHEIN and Temu match consumer demand and factory output, bringing Chinese production to the rest of the world. The companies have remade fast fashion, but their pioneering approach has the potential to go far beyond retail, says John Deighton.

• 18 Oct 2022
• Cold Call Podcast

Chewy.com’s Make-or-Break Logistics Dilemma

In late 2013, Ryan Cohen, cofounder and then-CEO of online pet products retailer Chewy.com, was facing a decision that could determine his company’s future. Should he stay with a third-party logistics provider (3PL) for all of Chewy.com’s e-commerce fulfillment or take that function in house? Cohen was convinced that achieving scale would be essential to making the business work and he worried that the company’s current 3PL may not be able to scale with Chewy.com’s projected growth or maintain the company’s performance standards for service quality and fulfillment. But neither he nor his cofounders had any experience managing logistics, and the company’s board members were pressuring him to leave order fulfillment to the 3PL. They worried that any changes could destabilize the existing 3PL relationship and endanger the viability of the fast-growing business. What should Cohen do? Senior Lecturer Jeffrey Rayport discusses the options in his case, “Chewy.com (A).”

• 12 Jul 2022

Can the Foodservice Distribution Industry Recover from the Pandemic?

At the height of the pandemic in 2020, US Foods struggled, as restaurant and school closures reduced demand for foodservice distribution. The situation improved after the return of indoor dining and in-person learning, but an industry-wide shortage of truck drivers and warehouse staff hampered the foodservice distributor’s post-pandemic recovery. That left CEO Pietro Satriano to determine the best strategy to attract and retain essential workers, even as he was tasked with expanding the wholesale grocery store chain (CHEF’STORE) that US Foods launched during the pandemic lockdown. Harvard Business School Professor David E. Bell explores how post-pandemic supply chain challenges continue to affect the foodservice distribution industry in his case, “US Foods: Driving Post-Pandemic Success?”

• 05 Jul 2022
• What Do You Think?

Have We Seen the Peak of Just-in-Time Inventory Management?

Toyota and other companies have harnessed just-in-time inventory management to cut logistics costs and boost service. That is, until COVID-19 roiled global supply chains. Will we ever get back to the days of tighter inventory control? asks James Heskett. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

• 19 Oct 2021
• Research & Ideas

Fed Up Workers and Supply Woes: What's Next for Dollar Stores?

Willy Shih discusses how higher costs, shipping delays, and worker shortages are putting the dollar store business model to the test ahead of the critical holiday shopping season. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

• 26 Mar 2014

How Electronic Patient Records Can Slow Doctor Productivity

Electronic health records are sweeping through the medical field, but some doctors report a disturbing side effect. Instead of becoming more efficient, some practices are becoming less so. Robert Huckman's research explains why. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

• 11 Nov 2013
• Working Paper Summaries

Increased Speed Equals Increased Wait: The Impact of a Reduction in Emergency Department Ultrasound Order Processing Time

This study of ultrasound test orders in hospital emergency departments (EDs) shows that, paradoxically, increasing capacity in a service setting may not alleviate congestion, and can actually increase it due to increased resource use. Specifically, the study finds that reducing the time it takes to order an ultrasound counter intuitively increases patient throughput time as a result of increased ultrasound use without a corresponding increase in quality of care. Furthermore, the authors show that in the complex, interconnected system or hospitals, changes in resource capacity affects not only the patients who receive the additional resources, but also other patients who share the resource, in this case, radiology. These results highlight how demand can be influenced by capacity due to behavioral responses to changes in resource availability, and that this change in demand has far reaching effects on multiple types of patients. Interestingly, the increased ultrasound ordering capacity was achieved by removing what appeared to be a "wasteful" step in the process. However, the results suggest that the step may not have been wasteful as it reduced inefficient ultrasound orders. In healthcare, these results are very important as they provide an explanation for some of the ever-increasing costs: reducing congestion through increased capacity results in even more congestion due to higher resource use. Overall, the study suggests an operations-based solution of increasing the cost/difficulty of ordering discretionary but sometimes low-efficacy treatments to address the rise in healthcare spending. Therefore, to improve hospital performance it could be optimal to put into place "inefficiencies" to become more efficient. Key concepts include: A process improvement can inadvertently cause an increase in demand for a service as well as associated shared resources, which results in congestion, counter intuitively decreasing overall system performance. While individual patients and physicians may benefit from the reduced processing time, there can be unintended consequences for overall system performance. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.

• 25 Jan 2013

Why a Harvard Finance Instructor Went to the Kumbh Mela

Every 12 years, millions of Hindu pilgrims travel to the Indian city of Allahabad for the Kumbh Mela, the largest public gathering in the world. In this first-person account, Senior Lecturer John Macomber shares his first impressions and explains what he's doing there. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.

• 07 Aug 2012

Off and Running: Professors Comment on Olympics

The most difficult challenge at The Olympics is the behind-the-scenes efforts to actually get them up and running. Is it worth it? HBS professors Stephen A. Greyser, John D. Macomber, and John T. Gourville offer insights into the business behind the games. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

• 19 Oct 2010

The Impact of Supply Learning on Customer Demand: Model and Estimation Methodology

"Supply learning" is the process by which customers predict a company's ability to fulfill product orders in the future using information about how well the company fulfilled orders in the past. A new paper investigates how and whether a customer's assumptions about future supplier performance will affect the likelihood that the customer will order from that supplier in the future. Research, based on data from apparel manufacturer Hugo Boss, was conducted by Nathan Craig and Ananth Raman of Harvard Business School, and Nicole DeHoratius of the University of Portland. Key concepts include: Two key measures of supplier performance include "consistency", which is the likelihood that a company will continue to keep items in stock and meet demand, and "recovery", which is the likelihood that a company will deliver on time in spite of past stock-outs. Improvements in consistency and recovery are associated with increases in orders from retail customers. Increasing the level of service may lead to an increase in orders, even when the service level is already nearly perfect. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.

• 19 Jul 2010

How Mercadona Fixes Retail’s ’Last 10 Yards’ Problem

Spanish supermarket chain Mercadona offers aggressive pricing, yet high-touch customer service and above-average employee wages. What's its secret? The operations between loading dock and the customer's hands, says HBS professor Zeynep Ton. Key concepts include: The last 10 yards of the supply chain lies between the store's loading dock and the customer's hands. Poor operational decisions create unnecessary complications that lead to quality problems and lower labor productivity and, in general, make life hard for retail employees. Adopting Mercadona's approach requires a long-term view and a leader with a strong backbone. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.

• 12 Jul 2010

Rocket Science Retailing: A Practical Guide

How can retailers make the most of cutting-edge developments and emerging technologies? Book excerpt plus Q&A with HBS professor Ananth Raman, coauthor with Wharton professor Marshall Fisher of The New Science of Retailing: How Analytics Are Transforming the Supply Chain and Improving Performance. Key concepts include: Retailers can better identify and exploit hidden opportunities in the data they generate. Integrating new analytics within retail organizations is not easy. Raman outlines the typical barriers and a path to overcome them. Incentives must be aligned within organizations and in the supply chain. The first step is to identify the behavior you want to induce. To attract and retain the best employees, successful retailers empower them in specific ways. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.

• 05 Jul 2006

The Motion Picture Industry: Critical Issues in Practice, Current Research & New Research Directions

This paper reviews research and trends in three key areas of movie making: production, distribution, and exhibition. In the production process, the authors recommend risk management and portfolio management for studios, and explore talent compensation issues. Distribution trends show that box-office performance will increasingly depend on a small number of blockbusters, advertising spending will rise (but will cross different types of media), and the timing of releases (and DVDs) will become a bigger issue. As for exhibiting movies, trends show that more sophisticated exhibitors will emerge, contractual changes between distributor and exhibitors will change, and strategies for tickets prices may be reevaluated. Key concepts include: Business tools such as quantitative and qualitative research and market research should be applied to the decision-making process at earlier stages of development. Technological developments will continue to have unknown effects on every stage of the movie-making value chain (production, distribution, exhibition, consumption). Closed for comment; 0 Comments.

• 20 Dec 2004

How an Order Views Your Company

HBS Professors Benson Shapiro and Kash Rangan bring us up to date on their pioneering research that helped ignite today’s intense focus on the customer. The key? Know your order cycle management. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.

• 15 Apr 2002

In the Virtual Dressing Room Returns Are A Real Problem

That little red number looked smashing onscreen, but the puce caftan the delivery guy brought is just one more casualty of the online shopping battle. HBS professor Jan Hammond researches what the textile and apparel industries can do to curtail returns. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.

• 26 Nov 2001

How Toyota Turns Workers Into Problem Solvers

Toyota's reputation for sustaining high product quality is legendary. But the company's methods are not secret. So why can't other carmakers match Toyota's track record? HBS professor Steven Spear says it's all about problem solving. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.

• 19 Nov 2001

Wrapping Your Alliances In a World Wide Web

HBS professor Andrew McAfee researches how the Internet affects manufacturing and productivity and how business can team up to get the most out of technology. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.

• 22 Jan 2001

Control Your Inventory in a World of Lean Retailing

"Manufacturers of consumer goods are in the hot seat these days," the authors of this Harvard Business Review article remind readers. But there is no need to surrender to escalating costs of inventories. In this excerpt, they describe one new way to help lower inventory costs. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.

• 12 Oct 1999

Decoding the DNA of the Toyota Production System

How can one production operation be both rigidly scripted and enormously flexible? In this summary of an article from the Harvard Business Review, HBS Professors H. Kent Bowen and Steven Spear disclose the secret to Toyota's production success. The company's operations can be seen as a continuous series of controlled experiments: whenever Toyota defines a specification, it is establishing a hypothesis that is then tested through action. The workers, who have internalized this scientific-method approach, are stimulated to respond to problems as they appear; using data from the strictly defined experiment, they are able to adapt fluidly to changing circumstances. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.

Rapid Response: Inside the Retailing Revolution

A simple bar code scan at your local department store today launches a whirlwind of action: data is transmitted about the color, the size, and the style of the item to forecasters and production planners; distributors and suppliers are informed of the demand and the possible need to restock. All in the blink of an electronic eye. It wasn’t always this way, though. HBS Professor Janice Hammond has focused her recent research on the transformation of the apparel and textile industries from the classic, limited model to the new lean inventories and flexible manufacturing capabilities. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.

• Original article
• Open access
• Published: 22 September 2021

Assessment of logistics service quality dimensions: a qualitative approach

• Gamze Arabelen 1 &
• Hasan Tolga Kaya   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-0150-4182 2  

Journal of Shipping and Trade volume  6 , Article number:  14 ( 2021 ) Cite this article

13k Accesses

7 Citations

Metrics details

Globalization and complex supply chain networks have been affecting Logistics Services Providers’ (LSPs) service delivery and service expectations. Logistics Service Quality (LSQ) is becoming a more important aspect for LSPs and logistics service customers. In recent years, there has been an increase in the studies on service quality in logistics. Researchers have been trying to identify aspects of LSQ and its dimensions in order to create a measurement model that could be used in overall logistics services. However, there is still neither a unified nor agreed LSQ measurement model in the literature and researchers have been debating continuously on the proposed models. This paper targets to investigate and suggest LSQ measurement dimensions obtained from previous studies by analyzing the findings within a systematic approach and improving the findings with semi-structured interviews. In this study, systematic literature analysis has been conducted to research papers published in selected academic databases with specific keyword and keyword cluster searches to identify the related articles published within a specified period. Papers have been selected in accordance with the predefined criteria. As a result, a total of 59 articles have been determined for the search criteria and the findings obtained were analyzed. Most frequently used research trends and methods on service quality in logistics have been identified. In addition, the most frequently used LSQ dimensions and factors have been reviewed. Moreover, the most frequently used service quality approaches and measurement models have been analyzed. The results received from systematic literature review have been composed and dimensions have been identified. Semi-structured interviews with LSPs and customers of LSPs in Germany-based companies have been conducted to strengthen the findings gained from systematic literature review. 5 LSQ dimensions and 24 factors have been formed with the help of semi-structured interviews. This paper represents the basis for further research for empirical studies and can be used as a guideline for quality management practices in logistics applications and transport.

Introduction

Globalization and growing supply chain networks have been pushing logistics service providers to focus on the provided logistics practices. Simultaneously, service types offered by logistics service providers have increased quickly. Importance of logistics services also has been increased universally; hence, service quality has become an important driver for LSPs. The importance of logistics services is known by practitioners and academics. Significance and interest in Logistics service quality (LSQ) have been also increasing. The concept of LSQ is equally important for customers and LSPs (Mentzer et al. 1999 ; Thai 2013 ). High level of LSQ increases logistics providers’ competitive advantage among compelling business environments (Wang and Hu 2016 ). Good service quality offered to customers generates customer satisfaction as well as customer loyalty for the service provider (Franceschini and Rafele 2000 ; Davis and Mentzer 2006 ; Baki et al. 2009 ).

There has not been any clear understanding of the LSQ concept despite the increasing number of research papers. Major focus of the researchers has been on the concept of the LSQ and its quality attributes, how to analyze and measure the quality of the services (Bienstock et al. 1997 ; Mentzer et al. 1999 ; Franceschini and Rafele 2000 ; Rafele 2004 ). Nonetheless, researchers have developed different ideas on logistics concept and service quality dimensions over time. There have been very few studies with the holistic approach on the LSQ to analyze overall developed dimensions and the attributes along with the general framework. Therefore, a comprehensive LSQ model that would incorporate different sectors is not available at present.

General approach of the researchers developing a study in LSQ has kept the literature review part very short and directed it to particular approaches without critically viewing the literature. This paper is aiming to address the previously mentioned issue by analyzing papers related to LSQ with a systematic approach. This will ensure that previous findings from scientific papers are systematically analyzed and presented and findings can be used in future studies to develop scientific or practical LSQ studies. Additionally, this study is anticipating LSQ attributes by analyzing research trends and general usage of LSQ dimensions, research methods, and fields of sectors. Furthermore, it is aiming to conduct a semi-structured interview with logistics professionals in order to confirm and enhance the outcome of the systematic literature review.

This paper has been developed through multiple sections. In the first section, research methodology has been explained. General approach in the systematic literature review, paper selection criteria, keywords, databases, and preliminary paper classification have been described in the second section. In the third section, descriptive analysis of the selected papers has been carried out. In the fourth section, LSQ dimensions and attributes have been analyzed and the LSQ measurement model has been created to discuss the findings in semi-structured interviews. In the fourth section, semi-structured interviews and findings from business professionals’ contributions have been explained. In the fifth section, a brief overview of this study has been presented and in addition notes on future works have been provided.

Research methodology

Systematic literature review methodology has been used in this study to have a holistic approach towards LSQ studies and interpret the findings obtained from previous papers. Systematic literature analysis method has been considered a technique of systematic, qualitative, objective, and quantitative description in the research area (Berelson 1952 ). A systematic content analysis methodology has been considered a very powerful and an explicit tool because of its ability to combine qualitative approaches retaining rich meaning with quantitative analyses (Duriau et al. 2007 ; Fink 2005 ). Additionally, the main difference between systematic literature review and traditional literature review has been considered the first comprehensive search section (Crossan and Apaydin 2010 ). In order the follow a structured method with valid results, a systematic literature review approach from the literature has been applied (Seuring and Gold 2012 ). In this regard, a systematic literature review has been planned in this study with several steps as: material collection, descriptive analysis, category selection, material evaluation. Material collection reflects gathering all necessary papers from previously created criteria. Collection of materials has been the most crucial step in systematic literature reviews. In the study, literature regarding the LSQ has been selected from peer-reviewed journals and literature databases, Web of Science, ScienceDirect, Emerald, Taylor and Francis, JSTOR, Business Source Premier, and the web. Second part of the systematic literature review has been descriptive analysis. Only studies in English language and published between 1995 and 2020 have been selected for the future classification. The formal characteristics of the selected papers have been set out in the descriptive analysis section to provide background for the content. Consequently, publication years, research methods and research fields of reviewed journals have been documented. Structural dimensions and related categories for future analytics have been selected in category selection. In the material evaluation section, all analyses have been presented according to determined categories and parameters.

Semi-structured interviews have been used in this study to consolidate the LSQ dimension findings from systematic literature analysis, as it is the most frequently used interview method (Taylor 2005 ; Dicocco-Bloom and Crabtree 2006 ). Flexibility and reciprocity of semi-structured interviews have benefited the LSQ discussion. Questions regarding service quality in logistics have been prepared prior to meetings, which were shaped around the systematic literature review findings and perceptions of the participants. In semi-structured interviews, following a strict structure is not advised (Kallio et al. 2016 ). Definite resolution on logistics quality and definition of quality dimensions have not been agreed upon for LSQ, therefore a semi-structured interview qualitative approach is considered more convenient in order to allow participants to express themselves. In order to create successful semi-structured interviews, a five-step model has been utilized (Kallio et al. 2016 ). Firstly, prerequisites of the interviews have been decided. Due to the coronavirus pandemic situation, related global restrictions and organizations, new working models such as online meeting method have been selected. Second step is gathering previous knowledge on data by using the systematic literature review. This has allowed the interviewer to gain knowledge and confidence in regular spontaneous follow-up questions. In the third step, guidelines of the interview have been developed. Questions have been prepared regarding participants’ understanding of LSQ, participants’ perception of the identified LSQ dimensions and follow-up questions regarding examples for the in-depth analysis of the topic. In the fourth step, a pilot has been conducted with one logistics business professional to test the clarity of the developed approach. In the final step, semi-structured interviews have been performed with five logistics professionals.

Systematic literature review

Systematic literature review is advised to be applied to a specified period of time. Therefore, materials have been selected from research papers that were published between 1995 and 2020. Specific keywords related to service quality in logistics have been used in literature databases such as Web of Science, ScienceDirect, Emerald, Taylor and Francis, JSTOR, Business Source Premier, and the web to identify the first step. Only papers that have been peer-reviewed in English language have been selected for further analysis for systematic review. Table 1 provides a summary of sample paper selection. In literature databases with keyword matches in their titles, 221 papers that are fit for the search criteria have been found. Furthermore, the suitability of the sample has been checked by applying a two-stage screening process. First screening has been applied to the abstracts of the selected papers. After analyzing the abstracts of 221 papers, sources that were irrelevant or with little relevance to the topic have been excluded from further analysis. However, studies with no abstract or with unclear information have been directly transferred to the second stage. In the second screening process, full paper review has been applied to enforce the relevance of the selected literature sample. Additionally, papers that have been cited multiple times and fit to the criteria of this research have been included in the samples. As a result, final sample has consisted of 59 papers.

After collecting the sample based on criteria, descriptive analysis has been followed, as it would create a framework for the systematic analysis. In this context, formal characteristics have been analyzed. Consequently, publication years and service fields have been analyzed to identify the preliminary framework of the selected literature sample. Publication years of the selected studies have shown that the trend towards the research topic of LSQ had been increasing. Findings of the study have shown that the LSQ is still a discussion subject among researchers. In order to show the academic interest in the LSQ topic, selected timeline of 25 years has been divided into five years of periods. The results have shown that 23 papers were published between 2015 and 2020, which clearly shows the increasing relevancy and interest in the research topic. Furthermore, search fields of selected papers have been analyzed and results reflected that 49% of the studies have been conducted in the logistics field and the second most popular research field groups have indicated the industrial management field with 20% of the total sample.

After analyzing the descriptive specifications of the selected research paper samples, analytic categories have been selected including research methods, data analysis methods, LSQ dimensions, service quality measurement models, approach of the studies. In the last part of the systematic literature analysis, selected categories have been analyzed and categorized to create some practical guidance on the LSQ research question. According to Avenier (2010), decontextualized evaluation of the literature analysis’ results brings out the possibility of proposing a certain degree of generalization for the findings. Therefore, systematic literature review findings have been used to identify the first design of the LSQ dimensions and later discussed in semi-structured interviews.

Analysis of the Categories

Previously founded categories have been analyzed to create further research design with transparency. Therefore, used data analysis and research method of selected literature sample have been analyzed. Table 2 provides an overview of the used researched methodology. According to the results, linear usage of qualitative, quantitative, and multiple data analysis known as triangulation has been used among 51% of the studies and 76% of the studies have had empirical approach.

There is an increase in empirical studies about the LSQ topic in addition to using existing created models and trying to validate the quality measurement models. Besides, many researchers have been searching the relationship between the LSQ and other attributes such as loyalty and satisfaction. Consequently, this increase in validation studies may refer to a reaction to unconformity on the search field and in search of study and generalized LSQ measurement model. Moreover, qualitative LSQ dimensions developing studies have been mainly observed in early periods and most researchers preferred to create an LSQ model and validate its reliability by quantitative methods throughout the time. Details of the research approach method with corresponding publications has been presented in Table 3 . From triangulation, Mentzer et al. ( 1999 ), created a nine-dimension service quality measurement model which is broadly used, Feng et al. ( 2007 ), Gil-Saura et al. ( 2008 ) and Thai ( 2013 ) also developed different models which were created for the need of the search in LSQ with different approaches.

Table 4 provides an overview of the ratio of used LSQ measurement models and, it is clear that most of the researchers preferred to create a unique service quality measurement model for logistics or preferred to add a modification to generally used methods instead of directly using developed and proved reliable methods. Logistics services have been always a chain of multiple services and findings may show differences among supply field, region or service expertise. For instance, Zailani et al. ( 2018 ) focused on LSQ considering halal logistics network and developed an individual service quality model. Thai ( 2008 ) has provided a service quality method for port operations and defined six brand new dimensions: resources, outcome, process, management, image or reputation and social responsibility. Despite having specialized service quality measurement models for logistics operations, most of the researchers have used the classical model of SERVQUAL in quantitative research. This approach also provides an insight into the inefficient LSQ measurement model for general usage.

In addition, the LSQ scale created by Mentzer et al. ( 1999 , 2001 ) has been used by researchers particularly. Rafiq and Jaafar ( 2007 ) had used the LSQ scale to measure customer perception on 3PL service providers, authors suggested generalizability of the LSQ scale on a similar sample model. Bouzaabia et al. ( 2013 ) has utilized the LSQ scale to compare the LSQ perception between Romania and Tunisia in retail logistics. Yumurtaci Huseyinoglu et al. ( 2018 ) has investigated the service quality scale model on Omni-channel capability. Table 5 provides an overview of LSQ dimensions and how often they are used in literature. The publication list has been submitted in chronological order to provide an overview of the development of LSQ dimensions that have been used throughout the period of the systematic research analysis. Due to different naming conventions on similar meanings, LSQ dimensions have been grouped by their relevance to each other. As a result, most frequently used LSQ measurement dimensions have been identified. Dimensions related to communication have been used 27 times in total, which have been mentioned under different names such as personal contact quality; responsiveness; customer focus etc. Second most frequently used LSQ dimensions are process-related and have been mentioned 20 times in the selected sample publications. Process related dimensions have been mentioned as order release quantities, order accuracy, order discrepancy handling, order quality and correctness, etc. Third but not least used dimensions are time-related and have been used 19 times in publications throughout the period. Time-related dimensions have been named in different forms such as timeliness, on-time delivery, lead time, etc. Over time, it has become clearly visible that while the focus of the operational quality has lost its importance and significance, communication-related dimensions and empathy dimension usage and their relation to quality have gained importance due to factors such as, responsiveness, empathy, personnel contact quality, etc.

The findings have indicated that the LSQ research area has remained incomplete in the literature. Thus, tailored service quality with hierarchical dimensions for logistics services are more applicable to analyze LSQ. Dimensions have been selected based on their relevance and frequency of use. As it has been noticed from the studies, focus on customer-related services in logistics operations is increasing, therefore, dimensions related to customer focus quality have been selected as the first dimension for this study to analyze further in the interviews. Additionally, by the image of the company and social responsibility acts investigated under a total of six LSQ dimensions and twenty sub-factors have been identified by their relevancy on logistics and the frequency of the use: Information quality, customer focus quality, order fulfillment quality, timeliness quality, corporate image and social responsibility were selected.

Semi-structured interviews

Semi-structured interviews allow participants and the interviewer to interchange knowledge within mutual benefit and, allow the interviewer to ask follow-up questions to participants based on the development of the answers (Rubin and Rubin 2005 ). In order to benefit from the professional view of the participants, semi-structured interview method has been selected. Semi-structured interview method is considered more fit for further investigation on LSQ dimensions because the topic is broadly discussed and has no consensus has been reached either on the definition or on the quality dimensions. Semi-structured interview has allowed participants to roam freely around the topic, and follow-up questions have provided preferable inputs and modifications on developed LSQ dimensions and sub-factors. As shown in Table 6 , interviews were carried out with five logistics business professionals. Two of the participants were logistics managers in retail business, one was the logistics service provider team lead and two of them were logistics specialists for logistics service providers. All interview participants and their companies were located in Germany and companies have the scope of working in global logistics and supply chain businesses. All interviews have been conducted through online calls, and meetings have been recorded. Five interviews lasted average of thirty minutes for each participant.

Semi-structured interview questions have been designed according to the outcome of the systematic literature review. Open-ended questions have invited participants to follow-up the topic. Open-ended questions have been designed for each participant and their companies. Next set of questions have been designed for each quality dimension that has been identified in the systematic literature analysis and the said questions asked participants their point of view to validate and modify the proposed model. In general, participants have been directed with general questions to understand their personal quality perceptions and followed-up with prompt questions.

As a result, construction of the preliminary proposed quality dimensions has changed. All participants have expressed the importance of their customer value and its relation with quality perception, also they have highlighted that quality dimension is in fact a customer obsession. Therefore, naming has been changed to ‘ customer obsession quality’ from ‘ customer focus quality’ . Additionally, all participants have highlighted and agreed on the social responsibility activities are related to companies’ image; therefore, LSQ dimensions have merged under one quality dimension: social responsibility and company image. Additionally, LSQ factors have also been discussed and modified as a consequence of the interviews. Sub-dimensional quality factors have raised to 24 from 20 in total. Final LSQ dimensions and factors have been defined as shown in Table 7 .

After the final evaluation of semi-structured reviews, shipment tracing capability, innovative solutions in logistics services; reliability, regularity, flexibility and availability of service, company’s reputation for reliability have been added to the LSQ factors and LSQ scale has been developed with five quality dimensions and 24 factors in total.

Research findings

Research findings have been developed with qualitative research techniques. Firstly, systematic literature analysis has been applied to the LSQ related papers with specified criteria between 1995 and 2020. Samples have been analyzed with systematically created filtering and descriptive analysis. Results have been analyzed and shown that researchers have not reached a consensus either on the LSQ perception or the measurement method. Additionally, a paradigm shift towards customer-oriented services from the natural physical movement of the cargoes has been observed in recent years. As a result, logistics service customers are giving more importance to business-to-business or business-to-customer communication and empathy. This change has been seen in the recent LSQ publications as well. As a consequence of the initial analysis, six dimensions and twenty logistics factors have been developed. Preliminary findings have been discussed in five semi-structured interviews. Logistics professionals’ contributions have been included in this study to ensure that literature key findings are in line with actual business and quality dimensions have improved by the outcome of the results.

As a result, systematic literature analysis has shown that SERVQUAL quality measurement method is still broadly used; however, there have been great contributions from many authors towards LSQ and the creation of logistics specific quality measurement model. Despite these improvements, there has been no consensus on the singular quality measurement model. This research proposes LSQ dimensions and factors created from systematic literature analysis and semi-structured interviews. Firstly, six-dimensional twenty factors have been developed and findings have been improved after the semi-structured interviews. Final model proposes five LSQ dimensions with twenty-four factors.

Conclusion and recommendations for further researches

Logistics services have been continuously growing around the world. These improvements and developments have increased the competition among service providers. There has been an increment in the number of research papers exploring this area. Service providers are trying to leverage operational excellence with high quality of services to maintain customer satisfaction, loyalty, and market competition. A regularly dynamic environment requires dynamic solutions, therefore, logistics services are constantly in development. Consequently, the perception of LSQ has been changing.

It has been found that LSQ understanding and applications have been evolving around the business focus of LSPs. Throughout the development of the quality dimensions in logistics, there have been different approaches from different authors. In the literature, the focus of the LSQ dimensions has been differing among different periods of the samples and it clearly shows the change in the focus on the quality. After observing a period of twenty years, early developed LSQ dimensions have shown that quality focus is mainly on the physical attributes of the operations, such as physical distribution and timeliness related dimensions. Over time, logistics services have accumulated more customer-oriented operations hence, in later periods customer-related LSQ dimensions have been observed, such as personal service/contact, empathy. The dimensional switch has also been accepted in semi-structured interviews and recorded as the most important dimension of the LSPs. Therefore, currently keeping positive relations with customers by providing emphatic continuous relationship has been more important for LSPs.

Despite having a high rate in empirical studies, findings suggest that researchers used repeatedly SERVQUAL model in LSQ measurement even though there have been measurement models created specifically for logistics services. This indicates that the search of the LSQ dimensions and measurement methods have not been completed; hence, it is open for improvement and eventually reaching the recognized LSQ measurement method. This study is providing a framework for service quality in logistics for researchers and logistics professionals by systematically analyzing the previously developed studies and measurement models. Primary quality dimensions have been developed from systematic literature analysis by systemizing and organizing the existing literature. Then, additional interviews have been conducted with service professionals. As a result, framework of LSQ has been developed with five dimensions with customer obsession quality, order fulfillment quality, timeliness quality, information quality, corporate image and social responsibility and twenty-four factors. The holistic approach of the research model has asserted LSQ dimensions for further measurement models.

Proposed model may be used as a framework for further studies and can be strengthened by empirically testing in multiple regions of the world. LSQ dimensions may be improved by conducting focus group meetings and additional interviews with logistics professionals from different regions of the world. Additionally, professionals may use these LSQ dimensions as an internal quality indicator and use factors and dimensions as quality key performance metrics. Managers may benefit from the findings to create quality-oriented logistics services or improve existing service models.

Availability of data and materials

The datasets used and analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Abbreviations

• Logistics service quality

Logistics Services providers

• Service quality

Service performance

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The author HTK analyzed and interpreted the historical research data regarding Logistics Service Quality and conducted descriptive analysis. HTK conducted interviews with business professionals. The author GA, analyzed historical service quality dimensions, developed inferences between historical findings and periodic trends among service quality dimensions, and is a major contributor in writing the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Arabelen, G., Kaya, H.T. Assessment of logistics service quality dimensions: a qualitative approach. J. shipp. trd. 6 , 14 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1186/s41072-021-00095-1

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Freight traffic fulfils not only the business needs of a region to move goods between producers, manufacturers, and end consumers, but also creates a host of unintended environmental, social, and economic impacts. Despite its importance, freight traffic impacts and associated logistic inefficiencies are largely overlooked in the urban transport discussions in developing economies like India. This paper addresses this research gap by outlining the research progress related to freight transport in India and discusses the key problems related to freight system performance. The published literature in the last three decades (1990–2020), policy briefs and institutional reports are explored to summarize key findings and uncover thematic linkages. We categorize the inefficiencies in the freight system into four aspects: (i) long-haul trucking, (ii) last-mile logistics, (iii) freight distribution (inventory level), and (iv) policies and regulations. Apart from identifying the limitations in policy discourse, this paper also explores the possible solution concepts to improve efficiency in freight transport and mitigate the unintended negative externalities in urban areas. The overall conclusion is that increasing and improving infrastructure and equipment, technology and operations, and policy and regulations will go some way towards making freight more efficient in India and reducing congestion and emissions of air pollutants and GHG. The present paper can be expected to promote further freight research and effective policy instrument design in India.

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Introduction

Currently, more than a third of global transport energy consumption (39%) is generated by freight movements [ 1 ]; trucking is responsible for 23%, followed by marine vessels, which are responsible for 12%, and rail and pipelines, which are responsible for 4%. It is therefore an imperative research need to investigate how to ensure that freight activities fulfil their role in economic transaction of goods, while mitigating the associated negative externalities. It is also critically important to understand why, how and where freight activity takes place and what kind of infrastructure and policies need to be provided to respond effectively to the growing logistical requirements of businesses and households [ 2 , 3 , 4 ]. The practical requirements to improve the logistics competency and operational efficiency of freight transport have been acting as strong catalysts to stimulate a number of studies towards understanding freight activity at both national and local scales. However, a data-driven summary of the freight system performance in India, expanding on the logistics inefficiencies and negative externalities of freight traffic, are evident gaps in the literature. This discernible research need triggered the present comprehensive review. This review specifically outlines the progress that has been made in freight research, along with possible future research directions and policy guidelines.

The objectives of this review paper are therefore threefold: (1) to investigate the various aspects of freight system performance, logistics inefficiencies, and freight traffic negative externalities in India; (2) to discuss the potential solution concepts and prepare a research agenda for future research on sustainable city logistics in India; and (3) to develop insights for policy and practice based on the empirical evidence in the literature and the emerging trends in the logistics market. These objectives are motivated by the lack of practice- and policy-based discussions on improving freight mobility in India and enhancing the ease in moving goods across cities and states in a geographically diverse country like India. Reviewing the inefficiencies and externalities of freight in India will help to provide solution concepts and mitigation strategies to improve the freight system performance. This paper, therefore, addresses the need for a comprehensive review focusing on Indian freight studies and aims to draw inferences from the existing literature and provide guidance for future research in India. The review findings are expected to promote freight research and effective policy instrument design to meet the growing needs to reduce the overall logistics cost for moving goods.

Method Adopted for the Review and Data Collection

Research questions.

The primary aim of this paper is to present a comprehensive review of the freight traffic impacts and logistics inefficiencies in India, which is an area of significant practical and research interest in the context of coordinated global efforts to reduce transport emissions. The following are the specific research questions explored in this review:

What is the extent of literature relevant to freight transport planning in India and what is the emerging trend?

Are there any deficiencies of freight performance in India relative to global benchmarks?

What are the logistics inefficiencies in India and what are the underlying reasons contributing to them?

What are the environmentally negative externalities of freight movements and how can they be quantified in India?

What are the potential solution concepts that can be derived from the literature for addressing the issues related to freight system performance, logistics inefficiencies, and negative externalities of freight movements in India?

An overview of the review questions, methodology and the discussion structure adopted in this paper is presented in Fig.  1 . As can be seen, the first research question (RQ1) is designed to map the extent of literature related to freight transport planning in India through a review of published literature, policy documents, and reports. The second research question (RQ2) follows from the previous question as it is to analyse and discuss the freight system performance in India based on the papers identified and screened as a part of RQ1. The third research question (RQ3) is to discover the underlying reasons contributing to logistics inefficiencies in India as a logical extension of RQ2. The fourth research question (RQ4) is to assess the environmentally negative externalities of freight transport, going beyond the operational efficiency focus in RQ3. The final research question (RQ5) is aimed at discussing the potential solution concepts in practice across the world to improve the freight system performance (RQ2), logistics inefficiencies (RQ3), and negative externalities (RQ4) in India.

Overview of the review questions, method, and discussion structure

Identifying and Screening of Literature

To ensure the review covered the most recent published literature on freight in India, Scopus, Web of Science, and TRID were combined with Google Scholar. The initial search used the general keywords ‘freight transportation/transport’ but this was later narrowed down to ‘India’, and subject areas ‘engineering’, ‘social sciences’, ‘environmental science’, and ‘decision science’. The search process was repeated using additional keywords of interest to this study, such as ‘logistics inefficiencies’, ‘freight traffic’, and ‘freight system performance’. Only peer-reviewed articles (including both review and original papers) were considered but these were combined with grey literature reports and government (e.g. Government of India) and international organizations (e.g. the World Bank) publications. The initial 290 unique records published between 1990 and 2020 were screened and purged down to 49. Many papers were irrelevant to the present study, as they dealt with issues unrelated to the research questions posed, despite having come up in the search exercise. The limited number of relevant papers found in the published literature underline the urgent need to focus on these research problems.

Review Approach and Data

The papers that survived the pruning were papers published in the following journals: Transportation Research (TR) Part A, TR Part B, TR Part C, TR Part D, Transport Policy, Transportation, Transport Geography, Transportation Research Record, Research in Transportation Economics, Travel Behaviour and Society, Sustainable Cities and Society, Transport Reviews, Journal of Cleaner Production, Energy Policy, Transportation Research Procedia, KSCE Journal of Civil Engineering, Transportation Letters, and Research in Transportation Business and Management. To quantify the extent of literature relevant to freight transportation in India (RQ1), the number of papers published in each of these journals is presented in Fig.  2 and the total number of publications in each year is presented in Fig.  3 . As can be seen in Fig.  3 , there has been substantial growth in freight studies since 2018. This jump in the number of papers underlines the increased research attention given to this topic area in recent years. Out of the 49 papers, 41 were published in Elsevier journals (83.67%), 3 were published in Springer journals (6.12%), 3 were published in Taylor and Francis journals (6.12%), and 2 were published in SAGE journals (4.08%). The 49 papers can be categorized into four areas: (1) development of disaggregate-level freight demand estimations at seaports [ 5 , 6 ] or urban establishments [ 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 ], (2) development of aggregate-level freight generation [ 12 , 13 ] or distribution models [ 14 ], (3) design of establishment-based freight surveys [ 15 , 16 ] and zoning systems [ 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 ], (4) analysis of freight transport parking practices [ 21 ], emissions [ 22 , 23 ], expenditure patterns [ 9 , 24 , 25 ], and logistics sprawl [ 26 ]. Since the relevant statistics on freight system performance (e.g. modal share, logistics cost) or specific logistics inefficiencies related to India were missing in these publications, the review scope was also extended to collect aggregate-level data from publicly available sources, such as the Logistics Performance Index from the World Bank [ 39 ] and the Freight Transport Indicators from the OECD [ 38 ]. Additionally, policy briefs and reports published by government agencies in India were also referred to gain insights into the status of freight transport policies. The Indian Government National Transport Development Policy Report [ 27 ] was reviewed with the aim of capturing the policy discourse. The discussion derived from the identified literature follows the structure shown in Fig.  1 . The thematic discussions on three specific topic areas are provided in the next three sections: freight system performance in India (RQ2), logistics inefficiencies in India (RQ3), and negative externalities of freight traffic in India (RQ4). The solution concepts for the issues identified in the thematic discussions are discussed in the penultimate section. The final section concludes this paper.

Number of papers reviewed from the literature and their respective journals

Number of papers published each year between 1990 and 2020

Freight System Performance in India

In line with the rest of the world, freight transport is undergoing important changes in India, most of which are simply a result of market trends, and most of which are already shaping and will continue to significantly shape the way freight transport performs in the future. This section is devoted to scrutinizing these trends, putting them in context, and understanding their potential impact in the short and medium term.

Unbalanced Modal Mix and Growth in Road Freight

The Indian economy is growing rapidly, partly thanks to its ongoing industrialization. One of the consequences of this is that freight movements are growing exponentially—both in the last-mile and long-haul trucking sector [ 27 ]. A major share of this demand is carried by road transport due to the flexibility provided for first-mile and last-mile logistics. The freight transport sector in India, as a result, is heavily skewed towards road transport with a modal share of 64% [ 28 ]. This compares with 75% in Europe [ 29 ] and 63% in the USA [ 30 ]. The historical trend of modal share between road, railways and inland waterways is presented in Fig.  4 using secondary data publicly available from a report published by the “Sustainable Urban Transport Project”, an organization devoted to the study and promotion of sustainable transport in urban areas [ 31 ]. The rail market share, as it can be seen, has gradually declined over the years. This trend is concerning because the economies of scale for bulk cargoes can be better achieved using a combination of railway, inland waterways, and coastal shipping. In 2018–2019, freight mode share in India stood at 27% rail, 64% road, 5% coastal shipping, 2% inland waterways, and less than 1% air (plus a 2% via pipelines for gas, water sewerage, etc.) [ 28 ]. Considering the less than optimal rail share, Indian Railways, a government entity under the Ministry of Railways that operates India’s national rail system, has set a target of having at least a 50% share of the country’s freight traffic by 2030 [ 32 ]. To achieve this, Indian Railways is investing heavily on network expansion projects and dedicated freight corridors. The strategic planning of these large-scale projects requires accurate freight demand models [ 24 , 25 , 33 , 34 ].

Source: Urban Freight and Logistics: The State of Practices in India [ 31 ]

Variation in freight modal share in India over time.

Achieving an efficient modal share is important for a country and the environmental impacts of different transport modes are evaluated in several studies [ 35 ]. An efficient modal share is one that maximizes volumes transported and does so at the minimum social cost, to include not just time and vehicle operating costs, but also externalities, especially noise, air pollution, climate change, caused by greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and accidents. For example, large, regular flows of goods with low-value density are historically suited for transport by railways, because: (i) origin/destination points tend to remain the same; (ii) commodity fragmentation can be avoided, and (iii) emissions can be minimized. Medium-valued goods are also increasingly transported by railways due to the availability of modern intermodal services around the world [ 36 ]. Due to significant economies of scale, railway or inland waterways have the potential to move these goods at a much lower unit cost than trucks with far lower GHG emissions and cost variability. A recent comparison of freight mode performance in India [ 37 ] suggests that the unit costs of moving goods is highest for road transport (2.58 INR/ton-km or 3.4 US cents/ton-km at April 2022 exchange rates), followed by railway (1.41 INR/ton-km or 1.86 US cents/ton-km at April 2022 exchange rates) and waterways (1.06 INR/ton-km or 1.40 US cents/ton-km at April 2022 exchange rates), respectively. Despite the high unit costs and road freight externalities, freight transport is road dominated in India (and other regions of the world such as Europe and the USA, as already highlighted above) because it offers greater delivery flexibility and shipment size. This trend is reflected in the growth of (road) freight transport in emerging Asian countries, such as China and India, as shown on Fig.  5 . The data were collected from the OECD Freight Transport Indicators Database [ 38 ]. The figure shows a clear growth of road freight in emerging economies, in line with the growth of the freight sector in those countries, and of the economy in general. Freight flows in OECD countries of North America and Europe, on the other hand, have reached a steady-state.

Source: OECD Freight Transport Indicators Database [ 38 ]

Growth of road freight transport in India and other major OECD countries.

Road freight transport offers lower transit times and higher reliability, making it better suited for transport of perishable goods and commodities with high value density [ 17 ]. The other operational advantages of using trucks include saving in packaging costs, ability to track and trace cargoes, door-to-door serviceability, and ability to schedule the delivery. An effective mode share of a country should thus concomitantly satisfy two criteria: (i) minimizing transport costs and (ii) meeting the operational requirements of shippers. While there is no consensus on the “ideal” modal mix for freight transport, India’s geographical features (extensive coastlines, predominance of hinterland economic activity, longer length of hauls) and the need to reduce freight emissions point in favour of rail transport.

Logistics Cost, Performance and Global Benchmarks

Logistics costs are a significant component of total trade costs. The high logistics costs constrain the competitiveness of the economy and are often the result of shortcomings (physical, regulatory, or institutional) in the transport sector. Nearly one-third of India’s logistics costs (~ 4% of GDP) are attributed to inefficiencies in infrastructure. An important logistics measure that can be used to compare the performance of India’s logistics system against its competitors is the Logistics Performance Index (LPI) produced by the World Bank [ 39 ]. The LPI scores are based on data on six dimensions of trade: customs efficiency, infrastructure quality, ease of transporting international shipments, logistics quality and competence, trackability of consignments (also called tracking and tracing), and delivery timeliness [ 39 ]. The World Bank uses the LPI to rank countries [ 39 ], and a summary of this ranking, relevant to the present paper, is presented in Fig.  6 . As it can be seen in Fig.  6 , the logistics infrastructure in India lags behind that in Germany, the USA, the UK, and China. Jumping up the LPI rank, as currently proposed [ 40 ], will require a fundamental reorientation in the way logistics infrastructure caters to freight demand in India.

Source: Logistics Performance Index [ 39 ]

Global variation in logistics performance index.

Pairwise comparisons of LPI scores between major OECD countries and India are given in Fig.  7 , to highlight the deficiencies across different aspects of logistics.

Pairwise comparison of LPI between OECD countries and India.

Changes in Logistics Strategies and Freight Needs

One important challenge in the freight sector is linked to the changes that have taken place and continue to take place in the context of E-commerce [ 41 ]. The purchasing options of consumers in the past were limited to retailers in the city centre, whereas these are now competing with wide-ranging options provided by online retailers. To maintain a competitive edge in the market, shops are increasingly adopting just-in-time inventory practices, which result in stocks being kept to a minimum. Another noticeable change is the increased requirement for better logistics outsourcing service levels [ 9 ]. Many customers expect delivery within 24 h after placing an order [ 10 ]. Retailers are forced to respond and adapt to changing consumer requirements or risk losing them to the nearest competitor. Compounding this challenge is the consumer experience, which has become highly personalized and specialized, thanks to the digital transformation that has taken place since the early 2000s. This implies more customized orders, stricter quality controls, tighter compliance standards, shorter delivery windows and an overall intolerance to delays in shipments. The role of “fulfilment centres” became increasingly important over the first two decades of the 2000s, and is now a component in many supply chains, with a prime example being Amazon. The changes in logistic strategies of many stores (and warehouses) and the expectations from end consumers have had significant impacts on the demand for freight transport as follows: (i) there is a higher demand for goods, (ii) there are higher service levels, and (iii) shipment sizes tend to be smaller than they used to be.

Diversification of Freight Flows

There are different types of freight flows. These are depicted in Fig.  8 , based on the typology suggested in a report by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs and Rocky Mountain published in 2019 [ 42 ]. As shown in Fig.  8 , there are four different types of shipments: (i) low-value, bulk freight (LVBF), (ii) medium-value, medium-density freight (MVDF), (iii) business-to-business freight (B2BF) for urban consumption, and (iv) business-to-consumers freight (B2CF) for urban residents. LVBF refers to shipments of construction materials (concrete, sand, gravel) and industrial goods (oil and petrochemicals). LVBF accounts for a significant share of freight shipments, especially in cities where the majority of the infrastructure is still in the process of being built. These low-value shipments tend to be shipped in large quantities (and heavy-duty vehicles), which cause high external costs. The next spectrum of shipments refers to MVDF, which are inputs or outputs of light industry (raw material oriented and less capital intensive), such as, for example, paper products, plastic products, leather, and textile products. The B2BF shipments are typically directed towards retailers so that they can be sold to urban residents. These shipments include fast-moving consumer goods, such as, for example, food products, beverages and pharmaceuticals, and they are typically stocked on the shelves of consumer stores. B2BF shipments are characterized by a high frequency of trips, although they are typically transported in light or medium-duty vehicles. Restricting the movement of B2BF shipments is generally contentious, because B2BF shipments directly cater to the needs of urban residents. Instead of reducing the freight volume, restrictions are typically found to force the shippers to move freight in less efficient ways. B2CF shipments typically are of high value and have specialized handling and delivery requirements (e.g. food deliveries, document packages, parcels). These types of freight are transported in light-duty vehicles, vans, two wheelers or even by foot, directly to the end consumer. Formerly a relatively small segment of urban freight travel market, B2CF shipments have become critical in urban logistics with the rise of E-commerce. Much like B2BF shipments, B2CF shipments cater to urban residents and policy interventions should focus on efficiency rather than demand management. While these diversifications are unique in each supply chain, a general conceptualization of urban supply chains is presented in Fig.  9 .

Source: authors’ own conceptualization based on freight flow categories discussed in the report by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs and Rocky Mountain Institute [ 42 ]

Type of shipments transported by urban freight.

Source: authors’ own conceptualization, extending the layout in Pani and Sahu (2019b)

Conceptual layout of urban supply chains.

B2CF shipments have experienced an important growth in the last few years, mainly due to increased Internet penetration. In the organized retail market, the share of online purchases was 25% in 2019, with forecasts predicting it could reach 37% by 2030 [ 43 ]. The presence of online platforms also enables consumer-to-consumer online markets; this form of E-commerce is rising in popularity [ 44 ]. Due to the influx of online platforms, many traditional retailers feel the need to participate in E-commerce as well, further increasing the urban freight flow levels. Many retailers are choosing to sell goods held in their inventory through E-commerce and Omni-channel delivery systems to offer better options to consumers [ 45 ]. In the context of increasing B2CF flows, reverse logistics of goods are also becoming more important. These streams involve not only the return and exchange of goods purchased online, but also services such as waste collection. As it can be seen in Fig.  9 , shippers also produce additional freight activity in the form of waste and “reverse logistics” of returns and exchanges. Policymakers should therefore customize policy interventions to different types of freight traffic. For instance, shippers or retailers can offer customers (end node of supply chains) unique value by incentivizing reuse of raw or finished materials through a seamless “return” policy. By creating these feedback loops in supply chains, cities can transition towards a circular economy with significant societal and economic benefits [ 46 ]. Classifying the type of goods entering the city through different supply chains can be the first step for understanding the diverse needs of the freight market segments and, in turn, examining what challenges they present. Existing freight studies in India have largely focused on freight flow, and limited attention has been given to reverse logistics and service activities [ 9 , 16 , 47 ].

Infrastructure Investment and Mobility Studies

Productive investment on freight transport infrastructure is vital for improving the freight system performance and, in turn, enabling seamless deliveries and pick-ups of goods in urban areas [ 48 ]. An integrated approach to infrastructure spending, with investment schemes driven by transport policy goals that are coordinated with land-use and industrial development objectives, is critical for India. Since much of the freight movements have a destination in cities where ports or airports are located, infrastructure investment needs to be prioritized in those cities and regions, especially as freight vehicles share road space with passenger traffic. A comparison of infrastructure investment in India over the period 2004–2017 is presented in Fig.  10 .

Source: OECD Infrastructure Investment Database [ 49 ]

Growth in infrastructure investment.

There have been several initiatives for increasing capacity, such as for example, the construction of dedicated freight corridors (DFCs). DFCs are expected to ensure that long-haul freight demand is catered efficiently in existing trunk routes on the eastern and western corridors (Howrah-Delhi and Mumbai-Delhi), which are currently saturated with line capacity utilization of 115%–150% [ 27 ]. The diversion of freight traffic from the long-haul trucking sector to DFCs on truck routes is expected to decongest the existing highway network for passenger movement. However, appropriate transport supply improvements require a demand assessment toolkit which is still missing for India [ 18 ].

Logistics Inefficiencies in India

There are a number of inefficiencies in both freight transport and freight policies in India. These inefficiencies can be broadly categorized into four areas: (i) long-haul trucking, (ii) last-mile logistics, (iii) freight distribution (inventory level), and (iv) policies and regulations. Reducing these inefficiencies will reduce the generalized cost of moving goods and the externalities of road transport. It will also improve the satisfaction of urban residents.

Inefficiencies in Long-Haul Trucking

The inefficiencies in trucking costs are driven by three factors: (i) avoidable running costs created by empty backhaul of trucks, (ii) usage of trucks with reduced fuel economy and (iii) insufficient fleet size and mix of logistics providers, which lead to inefficient utilization of trucks for forwarding shipments. The root cause of these inefficiencies is related to the inability of trucking firms to achieve economies of scale, thereby resulting in low productivity and efficiency. This is partially linked to the rise of small trucking firms, which attempt to reduce logistics costs through overloading, service violations and poor maintenance. These unlawful logistic operations artificially lower the price of trucking services and make the traditional carriers with large efficient fleets unable to continue operations. Large trucking firms, on the other hand, can achieve economies of scale through efficient dispatching and scheduling, which is critical to increasing fleet utilization and reducing empty running. Another important contributor towards inefficiency is the suboptimal load size observed in emerging countries [ 37 ]. The highways in India are also inadequately maintained, inconsistent in road width and heavily congested [ 27 ]. These infrastructure shortfalls underline the need for targeted capacity increase to improve the inefficiencies in long-haul trucking.

Inefficiencies in Last-Mile Logistics

Last-mile logistics involves delivering packages to end consumers or retail shops in urban centres. It typically follows different trip patterns, uses different vehicle types and has a different spatial extent of travel, compared to long-distance trucking. Due to the nature of multi-stop delivery tours carried out in last-mile operations, priority is given to maximizing the amount of freight delivered in an average tour. This is in contrast with the priorities given to achieving improved shipment size in long-distance trucking. The importance of last-mile logistics, despite being the shortest link in supply chains, stems from the fact that it constitutes up to up to 13%–72% of total logistics costs in many supply chains [ 50 ], and up to 55% in supply chains involving E-commerce [ 37 ]. The variation in costs is because of several potential causes of inefficiencies that exist in last mile, as explained below.

Fragmentation of receivers: In India, as in many emerging markets, the demand for freight can be somewhat fragmented. The reason for this fragmentation is the informal, even impulsive, ordering behaviour of “nano stores” [ 51 ]. This ordering behaviour affects the performance of the whole supply chain, as it triggers actions upstream in the supply chain [ 51 ].

Fragmentation of carriers: Planning delivery tours is a complex optimization problem, which needs to maximize delivery quantities, minimize time and distance whilst reaching all destinations, considering delivery windows and traffic patterns/congestion . Logistic providers in developing countries like India often lack the fleet size and technical tools to dispatch delivery trucks on optimal tours.

Fragmentation of delivery points: In the era of E-commerce and highly personalized freight orders, fragmentation of delivery points is an important barrier to last-mile logistics efficiency. The discretization of delivery points is a more pronounced issue in urban areas than the fragmentation of receivers. This is a problem common to both developed and developing countries, but in countries like India, the impacts are more evident, probably because of the higher traffic congestion levels that prevail in most cities.

Logistics sprawl: Due to high land values in cities, warehouses and distribution centres tend to migrate towards the suburbs. This phenomenon, known as “logistics sprawl”, increases the duration of delivery tours and the resultant traffic increases congestion levels, both going into and out of the cities [ 52 ]. Transportation is intrinsically linked to the urban growth phenomenon and the associated logistics sprawl [ 53 , 54 ]. Another implication of logistics sprawl is that it reduces the number of delivery points accomplished in a single tour. The evidence for logistics sprawl in major Indian cities is already available for industry sectors such as the timber market [ 26 ].

Inefficiencies in Freight Distribution

Inventory is a critical element of logistics costs, as it requires facilities for storage and holds up the working capital of firms (i.e. receivers) in a freight system [ 55 ]. To reduce these costs, firms typically attempt to minimize inventory levels without compromising their ability to serve end consumers. Due to uncertainty in lead times (i.e. time taken by shipper to deliver goods), excess inventory costs are typically incurred by shippers in the freight system, thereby increasing the overall logistics costs. The reduced reliability in transit times leads to higher buffer stocks to guard against uncertainty. The highly fragmented and inefficient distribution system poses major challenges to buffer stock reductions. Another challenge is the limited digitization of links connecting the stakeholders in a freight system, which restricts the ability of retailers to reduce cycle stock (i.e. the inventory held in shelves to satisfy normal sales demand). The ability to implement just-in-time (JIT) ordering practices that can accomplish reductions in cycle stock hinges on two factors: (i) digital capabilities to track inventory drawdown and (ii) digital links to distribution centres and supplies to avail dynamic replenishment of products. Due to limited advances in JIT systems in India, efforts to reduce the total amount of inventory in the distribution system and the amount of inventory lost have not been very successful [ 37 ].

Inefficiencies in Policy Framework

Policies intended to reduce the negative externalities or inefficiencies from freight can actually backfire and yield the opposite result. The National Urban Transport Policy (NUTP) in India acknowledges that freight traffic will grow substantially [ 31 , 56 ]. Timely and seamless freight movements are also mentioned as a priority for the economic development of the country [ 31 , 56 ]. The freight-related policy measures recommended in the NUTP report can be summarized as follows: (i) using off-peak hours for freight deliveries, (ii) restricting the entry of heavy-duty trucks into cities during daytime, (iii) building bypasses through public–private partnerships so that long-haul trucks can go around the city, instead of adding to the city traffic, (iv) reorganizing land use by locating wholesale activities in the periphery of cities, along the interstate highways, rather than in city centres, (v) building truck terminals and parking facilities outside the city limits to encourage the shifting of wholesale activities, (vi) provisioning parking space at appropriate locations for on/off street with the use of intelligent transport systems, (vii) planning ring roads to relieve traffic congestion in central areas, and (viii) implementing auto-fuel policies that call for tighter emission regulations and fleet upgrades [ 31 , 56 ]. Following the recommendations of the NUTP report [ 31 , 56 ], some cities, including Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Hyderabad, and Kochi, have set up committees, known as Unified Metropolitan Transport Authorities (UMTAs), charged with the mission of integrating the functioning of agencies associated with passenger and freight mobility. These top-down policies may deliver positive impacts and help achieve more efficient freight movements in urban areas.

Another policy that has been suggested is the implementation of time-based or cordon-based restrictions. These restrictions have been introduced in some cities in India [ 7 ]. They can entail, for example, banning vehicles exceeding 7.5 tons during specific time periods of the year or specific times of the day [ 7 ]. Delhi has also banned non-destined transiting trucks (heavy, medium or light-duty vehicles) from passing through certain regions in Delhi [ 23 ] and has imposed entry time restrictions to freight destined for Delhi. Shifting freight travel into times of minimum residential use can force deliveries at night, greatly increasing the share of last-mile cost in total logistics cost. Furthermore, it can, and it has, resulted in good deliveries by vans or three wheelers, which are not subject to bans, and this can, and indeed has, in turn, increased overall traffic.

In addition to the above, the imposition of pollution taxes can help freight face the environmental costs they cause. Delhi, for example, introduced a pollution tax in 2015, payable by trucks passing through Delhi [ 23 ]. The tax is 700 INR and 1400 INR (USD 9.24 and USD 18.49 at April 2022 exchange rates) for light-duty vehicles and heavy-duty vehicles, respectively. Reorganizing land use by moving wholesale markets to outer town suburbs or satellite towns can help reduce the pressure from freight movements. Mumbai did exactly this to reduce traffic levels in the congested south part of the city. Another initiative is that of Urban Consolidation Centres (UCCs) [ 57 ]. These schemes aim to reduce the number of goods delivery vehicles in urban areas by consolidating multiple shipments at centres located in the city periphery [ 58 ]. There are several informal examples of such centres in India, especially in the perishable product sector (e.g. Azadpur vegetable market, sabzi mandi in Delhi). Another example of consolidation is the ITC e-Choupal project in which internet-based kiosks reach out directly to farmers and eliminate the middleman in agri-business supply chains [ 31 ]. Finally, many cities, such as for example Chennai, are planning to have truck terminals and parking zones on the city periphery [ 31 ]. However, there are several institutional, practical and legal barriers for long-term success in UCCs implementation, as reported in some European cities like Oslo [ 57 ].

Despite the publication of the NUTP and the setup of UMTAs in some cities, freight transport policy in India is still in nascent stage [ 42 ], in contrast with passenger transport policy. Save for the policy initiatives aimed at increasing capacity and building facilities (truck terminals, consolidation centres), freight policies in India have largely been restrictive in nature [ 23 ]. A scenario building approach, perhaps taking into account individual perspectives [ 59 ], has the potential to yield participatory decision-making outcomes related to freight policies.

Negative Externalities of Freight Traffic in Indian Cities

The negative externalities from freight traffic in India are only expected to increase in magnitude, bearing in mind the trends mentioned in previous sections. Negative externalities from freight can be defined as the costs imposed by freight on freight and other traffic, and society in general. These costs are not borne by those causing them, and are not reflected in any economic transaction (i.e. when the good is produced, transported or consumed). These external costs can be broadly categorized into three [ 60 , 61 ]: (i) environmental impacts, (ii) social impacts and (iii) economic impacts, as explained below.

Environmental Impacts

The environmental impacts from freight transport include air pollution, climate change caused by GHG emissions, noise, and water pollution. A multimodal emission assessment shows that the emissions from transport are expected to grow by 4.1–6.1% per year, leading to an increase of seven times by 2050 [ 62 ]. Air pollution is caused by emissions of particulate matter (i.e. microscopic solid or liquid particles in air), carbon monoxide, ozone and hazardous air pollutants such as benzene, which causes cancer and other serious health effects. Most trucks run on diesel, which is more polluting than petrol. Climate change is caused by GHGs. Excessive noise can negatively impact human health, disturb sleep, and cause cardiovascular and psychophysiological problems [ 63 ]. Most of the external costs from trucks in Europe come from noise [ 64 , 65 ]. Water pollution can result from freight transport when there are spills, leakages, or disposal of cargo material in water bodies. Although freight traffic constitutes merely 3% to 15% of total traffic in urban arterials and expressways [ 66 , 67 ], it is estimated to be responsible for up to 50% of road transport emissions [ 68 ]. In the case of noise pollution and vibration hindrance, in general, road freight has a much larger impact than cars [ 64 , 65 ]. Compounding these impacts is the fact that freight trucks used for urban deliveries are generally older and more polluting than trucks used for long-haul shipments [ 69 ]. Finally, land-use changes associated with freight flow and transport infrastructure development are an increasing source of concern as they can cause visual intrusion on environmental landscape, and destruction of habitats and species loss.

Social Impacts

The main negative externality from freight with social impacts is accidents. A significant share of road accidents can be attributed to trucks, as shown in Fig.  11 , based on crash data published by the Transportation Research and Injury Prevention Programme at the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi [ 70 ]. The vehicle types include motorized two wheelers (MTWs), three wheel scooter taxis (TSTs), buses, cars, trucks, and others. As it can be seen in Fig.  11 , 72% and 65% of fatal crashes in six-lane national highways and urban highways are associated with trucks as one of the impacting vehicles.

Source: Transportation Research and Injury Prevention Report, Table 10 [ 70 ]

Proportion of impacting vehicle type in fatal crashes (2015–2018).

Economic Impacts

The main externality from road freight that has economic impacts is congestion. Congestion caused by road freight has become a common problem in cities around the world [ 71 ]. In Europe, most of the external cost from trucks comes from congestion (and noise) [ 64 ]. Trucks take between two and four times the road space that cars take, and their speeds also tend to be lower. In addition, due to scarcity or inadequate configuration of loading or unloading bays/zones, freight trucks often double park during their delivery tours [ 72 ], thereby blocking the road for other vehicles. Traffic congestion has substantial negative impacts in terms of reduced productivity and wasted fuel. A high-level estimate of the economic loss resulting from congestion in major cities in India is over 22 billion USD per year [ 61 ]. Two conflicting interests emerge regarding congestion—public authorities aim to reduce freight traffic to improve the attractiveness of their city to residents as well as tourists, while private companies seek to operate at lowest cost with quick deliveries to satisfy consumers’ expectations in a highly competitive market [ 61 ]. The regulations and restrictions brought by public authorities can cause “detour” of delivery vehicles through narrow streets and unsafe delivery areas with low vertical clearance, further exacerbating traffic congestion [ 73 ].

Solution Concepts for Sustainable City Logistics

Considering the past trends, future projections of freight movement in India, a portfolio of solution concepts needs to be proposed and implemented to address negative externalities and inefficiencies in freight transport. We provide a broad overview of these solution concepts in this section and do so under four categories: (i) physical assets such as infrastructure and equipment, (ii) technology and operations, (iii) policy and regulations, and (iv) logistics-driven changes. The first two classes of solution concepts are part of long-term planning and require significant investment and changes to transport infrastructure. The latter two classes are part of short-term planning and they aim to reduce the impact of freight transport within the existing expanse of transport infrastructure. These categories of solution concepts are explained in the next subsections.

Infrastructure Solutions

These solutions include improving the quality and capacity of the road and railway networks and providing multimodal hubs and warehouses. Analyses of commodity movements and freight demand are critical decision-making tools for provision of infrastructure solutions. These solutions are imperative for developing a balanced modal mix and reducing the overall logistics cost, as explained below.

Improving freight distribution and last-mile logistics: The infrastructure facilities that need to be provided to improve freight distribution and last-mile logistics in urban areas are: (i) curb-level parking infrastructure and loading bays, (ii) exclusive truck lanes and dedicated routes, (iii) urban freight consolidation centres, and (iv) urban logistics spaces and (v) smart lockers. Parking and loading bays are critical for reducing the cruising time for truck traffic since delivery locations in urban areas often lack parking infrastructure. As a result, the inability to find an unloading spot or off-street parking lot leads to double parking and congestion [ 74 ]. Development of reversible lanes (off-peak reorganization of lanes in dense business districts), developmental lines and land-use ordinances are some of the effective solutions for improving parking efficiency [ 72 ]. Exclusive truck routes help for “detouring” freight deliveries away from residential areas in urban areas. These routes need to be designed for anticipated truck traffic levels in terms of vertical clearance, turning radii, sight distances and gradients. Provision of exclusive truck routes helps to streamline freight traffic in such a manner that the operational efficiency of other roads can also be improved. UCCs allow for greatly enhanced loading and routing efficiency in last-mile logistics efficiency. UCCs implementation can reduce freight travel by up to 50% in urban areas [ 37 ]. Urban logistics spaces (ULS) present a less intrusive way of achieving shipment consolidation than UCCs. Logistics operators and shippers typically welcome ULS compared to UCCs since the former are perceived to cause less disruption to lead times and delivery frequency. Smart lockers, or pack stations, are banks of lockers placed in activity centres such as transit stations, malls, grocery stores, to allow end consumers to collect their orders during their daily activity travel pattern, instead of taking delivery at home locations.

Achieving a balanced modal mix: There are two complementary targets in the roadmap for achieving a balanced modal mix in a country like India where rail freight is having a suboptimal share. One is to look at potential solutions that can foster a modal shift towards rail transport and the other is to facilitate better intermodal transfer between road and rail [ 75 ]. The former category of solutions includes the following: (i) increasing rail network capacity, and (ii) resolving gaps in rail network connectivity. The latter category of solutions includes developing intermodal logistic parks in tandem with dedicated freight corridors, and/or promoting double-stack clearance (stack containers one above the other) of intermodal corridors.

Reducing inventory costs: Two major solutions exist for reducing inventory costs, a major component of total logistics costs. The first is to improve the quality of warehousing, and the second is to reorganize warehouses to optimal locations. As for the first solution, the quality of warehousing can be improved by investing on automation, cross-docking facilities and refrigeration systems.

Improving trucking efficiency and productivity: The most important solution to improve trucking efficiency is to ensure that the current highway network keeps in pace with growing freight demand. Another avenue is to standardize logistic practices (e.g. harmonization of pallet and truck standards) and inventory data (e.g. inventory management for better dispatching of trucks).

Technological Solutions

To enable logistics chains, reduce costs, and improve services for customers, freight systems need to be enriched in various technologies. Digitization, coupled with adequate technological support and targeted investment schemes, can integrate the supply chain from demand forecasting stage to shipment consolidation, truck routing and dispatch scheduling [ 76 ]. The potential solutions through these technological, digital and operational advancements can be explained on seven fronts: (i) developing more accurate demand forecasting models through enhanced inventory visibility, (ii) automation of warehouse processes, (iii) deploying inventory data insights in distribution network design to deal with demand volatility, (iv) implementation of just-in-time inventory systems and fostering lean ordering behaviour among establishments, (v) achieving efficiency in truck routing and dispatch through real-time information, (vi) implementing intelligent transport systems (ITS), such as weigh-in-motion systems, delivery space booking systems, and route planning systems, and (vii) promoting carrier collaboration and accomplishing higher levels of operational efficiency through “Internet of Things” applications. These technological solutions are increasingly explored by the new third-party logistics providers, freight forwarders, and trucking companies emerging in the Indian market. For instance, driver relay models are increasingly adopted to reduce the continuous driving time of truck drivers to less than a day, and in turn reduce the turnaround time on long-haul routes (eliminating the driver idling time in the prior operational models). Increased adoption of location tracking solutions and growing presence of fulfilment centres in Indian cities have been helping the emerging logistics companies to eliminate the inefficiencies in the traditional hub-and-spoke model of delivering parcels. By utilizing distributed delivery models (i.e. each arc in the network acting as a hub and a processing centre by itself), the delays in routing the shipments through a hub before reaching the spoke can be avoided with the help of technology. As a result, most of the emerging logistics companies are positioning themselves as supply chain enablers with their own in-house order management systems. The challenges faced by small fleet owners have also come to the focus of the emerging market players in the logistics space with a vast number of software-as-a-service (SAAS) companies working towards hassle-free truck bookings and real-time vehicle tracking. The ongoing efforts as a part of Government of India’s Gati-Shakti national master plan to develop a unified logistic interface platform (ULIP) are expected to further accelerate the efforts of trucking companies and SAAS providers to reduce the overall costs of logistics and time in India.

Policy Interventions

Policy interventions play a crucial role in translating the first two solution classes into action, both in terms of energy demand and economic consequences [ 77 ]. Government departments, such as the Ministry of Shipping and Logistics, can employ a wide-range of policy measures, ranging from taxation instruments (e.g. fuel taxes, excise taxes and tolls) to financial incentives (e.g. tax rebates for supporting greener modes, capital grants) and regulation orders (e.g. vehicle design, entry time, emission standards), as explained below.

Taxation: Apart from the typical taxes levied on petroleum products (24–25% by the central government and 20–25% by state governments), additional charges such as the ‘green surcharge’ (up to INR 2/litre, or US cents 2.6/litre at April 2022 exchange rates) exist in India, although they do not include diesel vehicles. Introducing such differential charges for trucks can favour a switch to alternate modes, such as electric trucks or rail and water. The political challenges of introducing a carbon tax in developing countries are well known [ 78 ] and require more coordinated efforts in the future to foster a nationwide change to low carbon logistics.

Financial incentives: The financial support provided by the government varies from initiatives such as off-hour deliveries to incentives for shifting to greener freight modes such as electric trucks. The extent of financial support depends on external factors such as (i) differences in service and infrastructure ownership, (ii) competition policy, (iii) nature of freight market, and (iv) regulations governing financial aid from governments. Incentives also include capital grants to develop rolling stock or vessels for intermodal transfer and terminal development. Depending on the contribution to achieving government-level goals of sustainability, many services and infrastructure provisions can avail discounted infrastructure payments, operating subsidies or revenue supporting grants.

Supply chain digitization: As discussed in the previous section, digitization of supply chains and enforcement strategies can improve trucking efficiency. For instance, weigh-in-motion (WIM) implementation helps to penalize shipments that are exceeding the allowable limits and helps to identify the defaulters in the freight system; this also allows for effective checkpost clearance since trucks do not need to stop for inspections. The introduction of the electronic way (e-way) bill under tax-reforms like GST has improved clearance times across various states in India.

Zoning for freight operations: Land-use planning needs to develop designated locations for intermodal facilities such as inland container terminals, which can reduce urban congestion and foster a shift towards smaller commercial vehicles [ 18 ]. For this purpose, premium city space may need to be made available for logistical development near significant freight generating areas [ 19 ]. Another important aspect of land-use planning is to encourage spatial clustering of manufacturing firms that can achieve economies of density, which can lower transport costs down and improve delivery efficiency.

Zoning for logistic sprawl: Due to increasing land values in city cores, logistic land uses tend to locate farther from the city centre [ 79 ]. This sprawl of logistic facilities increases daily truck kilometres travelled, as well as congestion on urban arterials. By developing an efficient zoning policy for reserving suitable land uses in city centres (e.g. creation of urban logistics spaces or ULS near major retailing chains), logistics sprawl can be reversed. By bringing ULS to city centres, urban residents can also benefit in terms of superior access to goods and services.

Low emission zones: Low emission zones (LEZ) are geographic areas that limit access to those vehicles meeting certain emission standards [ 80 ]. The purpose of LEZs is to restrict or put a price on the most polluting vehicles if they enter areas in close proximity to urban residents. LEZs are typically proposed in areas where air quality levels are hazardous to society.

Delivery vehicle restrictions: These are among the most common policy responses taken by public authorities when freight traffic is sharing the same right of way with passenger traffic [ 81 ]. Implementation of these restrictions without the provision of ULS or UCCs are found to have negatives impacts on the regional economy. Besides, these restrictions often turn counterproductive due to increased delivery activity using small vans and three-wheelers. In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, delivery vehicle restrictions have received increased attention due to the rising delivery activity in residential areas, largely driven by the emergence of grocery and food delivery companies. As the delivery start-ups are primarily focusing on faster deliveries and increased convenience for consumers, fulfilment/distribution centres are being deployed in the middle of dense urban neighbourhoods and delivery drivers are incentivized to achieve 10-min or 15-min delivery windows. The traffic safety concerns resulting from these delivery vehicles have thus been receiving notable coverage in the newspapers, underlining the requirement of data-driven delivery vehicle restrictions and centralized self-service delivery lockers as a mitigating solution.

Market-Driven Solutions

The final class of solution concepts is related to the market-driven changes that can be implemented in the freight transport sector. These solutions include three broad categories: (i) technological advances, (ii) crowd shipping on transit (COT) programs, and (ii) planning and cooperation initiatives, as explained below.

Electric and autonomous freight vehicles: A number of technological advances in the freight transport sector have been made in the field of vehicle technology [ 82 , 83 , 84 ]. These advances are increasing the fuel efficiency of trucks and reducing emissions through emission filters. Continuous improvements are being made with respect to noise reduction and safety hazards. Furthermore, electric trucks (ETs) and connected and autonomous trucks (CATs) are becoming more scalable and viable alternatives relative to diesel powered trucks [ 85 , 86 , 87 ]. Analysis of the passenger transport sector already shows that the policy push for e-vehicles will only reduce GHG emissions if the electricity generated to power these vehicles is produced in a clean manner, i.e. the electricity generation mix needs to have a large share of renewables [ 88 ]. Fostering the replacement of traditional truck fleets with ETs and CATs through incentive schemes and tax reductions will significantly reduce the negative externalities of freight transport. Autonomous delivery robots (ADRs) are another emerging technology in retail and are projected to be a crucial step towards low-carbon last-mile deliveries [ 89 ]. With various tests underway, researchers believe that ADRs could revolutionize the system and reduce delivery costs by 80% to 90%. Although the current state of autonomous delivery still faces substantial challenges, the capabilities of the technology are promising for a country like India, with a fragmented delivery system. There has also been conclusive evidence that autonomous delivery robots (ADRs) can bring carbon emissions down compared to traditional van deliveries, especially when the delivery areas are near to the depot [ 90 ]. The existing policy framework in India, however, does not allow testing of autonomous technology and significant research is required to assess the implementation challenges in enabling CATs, ETs, and ADRs in India. Recent policy initiatives by the Indian government, such as ‘Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of Hybrid and Electric Vehicles’ (FAME), are a valuable step towards fostering technology advancements in freight transport.

Crowdshipping on transit: Crowdshipping on transit (COT) is a concept that incorporates the underutilized passenger transport mode capacity and related infrastructure to cover the last mile and deliver freight packages [ 91 ]. Packages are delivered with the help of commuters and other trip makers, who drop the packages off at designated places on their way, for the packages to then be picked up by another trip maker and delivered to the customer at the final destination. While large-scale formal crowdshipping programmes have been missing in Indian cities, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has put a sudden spotlight on introducing COT for enhancing non-ticket revenue of transit systems [ 92 ]. For instance, the public transit agency in Kerala, a Southern state in India, has recently initiated COT programs for parcel service in an attempt to overcome the fall in revenue following the pandemic-induced lockdowns and heightened risk perceptions [ 93 ]. Further research is required to scale up COT programs with the required infrastructure and operational efficiency for last-mile delivery.

Planning and cooperation initiatives: Business establishments can achieve higher logistic performance by cooperating with other stakeholders in the freight system, utilizing resources more efficiently [ 94 ]. This cooperation can either be horizontal (between same types of establishments active in the same stage of supply chain, such as carriers) or vertical (between different establishments positioned upstream and downstream of a supply chain, such as shippers and carriers). Despite the potential benefits of collaboration among logistics service providers, there is little effective collaboration in practice. In the era of the sharing economy, logistics collaborations have great potential in a country like India towards on-demand logistics, freight consolidation, facility sharing, and warehousing.

Conclusions

This paper has reviewed Indian freight transport research and policies in terms of logistic performance and solution approach for mitigating externalities. What emerges from the discussion is that freight transport is growing substantially in India, mainly due to its growing economy. However, like in Europe and the USA, the share of road transport seems too high, especially bearing in mind the higher negative externalities that road freight causes relative to its main competitor, rail freight. Decreasing this share is not easy because of the fragmentation of receivers and carriers in India. The penetration of the Internet has also triggered, like in most developed and many developing countries, an increase in B2CF, which only increases air pollutant and GHG emissions, and congestion. To make matters worse, some of the policies intended to reduce the externalities from road freight in India are proving counterproductive. Restricting areas or hours of freight deliveries, or banning big trucks, has increased, rather than decreased some externalities. The response has often been to fragment deliveries even further by, for example, using smaller vehicles and making more trips, or delivering during the night when time restrictions do not apply.

A portfolio of solution concepts to overcome the inefficiencies has also been presented. Although there is no one solution that will solve all the problems discussed, the following policy interventions have the potential to make freight more efficient in India and reduce emissions of air pollutants and GHG. Long-term planning and significant investment in infrastructure, including parking and loading bays, exclusive truck routes, consolidation centres, urban logistics spaces and pack stations, increasing road and rail network quality and capacity, could go some way towards integrating road and rail freight and reducing traffic congestion. Short-term planning to reduce the impact of freight transport within the existing expanse of transport infrastructure, including the development of intermodal logistic parks in tandem with dedicated freight corridors, and the promotion of double-stack clearance (stack containers one above the other) of intermodal corridors, would also help to increase the efficiency of the freight transport system in India. Additional interventions could entail developing more accurate demand forecasting models, automating warehouse processes, deploying inventory data insights in distribution network design to deal with demand volatility, implementing just-in-time inventory systems and fostering lean ordering behaviour among establishments, achieving efficiency in truck routing and dispatching through real-time information, implementing intelligent transport systems (ITS), delivering space booking systems, and route planning systems, and promoting electric delivery trucks.

The coordination and implementation of these actions are likely to require financial and time resources, and to encounter some degree of stakeholder backlash. This review has outlined the progress in freight research related to India and provided a framework of solution concepts. India is in a position to leapfrog and make important advances in policy implementation and doing so will increase the efficiency of freight transport, with consequent positive impacts on the economy and the environment.

Data Availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from Prasanta Sahu ( [email protected] ) upon reasonable request.

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Funding was provided by the Research Initiation Grant (RIG Head 06/03/302), Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS) Pilani, Hyderabad, India.

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Sahu, P.K., Pani, A. & Santos, G. Freight Traffic Impacts and Logistics Inefficiencies in India: Policy Interventions and Solution Concepts for Sustainable City Logistics. Transp. in Dev. Econ. 8 , 31 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40890-022-00161-8

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Research in defense logistics: where are we and where are we going?

Journal of Defense Analytics and Logistics

ISSN : 2399-6439

Article publication date: 15 January 2020

Issue publication date: 18 June 2020

The purpose of this paper is to provide insight on high-interest areas of research in defense-related logistics and supply chain management and opportunities for advancing theory and practice in this domain.

Design/methodology/approach

A panel of experts provided their insight to several questions oriented toward examining research opportunities and gaps in defense logistics research at the 2018 Academic Research Symposium of the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals annual conference on September 30, 2018.

Three overarching themes emerged from the panel discussion for advancing theory and practice in defense logistics and supply chain management, which are developing a central repository, creating publication opportunities and integrating research practice and knowledge with the greater academic community.

Originality/value

Logistics and supply chain research is critical for advancing knowledge and practice in the military, as well as industrial settings. The intention in this manuscript is to provide scholars and practitioners in both settings greater awareness and potential avenues for developing synergies and processes for advancing logistics and supply chain research.

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Zsidisin, G.A. , Bresler, A. , Hazen, B. , Snider, K.F. and Wilkerson, T.H. (2020), "Research in defense logistics: where are we and where are we going?", Journal of Defense Analytics and Logistics , Vol. 4 No. 1, pp. 3-17. https://doi.org/10.1108/JDAL-07-2019-0012

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Introduction

There has been exponential growth in the interest, practice and research associated with logistics and supply chain management (L/SCM) in the past quarter-century. However, although much of the initial interest and research in L/SCM (using the current vernacular) emerged in defense logistics, the great majority of published research is now done at civilian universities investigating supply chain practices in industry and business. Further, it appears there is minimal integration of the literature streams, at least in terms of defense-oriented research being published in established supply chain and logistics journals. This can be due to a host of reasons, such as a lack of reviewers and editors familiar with the impact and nuances of defense logistics problems or processes, bias toward commercial supply chains, lack of readership interest and potential to be “highly cited,” published research in both the military and traditional academic communities not being centralized or easy to access, the propensity of government to restrict or hinder dissemination of defense research, the perception that military and commercial functions and practices are not comparable or translatable, the interdisciplinary nature of military logistics, and being viewed as a field of practice and not theory [see, for example, Shaffer and Snider (2014) , pp. 477-479].

The purpose of this paper is to provide insight on high-interest areas of research in defense-related supply chain management and logistics and opportunities for advancing theory and practice in this domain. The genesis of this manuscript comes from the 2018 Academic Research Symposium at the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals Conference, held on September 30, 2018, in Nashville, TN. During the conference, a panel session was held, titled “Research Streams in Defense Logistics.” The panelists (Amanda Bresler, Ben Hazen, Keith Snider and Taylor Wilkerson) come from a diverse background of military logistics research experience and expertise, as highlighted from the answers to the first question and summarized in their bios.

The next section of this paper will provide individual panelist responses from each of the questions asked during the panel session. This is followed by a discussion of themes emerging from the panel of experts. Conclusions are then provided.

Panel session questions and responses

Briefly describe your activities and expertise in military logistics/supply chain management research.

Amanda Bresler: My expertise in military logistics/supply chain management stems in part from my role as Chief Strategy Officer at PW Communications, a firm with more than 22 years of experience supporting federal and commercial clients – including many of the world’s largest Department of Defense (DoD) contractors; and in part from extensive research I undertook in 2018, evaluating the efficacy of DoD-backed innovation programs as a means of enhancing the adoption of new technologies force-wide. It became apparent to me through my research that the DoD’s innovation challenges are, in large part, logistics and supply chain management challenges. Specifically, my research evaluated the distribution of more than 1.29 million DoD contract awards over seven years, across a data set of more than 8,000 recipients of DoD-sponsored Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Rapid Innovation Fund (RIF) awards. The analyses sought to determine how program participants performed in the broader defense market, in the years following their innovation program award. The research results produced several critical findings, including the fact that the majority of small, innovative companies that participate in DoD-backed innovation programs achieve no meaningful growth in their direct DoD business after program completion; and participants’ capabilities rarely diffuse to DoD stakeholders outside of their initial branch sponsor. To better understand the reasons for these issues, I conducted qualitative research in the form of surveys and interviews of individuals from three stakeholder groups: participants in DoD-backed innovation programs; program managers from DoD-backed innovation programs; and general members of the DoD community. Based on these research findings, I make a series of recommendations for how to improve innovation programs to enable the military to better leverage its broad “innovation portfolio,” and to improve the DoD’s ability to identify, engage and retain the best and brightest innovative suppliers.

One of my primary research recommendations argues for the creation of a centralized repository of information about the companies that participate in DoD-backed innovation programs so that DoD stakeholders can more easily access this information and engage with mission-tested, innovative suppliers. I used my research to promote important policy changes with leaders from Capitol Hill and across the DoD, and in the process, I have gained an even greater understanding of the DoD’s current supply chain and logistics environment.

Ben Hazen: I served 20 years in the Air Force in both enlisted and officer roles. As a military member, I worked many L/SCM – related jobs both deployed and in the States. I also served as an Associate Professor of Logistics and Supply Chain Management at the Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT), which is the graduate school for the Air Force, conferring masters and doctorate degrees in L/SCM.

I am the current editor of International Journal of Physical Distribution and Logistics Management , a past-editor of International Journal of Logistics Management , and a founding co-editor of Journal of Defense Analytics and Logistics. As a researcher, advisor, reviewer and editor I have served a role in the writing, advising and editing of well over a thousand L/SCM research studies across topics germane to defense, government, commercial and non-profit interests.

Outside of defense, SCM is defined by the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals ( CSCMP, 2019 ) as:

[…] the planning and management of all activities involved in sourcing and procurement, conversion, and all logistics management activities. Importantly, it also includes coordination and collaboration with channel partners, which can be suppliers, intermediaries, third party service providers, and customers. In essence, supply chain management integrates supply and demand management within and across companies.

In short, L/SCM is the function of an organization that plans and manages the transformation of inputs (resources, tax-payer dollars, labor) into outputs (delivery and sustainment of final products and capabilities to the end-user). Interestingly, this definition is very similar to the definition of defense acquisition as noted by Dr. Snider, below. I feel that one of the shortcomings in the extant defense L/SCM knowledge base is the preponderance of overlapping and ill-defined terms that make it difficult to discuss major issues across commands, services, and potential partners outside the gate.

Keith Snider: My teaching and research interest areas are in defense acquisition, a specialized area of military supply and logistics.[ 1 ] I teach courses in defense acquisition in the Graduate School of Defense Management at the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA. Before joining the NPS faculty, I served for twenty years in the US Army and several of those years in the management of Army defense acquisition programs. I also served as Principal Investigator for the NPS Acquisition Research Program (described below) for 15 years.

In the defense context, acquisition is defined as:

The conceptualization, initiation, design, development, test, contracting, production, deployment, logistics support, modification, and disposal of weapons and other systems, supplies, or services (including construction) to satisfy [Department of Defense][ 2 ] needs, intended for use in, or in support of, military missions ( Defense Acquisition University, 2012 ).

This definition suggests aspects of rationality in acquisition; that is, it translates, through the application of resources, stated needs and requirements into products and services for national defense. Further, it depicts a “birth-to-death” life-cycle beginning with need determination, design, development, production, sustainment and disposal. Finally, it reflects a variety of functions necessary to accomplish these activities, including engineering, testing, production, contracting, logistics[ 3 ] and, importantly, project management as an integrating function.

How is military logistics/supply chain management research similar to that of research focused on private industry? Different? Why ?

Amanda Bresler: Military logistics/supply chain management research differs from research focused on private industry in several ways. First, because the government is required to report spending and contracting information, there are vast publicly available data sets with which to conduct military-related research. By comparison, in the private sector, it can be challenging and costly to acquire large data sets. However, both military logistics/supply chain management research and research focused on private industry have the potential to influence policy changes – for military, policy-making stakeholders may be DoD leadership or elected officials; for the private sector, those stakeholders may be board members, investors and/or management. Both categories of research have the potential to influence investment decisions as well – for the private sector, research can demonstrate to a company that it may need to invest in new technologies, retrain its workforce, pivot its marketing strategy, etc. For military logistics research, as my 2018 research demonstrated, the research can support efforts to advocate for investments in new processes and systems.

Ben Hazen: At the end of the day, L/SCM processes, practices and principles are very much similar whether we are talking defense applications or any other application. While the desired outcomes can differ (lowest cost vs most “mission effective”), the mechanisms to achieve “success” are very much the same.

I have heard people outside of the military context comment about how processes in military logistics cannot possibly generalize to the private sector. I have also heard military leaders balk at the idea of bringing in private sector best practices to the military paradigm because the military is “too different.” I believe both of these perceptions constitute dangerous fallacies. Context is always a consideration – but that does not mean that what can be learned in one area is irrelevant in the other. Although differences do indeed exist (as explained further below), the problems and solutions are very much alike. The sooner we can realize this, the better for both communities.

Private discretion vs public authority – Private industry has great discretion in dealing with customers and clients, while relationships between citizens and governments are subject to legal, regulatory and coercive structures.

Profit vs public value – Private industry pursues bottom-line profitability as a generally accepted performance measure, but there is no similarly agreed-upon measure in the public sector by which to measure success.

Political and organizational constraints – In the public sector, leadership and oversight by elected officials inevitably inject political considerations into agency management, thereby shaping and constraining performance. Further, public agencies must provide some essential services when private firms are unwilling or unable to do so. Finally, due to political vagaries, public agencies and their programs may have duplicative or incompatible objectives. Such challenges are much smaller in private firms that have a common goal of profitability.

Taylor Wilkerson: Across the projects I have worked on, I have found a number of similarities between military and private industry supply chain research. The military wrestles with many of the same problems that vex industry: evaluation and adoption of new technologies, continuously improving efficiency and effectiveness of logistics processes, reducing risk in an ever-increasingly complex logistics environment and sustaining a highly skilled supply chain workforce. While DoD has some unique constraints due to federal and international laws and regulations, many of the fundamental research questions are the same, and, indeed, many private industry research findings can easily be adapted to a military environment.

However, there are DoD supply chain topics that are unique or have few analogies in the private sector. For example, DoD needs innovative solutions for deploying tens of thousands of people, their equipment, and their support staff into an austere, hostile environment in a matter of days. DoD then also needs to securely sustain deployed forces, including secure transportation pipelines, communications infrastructure, and support services (food, shelter, medical, etc.). These problems become complex variants of a traditional supply chain that require a different research approach for better understanding these caveats.

Another key difference in DoD supply chain research is the national security objectives of the DoD. Rather than optimizing around cost and profit, DoD is optimized around achieving a mission objective at the lowest cost. For DoD, the mission comes first, cost efficiency second. For the private sector, the tradeoffs between meeting a customer objective and cost savings can often be easily modeled since both have financial implications. Models that trade dollars against dollars have a common unit of measure; however, for DoD, the tradeoff is between achieving an objective (e.g. troops deployed in 10 days) against the cost. This makes models more complex and raises more subjective tradeoff questions. If you can make the supply chain cost 10 per cent less if the troops will be deployed in 11 days instead of 10, is that worth it? For this reason, researchers have to be careful when applying private sector economic or process optimization models to a DoD environment. The assumptions used to build a private sector model may not hold for a DoD supply chain environment.

Discuss the importance of funding organizations in financially supporting research in military logistics. What are some successes and challenges you have experienced in funded research?

Amanda Bresler: I work for a private sector company (PW Communications), and PW Communications funded my research. I know I speak for the Company’s CEO when I say that it was incredibly strategic and worthwhile to fund this research. The research allowed me to interact with our customers and stakeholders in a new and different way; it built tremendous brand equity; and it ultimately laid the foundation for us to establish a new, strategic line extension of the business that has the potential to deliver high-value results.

By supporting military logistics research, funding organizations enable researchers to identify and illuminate critical insights that had not initially factored into the research questions; in other words, funding research has the potential to make an impact more far-reaching than researchers or funding organizations initially anticipated. For instance, when I initiated my research I was interested in understanding if and how the DoD ensures that mission-tested innovations are diffused to as many relevant military stakeholders as possible. My research not only exposed critical findings related to that question but also led to several other important discoveries. For instance, my research exposed the fact that DoD-backed innovation programs such as Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR), SBIR and RIF are rampant with serial users: my data set contained 8261 SBIR and RIF award recipients, which equated to only 1,140 unique companies. Some SBIR participants won 100+ SBIRs over just 3-5 years. This finding begs concerns and establishes the need for significant follow-on research to better understand why a small number of companies win such a significant percentage of innovation program awards. It indicates that some companies may not possess innovative capabilities but in fact serve as clearing-houses, skilled in the process of bidding on an innovation program award. From a supply chain perspective, it indicates both a lack of transparency, as well as excessive friction (cost) in how innovation funds are distributed. By funding my research, PW Communications enabled me to uncover this important finding.

Additionally, the funding also allowed me to address my core research questions and draw significant conclusions. For instance, my research demonstrated that 48 per cent of companies that participate in a DoD-backed innovation program won 0-1 DoD contracts in the years following program completion. In other words, program participation leads to little or no growth in the direct contracting business for nearly half of the participants. Of the 1.29 million DoD contract awards in our data set, 13,449 of them were awarded to the 1,140 companies in our participant data set. However, another significant finding was the fact that only 40 participant companies – or a mere 3.5 per cent of the total participant company data set – were awarded 10,785 of these 13,449 contract awards. In other words, 3.5 per cent of companies won a striking 80 per cent of all contract awards. Upon further analysis, one finds that these 40 companies include names like 3 M, Raytheon, General Dynamics and other major tier-one contractors. Despite the fact that these programs market themselves as gateways for small businesses, these findings indicate that they have in some ways become another channel for legacy contractors to gain additional market share.

These and other findings not only establish a need to reform these programs but also elucidate in general the need for additional funding for military supply chain research. Supply chain issues rest at the center of the military’s broader struggle to identify, engage, retain and leverage innovative solutions providers. It is essential to fund research that agnostically evaluates the existing frameworks and processes that define DoD logistics, to improve them effectively.

Funding the research was a challenge, however, in that it diverted corporate resources (time and capital) away from our core business. It was also a new process for us and required us to learn the ins and outs of preparing and submitting academic research. Ultimately, the successes we have enjoyed as a result of the investment in funded research have far outweighed any challenges, and we hope to continue conducting impactful research moving forward.

Ben Hazen: Research and experience tell us that the military is no longer the driving force behind logistics innovation. This is troubling to me. The military has spent a great deal of time and treasure figuring out other warfighting best practices, while L/SCM has been on the back burner.

L/SCM is and always has been a significant battlespace dimension, whether we consider it so or not. We talk about cyber being the “fifth domain” of warfighting (after land, sea, air and space) and I completely agree. However, there is an additional domain of warfare that has existed for quite some time with a minimal contemporary treatment. The sixth domain (well, really the one enduring domain) is the supply chain. Most military professionals will concede to Napoleon Bonaparte’s assertion that an army marches on its stomach. Success also entails the employment best-in-class means to assert kinetic and non-kinetic effects, maneuver, and communicate in the battlespace. However, I fear that we often get too wrapped up in specific technologies (aircraft, intercontinental ballistic missiles, directed energy, etc.) and do not pay proper attention to how they are acquired, employed and sustained.

In today’s capitalist industry, we no longer have companies competing with companies but supply chains competing with supply chains. This is a global truth from the industry that we seem to be ignoring in the military. How are we competing on our supply chain? We could do better. We do not have many of our supply chains clearly mapped and we certainly do not have an office devoted to supply chain execution. How are we going to win in this new domain if we are not even able to describe what it is, and who is in charge of it?

The good news is that there are some brilliant folks across the total force US military who are making serious commitments to re-energize key L/SCM initiatives. The military is becoming more tech-savvy, too. For instance, the US military is employing advanced track and trace systems, creating best practices in three-dimensional printing, is well abreast of current uses and limitations of immersive technology, and has access to hands-down the best technologies in the world. The military is also making strides to ensure that we keep the number one resource, the tech-savvy Airman/Soldier/Sailor/Marine/Guardsman, properly trained and equipped. We are getting there, but still have room for improvement.

From this perspective, the military and those in the industry have the money and mechanisms in place to fund research on a multitude of supply chain problems. The problems range across the spectrum of science, to include social science issues such as, “who should be in charge of certain supply chain functions?” and “what is the best way to organize, train and equip tech-savvy personnel?” as well as decision science questions, such as “what is the most resilient supply network structure?” In the Air Force, we have folks at AFWERX, AF Research Labs, and others that have research resources ready to support the most pressing research needs. Unlike other fields like engineering, mastering supply chain problems does not take as much spend to get solid results. Supply chain management is just that – smart management from a systems perspective. We have the resources and access to the right brainpower – we just need the right structure in place to ask the right questions and implement the best solutions.

Keith Snider: Over the past half-century, the DoD has undertaken numerous research initiatives ( Table 1 ) to address the seemingly perennial problems in defense acquisition, particularly in large and expensive weapons programs [cost overruns, schedule delays, performance shortfalls; see, for example, GAO (2017) ]. However, these efforts have had little if any apparent effect on acquisition program outcomes.

There is something here of the proverbial “chicken and egg” dilemma: we need acquisition scholars to conduct research, but we do not yet have a sufficiently robust research environment that can produce many acquisition scholars. Such an environment must encompass a broad swath of civilian universities, rather than only a few government-run institutions such as AFIT and NPS ( Roback, 1975 ; Strayer and Lockwood, 1976 ). In addition, it depends on resources; research requires funding. At least two funding models exist for acquisition research – the program model and the entrepreneurial faculty model.

First, the program model. Due mainly to the initiatives of the late Jacques S. (Jack) Gansler, former Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, efforts have been made to attract civilian university scholars by offering grants for acquisition research. Gansler sponsored a short-lived grants program at NPS, and subsequently at Defense Acquisition University (DAU), in the late 1990s ( Nissen, Snider and Lewis, 2002 ). Finally, in 2005, he made a compelling argument for DoD to fund a “disciplined basic and applied for research program [as] the only proven way to develop new theories and then use them to solve specific, practical questions within [the defense acquisition] knowledge domain” ( Gansler and Lucyshyn, 2005 ). Gansler’s former office responded by establishing a grants program at NPS in 2007, and it continues today. NPS also conducts an annual Acquisition Research Symposium at which grant recipients and other acquisition researchers present their findings.

These efforts have produced mixed results. Gansler’s first sponsored program funded only 15 research projects until its termination due to budget cuts.

The on-going research program bears additional description and discussion. Each year, the program publishes an open solicitation, the objective of which is to attract outstanding researchers and scholars to investigate topics of interest to the defense acquisition community. It requests proposals for projects of a year’s duration with current cost ceilings of $125,000. An inter-organizational committee then reviews and prioritizes proposals for the award.

A large proportion of proposals from civilian schools came from only a few schools, with several from NPS and the other government-run institutions, which suggests that defense acquisition is a niche topic of interest in only a few institutions.

Proposals reflected a distinctly pragmatic, practitioner-oriented bias in the relative frequency of research proposal types ( Elder, 2005 ).

Proposals reflected a general paucity of data and scholarly literature in defense acquisition.

Second is the entrepreneurial model. Apart from the grants program, NPS faculty may actively seek to develop relationships with DoD sponsor-clients who have budgets to fund particular research projects. Because few clients are willing to fund projects that are not relevant to their needs, these projects often take the form of consulting efforts, with the final product not well-suited for publication in a scholarly journal or conference proceedings.

To compare and contrast these two models, the program model may provide a researcher with the freedom to propose and conduct research with publishable results, but with perhaps more uncertainty as to grant award. Once received, though, a grant award is an asset on a faculty member’s vitae. The entrepreneurial model may increase the likelihood of receiving funding, but with perhaps less freedom in selecting and conducting the project. The success of the program model also depends on having first, a “rainmaker” to ensure sufficient funding, and its continuity, to sustain the program, and second, dedicated staff to administer the program.

Taylor Wilkerson: When I was managing LMI’s Research Institute, we funded several military supply chain research projects. These projects were important because they address issues that could improve the effectiveness and efficiency of military operations in a way that private sector research cannot. In addition, DoD is often at the leading edge of technology adoption to solve difficult problems. By funding the research with DoD, sponsors may find willing research participants where the private sector is not ready to address bleeding-edge solutions.

Please describe the importance of publishing funded military logistics research findings. Are there conflicts of interests or challenges? Please explain.

Amanda Bresler: It is critically important to publish military research findings. Publishing the research lends credibility to the authors and lends credibility to policy recommendations and “arguments.” For instance, I knew anecdotally that DoD-backed innovation programs were not delivering the marketed/intended benefits to program participants. By using vast data sets to evaluate this problem at scale and by publishing my results, the points I had been arguing became unequivocally clear. In turn, my conversations with stakeholders and lawmakers need not focus on convincing them that the problem exists (the research already proves that); instead, I can focus on advocating for solutions. In short, by publishing research one allows he/she findings to drive actionable decisions and change. By publishing research, stakeholders across the military logistics and supply chain ecosystems are also able to share and learn best practices, enhancing overall literacy on these issues.

Publishing research findings does have risks, however. Specifically, published research may also include recommendations and ideas, and these ideas may lay the foundation for compelling business opportunities (particularly in a field like logistics). As a private company, by publishing research we run the risk of alerting our competition about business decisions we may be making and/or giving them the opportunity to execute on our ideas.

Ben Hazen: As scholars of military logistics and L/SCM, we need to share our collective thoughts. War is not a desirable experience, yet war has been an enduring human condition since the dawn of time. How might we improve L/SCM in such a way that maximizes effectiveness and minimizes suffering? How can militaries across the globe serve their warfighters better such that their experience in the field and in-garrison is socially sustainable; that is, how can the state sustain a healthy fighting force? Most importantly, how can a nation compete with its supply chain to become even more lethal, and ready for any emerging future situation?

Global supply chain management is an art and science. As such, we need to publish our advancements in the proper forum to share results and build the body of knowledge. This does not mean that everything should be open-access. Indeed, classification levels must be minded. However, there is a dearth of cumulated and manicured defense L/SCM knowledge available today. If we do not publish our research in some way (meaning that it is made available to stakeholders and of adequate rigor and relevance), how can we remain relevant as a field? Moreover, how can we compete against state rivals by leveraging our supply chain?

Keith Snider: Few scholarly outlets focus specifically on acquisition research. The DoD’s Defense Acquisition University (DAU) has since 1996 published a refereed journal, Acquisition Review Quarterly (now Defense Acquisition Research Journal ). The International Journal of Defense Acquisition Management operated between 2008 and 2014 as a joint effort of Cranfield University and the Naval Postgraduate School. Considering the “publish or perish” incentives faced by scholars, such a low number of acquisition journals indicates the dearth of acquisition scholars.

In 1997, faculty members at NPS issued a call for papers for a special issue of Acquisition Review Quarterly . The call targeted scholars in universities and other research institutions “to engage their interest in defense acquisition as a primary area of research” ( Nissen et al. , 1998 , p. 89). Response to the call was, however, “underwhelming” (p. 102), generating only one of the seven accepted articles. (The others were generated from personal solicitations from the special issue guest editors.) The guest editors concluded that, if there exists an untapped pool of potential defense acquisition researchers, there is “no effective formalized mechanism for bringing their work to bear” on acquisition matters (p. 103).

In 2013, NPS faculty members again attempted to organize a special journal issue on defense acquisition, this time for the Journal of Public Procurement . Again, the results were disappointing, with only six manuscripts submitted in response to the call. After peer review, only two manuscripts were accepted for publication. Since this was insufficient for a special issue, those two appeared in regular issues.

Defense acquisition research occasionally appears in other disciplinary outlets such as this journal, Project Management Journal , Journal of Contract Management , Journal of Purchasing and Supply Management and Journal of Public Procurement . Naturally, in such cases, editors and reviewers may insist that authors present their work in ways that will appeal to the disciplinary audience; however, this framing may limit the appeal to a broader acquisition audience.

Taylor Wilkerson: Like any other research effort, publishing allows the research team to expose their methods and findings to a wider academic community for review and validation. By gaining validation, the research team can provide more robust findings and solutions. However, DoD security concerns can prevent publication of the research in public journals. Articles that can expose DoD operations methods and data can receive the most scrutiny before publication. As it is rare to have data from multiple militaries, anonymizing data is typically not a solution to alleviate security concerns. Researchers must work with the DoD to get articles approved for publication, which can be a significant process.

Common themes and insights

Developing a central repository.

Creating publication opportunities.

Integrating research practice and knowledge with the greater academic community.

Developing a Central repository

One common theme identified by the panelists is a lack of a central repository or clearing house for published research studies in the DoD. Each of the military branches conducts extensive research on various logistics processes and technologies, such as through their respective schools including the NPS, AFIT, and the Army Logistics University (ALU). Beyond these schools, other organizations conduct research, such as RAND, MITRE, LMI, Deloitte and others listed by the panelists. However, many of these studies are not readily available for other scholars to access. Some of this is due, in part, to the need for ensuring knowledge of competitive advantages is kept within the state. The challenge is that there is a lot of redundancy in working toward answering research questions in which solutions have already been developed, as well as the inability to build and advance from the initial work of other scholars. One reason for this challenge concerns the amount of turnover in the DoD. Many individuals are in their respective positions for only three to four years, then move to another position. Further, there appear to be several “camps” with interest in acquisition and logistics research (i.e. engineering, political science and business), but no one central authority within the DoD. There may also be the limited distribution of published research findings due to security or confidentiality issues, as discussed earlier. The absence of a central repository can also be due, in part, from the challenges of publishing military logistics research.

Creating publication opportunities

As highlighted during the panel session, there are limited publication opportunities for DoD research. However, all panelists agreed that publishing research in refereed academic journals is critical for many reasons, such as for evaluating the research productivity of junior faculty, building the knowledge domain of L/SCM, and providing validity and justification for future research projects and grants. Part of the challenge in publishing DoD oriented research deals with the ability to translate findings for application beyond the military context. As discussed by all of the panel participants, there are similarities and differences between military and civilian L/SCM. At the operational level, there are many similarities – however, it is generally regarded that the desired outcomes and measurement of those outcomes differ. Many academic L/SCM journals seek to publish papers that address the “so what” of the research findings from a business perspective – usually implying how a specific practice or process improves business performance, which is often measured as some form of cost savings or contribution to profitability. Many research studies in the DoD do not have the same focus on improving the financial “bottom line,” and therefore, it can be difficult to translate for publishing in many academic journals.

A second challenge in publishing military logistics and supply chain research concerns the number of scholars and universities with this focus. Although the military has traditionally been the leader in creating new knowledge in L/SCM, the shift to civilian universities serving as the leader of this domain changed in the 1960s. This shift has limited the number of scholars, departments and universities who focus on defense acquisition, logistics, supply chain management and other related disciplines. Publishing challenges, therefore appear to stem from both the supply (number of scholars) and demand (by peer-reviewed academic journals) perspectives.

There are several other constraints limiting publication opportunities. These include challenges associated with using confidential and proprietary information, having additional bureaucratic “gatekeepers” limiting what is allowed to be published, and having a frequent turnover of military personnel who may have different viewpoints in supporting and funding research projects.

Although challenges exist in publishing DoD research in L/SCM, there are also opportunities. One significant advantage concerns databases. The DoD has vast records of historical data. With current advancements in data analytics, the DoD’s rich data sets provide great opportunities for scholars to delve into data and derive insights into supply chain practices and performance. Another opportunity for publishing DoD research in logistics and supply chain management concerns obtaining the resources necessary for conducting the research itself – specifically research grant opportunities. As discussed by all of the panel participants, there are many existing opportunities for obtaining research grants from various DoD sponsors. The challenge, as alluded to previously, is the lack of a central repository of grant providers and matching grant topics with those aligning with journal publication priorities. With the emergence of journals such as JDAL, and the continuation of other journals such as Naval Logistics Research, Military Operations Research and Journal of Public Procurement , we hope to see growth in publication opportunities. For this growth to occur, there also needs to be more assimilation with the greater logistics/supply chain academic community.

A final reason may be culture. Historically, the DoD has not fostered a culture of collaboration across services. As a result, despite the fact that stakeholders across all branches share many of the same capabilities gaps, they have not been sufficiently motivated to pursue cross-services collaboration.

Integrating research practice and knowledge with the greater academic community

Defining L/SCM in clear terms that encompass all contexts, within and outside of defense. Standardize usage of key terms that describe major components of L/SCM, to include: logistics management (differentiating from “Big L” military logistics), acquisitions, procurement, supply management, operations management, maintenance/repair/overhaul, distribution management, transportation management, sustainment, reverse logistics/reconstitution/redeployment of assets and others.

Creating an L/SCM center of excellence in the DoD that can study, manage and support timely and relevant L/SCM research and maintain DoD SCM knowledge.

Conferring with and encouraging civilian academic researchers to devote time to studying defense-related problems.

Engaging with senior military logistics leaders to discuss the use of academic research and publication to support their mission and develop solutions to their most pressing problems that can balance the value of the research against the need for operational security.

Encouraging the academic community to develop approaches for translating supply chain and logistics findings between commercial and military perspectives, and encouraging the academic community to consider both perspectives in publishing research.

Building collaborative forums between traditional academic communities and the military academic communities to support the identification and conduct of joint research efforts.

Promoting select articles to major news publications such as Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal to increase areas of general interest applicable to the private sector community, such as supply chain security, to add a unique context and perspective to traditional reporting.

Conclusions

L/SCM is a critical enabler of organization success, both in industrial, for-profit enterprises, as well as for military operations. Research is a critical mechanism for advancing knowledge in this field to continually improve practice. Although there is arguably a gap existing between civilian and military research, there is also an opportunity to leverage our knowledge and skills to advance our understanding of L/SCM in both settings. We hope this paper provides some direction in how we can successfully advance our discipline.

US Defense acquisition research initiatives

Source: Nissen et al. (1998 , p. 95)

Some distinguish acquisition from supply and logistics in that acquisition entails bringing military capabilities into service use, while supply and logistics involve maintaining and sustaining those capabilities once acquired.

While this section is written mainly from the US perspective, other countries view defense acquisition and its challenges similarly. See, for example, UK Ministry of Defense, 2008 .

This definition includes logistics as a function supporting acquisition; it is likely, however, that some logisticians see acquisition as a function supporting logistics.

CSCMP ( 2019 ), available at: https://cscmp.org/CSCMP/Educate/SCM_Definitions_and_Glossary_of_Terms/CSCMP/Educate/SCM_Definitions_and_Glossary_of_Terms.aspx?hkey=60879588-f65f-4ab5-8c4b-6878815ef921

Defense Acquisition University ( 2012 ), Glossary: Defense Acquisition Acronyms and Terms , 15th ed., Defense Acquisition University Press , Fort Belvoir, VA .

Elder , M. ( 2005 ), “ An eleven year retrospective of acquisition review journal ”, Master’s thesis, Air Force Institute of Technology , Wright-Patterson Air Force Base , OH .

Gansler , J.S. and Lucyshyn , W. ( 2005 ), A Strategy for Defense Acquisition Research , University of MD, School of Public Policy, Center for Public Policy and Private Enterprise , College Park, MD , p. 6 .

GAO ( 2017 ), High-Risk Series: Progress on Many High-Risk Areas, While Substantial Efforts Needed on Others , GAO-17-317, February 15 , Government Accountability Office , Washington, DC .

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Corresponding author

About the authors.

George A. Zsidisin, PhD (Arizona State University), CPSM, C.P.M., is the John W. Barriger III Professor of Supply Chain Management at the University of Missouri – St. Louis. His research focuses on how firms assess and manage supply disruptions and price volatility in their supply chains. Professor Zsidisin is co-Editor Emeritus of the Journal of Purchasing and Supply Management and sits on the Editorial Review Board for several academic supply chain journals, including the Journal of Defense Analytics and Logistics .

Amanda Bresler is Chief Strategy Officer for PW Communications, a woman-owned small business providing a full-service proposal, contract performance and business development support to federal and commercial clients globally. She leads the firm’s Future Capabilities Practice and is the President of SHELDON, a data-driven solution designed to facilitate the adoption of innovation force-wide. Amanda’s research examining Defense incubation programs has been published through the Naval Postgraduate School and the Journal of Defense Analytics and Logistics . Her research contributed directly to the drafting and passing of section 220 in the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act. She graduated Cum Laude from Georgetown University.

Ben Hazen (PhD, Auburn University) is a Research Professor in Logistikum at the University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria (Steyr). He enjoys doing research in the areas of supply chain sustainability, technology and innovation and is a retired US Air Force officer. As a consultant, he has contributed to helping organizations to understand, develop and implement technologies into their supply chains. Ben has published more than 65 peer-reviewed articles in top academic journals across a variety of disciplines. He serves as the Editor-in-Chief of International Journal of Physical Distribution and Logistics Management and Co-Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Defense Analytics and Logistics.

Keith F. Snider, PhD (Virginia Tech), is Dean and Professor of Public Administration and Management in the Graduate School of Defense Management at the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA. He graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point and served on active duty for 20 years, retiring at the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. His teaching and research interests lie in the areas of defense acquisition policy, defense project management, public organizations and public administration theory and history.

Taylor H. Wilkerson is a Principal Health Systems Engineer at the MITRE Corporation Mr Wilkerson has over 20 years of experience with public and private sector supply chain improvement and engineering. His experience includes strategy, process design, system architecture and requirements, risk management, sustainability, decision support, and innovation management. He has worked with several public sector clients including OSD, Army, DHA, USTRANSCOM, VA, CDC, HHS, DOS, USAID and USDA. Mr. Wilkerson is the president of the Council for Supply Chain Management Professionals Washington D.C. Roundtable and is a Senior Fellow with the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland. He has an MBA with a concentration in supply chain and information systems from the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland and a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Vanderbilt University.

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A Systematic Literature Review of Green and Sustainable Logistics: Bibliometric Analysis, Research Trend and Knowledge Taxonomy

1 College of Defense Engineering, Army Engineering University of PLA, Nanjing 210042, China; moc.361@1080iurner (R.R.); moc.361.piv@lz-nehC (Z.C.)

2 College of Civil Engineering, Nanjing Tech University, Nanjing 211816, China; moc.361@9708obnus

Jianjun Dong

3 Research Institute for National Defense Engineering of Academy of Military Science PLA China, Beijing 100850, China; moc.liamxof@xdgl-cyc

Zhilong Chen

Ever-growing globalization and industrialization put forward impending requirements for green and sustainable logistics (G&SL). Over the past decades, G&SL initiatives triggered worldwide deliberations, aiming at easing negative transport externalities and improving supply chain performance. This review-based paper attempts to offer a joint quantitative and qualitative understanding for the overall evolutionary trend, knowledge structure, and literature gaps of the G&SL research field. Employing the science mapping approach, a total of 306 major paper published from 1999 to 2019 were retrieved, elaborated on, and synthesized. Visualized statistics regarding publication years, journal allocation/co-citation, inter-country/institution collaboration, influential articles, co-occurred keywords, and time view clusters of research themes were analyzed bibliographically. On this basis, a total of 50 sub-branches of G&SL knowledge were classified and thematically discussed based on five alignments, namely (i) social-environmental-economic research, (ii) planning, policy and management, (iii) application and practice, (iv) technology, and (v) operations research. Finally, the current knowledge obstacles and the future research opportunities were suggested. The findings contribute to portray a systematic intellectual prospect for the state quo, hotspots, and academic frontiers of G&SL research. Moreover, it provides researchers and practitioners with heuristic thoughts to govern transportation ecology and logistics service quality.

1. Introduction

Sustainable development has inspired many green and sustainable logistics (G&SL) activities to reduce the negative effects of freight transportation [ 1 ] and improve positive environmental and social feedbacks. From long-haul heavy-duty logistics to intra-city distribution, road-based freight transportation systems generate tremendous negative externalities in daily operations [ 2 ], including pollutant emissions, congestion, traffic accidents, noise, visual interference, infrastructure failure and resource waste [ 3 ]. Moreover, these negative externalities, together with the disadvantages of logistics system itself (e.g., limited intelligentization, personnel dependence and vulnerability [ 4 ]), further lead to the downgrade of supply chain performance at both enterprise level and regional level. With the rapid growth of logistics demand, the damage grows exponentially, which will eventually bring irreversible impacts to the economy and the whole ecosystem [ 5 ].

The operation management of physical distribution is one of the most significant and challenging sub-issues of the macro supply chain management (SCM) [ 6 ], because it involves real-time scheduling and coordination of hundreds of thousands of packages and containerized goods under a dynamic logistics scenario [ 7 ]. G&SL is defined as the planning, control, management, and implementation of logistics system through the advanced logistics technologies and environmental management, aiming to reduce pollutant emissions and improve logistics efficiency [ 8 ]. G&SL is not only concerned with providing customers with green products or services [ 9 ], but also with the green and sustainability of the entire lifecycle of the logistics process [ 10 ]. Various green logistics modes, activities, and behaviors were proposed and gradually realized from government rules to technological innovations. For example, the construction of green logistics network [ 11 , 12 , 13 ], reverse logistics [ 14 ], emission control [ 15 ], electric freight vehicle [ 16 ], modal shift and multimodal transportation [ 17 ], energy efficiency [ 18 ], collaboration [ 19 , 20 ], outsourcing [ 21 , 22 ], etc. A wide range of topics related to G&SL yielded substantial academic results and considerable practical performance. However, G&SL is still in its infancy and is far from meeting the challenges posed by the complexity of internal cooperation and uncertainties of external markets [ 1 ].

Previous studies reviewed G&SL from different perspectives. By reviewing 115 papers, Zhang et al. [ 10 ] analyzed the combinatorial optimization problems and swarm intelligence technique applied in improving G&SL performance. Qaiser et al. [ 23 ] conducted some brief statistics on the bibliometric information of 40 papers on G&SL. Bask and Rajahonka [ 8 ] mainly reviewed the role of environmental sustainability in multimodal freight transport decision-making. Based on 56 papers, Mangiaracina et al. [ 24 ] summarized the impact of business-to-customer transportation process on the environment. Arvidsson et al. [ 25 ] reviewed the sustainable measures for improving urban distribution efficiency. Pourhejazy and Kwon [ 26 ] conducted a survey on 380 articles published from 2005–2016 and revealed the application status of operations research technique in the supply chain optimization. The literature of green SCM was classified and reviewed by Srivastava [ 4 ] from a reverse logistics angle. This work was further enriched by Fahimnia et al. [ 27 ], who investigated the bibliographical information and trend of a majority of green SCM research through article co-citation network and keywords co-occurrence network.

However, based on the time of publication and the number of papers contained, the existing studies are outdated and incomplete, unable to provide a comprehensive analysis of the booming G&SL research in the past two years. Also, it is more difficult to integrate the multitudinous research directions to build a complete knowledge structure for G&SL. Therefore, it is of great theoretical and practical significance to objectively and quantitatively investigate the overall progress of G&SL.

This study aims to conduct a comprehensive review of the global G&SL literature, so as to explore the state-of-the-art, hotspots and research trend, as well as to build the G&SL knowledge classification system. Specifically, first, tracking and analyzing the evolution of the G&SL research field from (i) publication year and journals; (ii) countries, regions, and organizations; (iii) influential documents; (iv) keywords clustering and research themes. Second, establishing the knowledge taxonomy based on the scientometric results. Third, identifying the research gaps and the future research opportunities.

The novelty of this study lies in two aspects. One is to integrate the science mapping approach into the systematic literature review process to visualize the relationships among the G&SL literature. Science mapping approach is composed of data mining and bibliographic analysis, which can minimize subjective arbitrariness and grasp useful information to facilitate in-depth thematic analysis. Another is that this study further extends the bibliography to illuminate the emerging knowledge branches, gaps, and agendas in G&SL research, which will contribute to the improvement of G&SL practice and research innovation. The findings are expected to provide researchers and practitioners with a panoramic description and in-depth understanding of G&SL research. Additionally, the proposed knowledge structure can also be used as a handbook-like tool to further collect, analyze, and expand knowledge in the G&SL field and to provide references for other innovative logistics initiatives.

The rest is organized as follows. In Section 2 , the outline of research method is introduced. Section 3 presents the results of the data collection and the results of five parts of scientometric analysis. Section 4 proposes the taxonomy of G&SL research based on the keywords clustering and discusses the knowledge branches in detail. The current research gaps and agenda are also identified. Section 5 summarizes the major findings and limitations.

2. Research Method

2.1. overview of review protocol.

This review-based study conducted a systematic investigation on the academic development of global G&SL research with the aids of science mapping. Science mapping is a quantitative analysis approach that uses mathematical statistics and visualization techniques to study bibliographic networks (e.g., academics, institutions, themes, keywords, and journals) in a specific field [ 28 ]. This approach has been widely applied in many academic fields, such as sustainable transportation [ 29 ], environment science [ 30 ], city logistics [ 31 ] and waste management [ 32 ] and can directly synthesize salient findings from the existing knowledge system.

Figure 1 illustrates the detailed research process, consisting of three steps.

The flowchart of reviewing G&SL literature.

In step 1, the statistics was obtained after a comprehensive retrieval from two electronic databases, Web of Science (WoS) core and Scopus. Two rounds of selection were then performed to refine, classify, and encode the documents. The year publication trend, journal allocation and the most cited articles were described.

Four scientometric tests were carried out in step 2, namely (i) Journal co-citation analysis : to identify the most cited journals and the research domains they belong to. This analysis helps to reveal the distribution of published journals and cited journals of the reviewed documents, so as to identify popular journals in G&SL research domain. (ii) Countries/organizations collaboration analysis : to visualize the collaborative research network of G&SL among countries and organizations, so that the readers can quickly understand the partnerships between major research communities and institutions around the world. (iii) Document co-citation analysis : to highlight the influential G&SL articles and the corresponding reference relationships. By analysis of the papers with high citation, the emerging trend of scholars’ research interest to G&SL is easier to grasp. (iv) Keywords co-occurrence analysis : to map out the co-occurred time zone of the hotspots G&SL keywords and cluster them into several research themes. Network analysis of co-occurred keywords is used to clarify the knowledge structure of G&SL as well as to present the research hotspots and potential research opportunities in the future.

In step 3, the hierarchical knowledge structure of G&SL was proposed for thematic discussion.

The text mining software VOSviewer was adopted for science mapping, combining with another software CiteSpace to portray the time view of the clustered keywords based on the same data. VOSviewer, developed by van Eck and Waltman [ 33 ], is a comprehensive bibliometric analysis tool based on Visualization of Similarities (VOS) technology, which has unique advantages in clustering fragmented knowledge from different domains according to their similarity and relatedness. In the visualized networks, a node signifies a particular bibliographic item, such as organization, country, keyword or reference, etc. The node size represents the counting of the evaluated item namely citation or occurrence. Link denotes the co-citation, co-occurrence or collaboration relationship. The metric, total link strength (TLS), is outputted automatically by the software to reflect the correlation degree between any two nodes in the generated networks. A higher value of TLS, the higher importance and centrality of the item has [ 31 ]. Nodes with a high similarity were clustered together and distinguished by colors with other clusters, while the nodes with low similarity should be separated as far as possible. The similarity matrix can be calculated by Formula (1), where c ij is the co-occurred or co-cited times of item i and item j , W i and W j denote the node sizes of item i and item j respectively [ 33 ]. The stopping criterion of VOSviewer mapping is the minimal sum of weighted Euclidean distances of all items in each cluster [ 34 ], which can be expressed by Formula (2), where x i and x j are the positions of the nodes.

For a detailed operation manual of bibliographical experiments using science mapping approach, readers are advised to refer Jin et al. [ 28 ] and Hu et al. [ 31 ].

2.2. Literature Retrieval and Selection

The advanced retrieval function in Scopus and WoS core collection database was used to retrieve the G&SL related papers published during 1999 to August 2019 (see Table 1 ). To ensure the quality of the literature, the document types were restricted to research articles, while other types such as the conference proceeding, book chapter, letter or editorial material were excluded. The preliminary search yielded 1160 records. These records were imported into EndNote software for the first-round inspection to filter out duplicates and unqualified records in forms (e.g., article length and integrity). Additionally, those completely and partially irrelevant studies were removed. For example, an article entitled “Using logistics regression to analyze the sustainable procurement performance of large supply chain enterprises” was not the desired result. A total of 397 records were left after the first-round inspection. Then, the second-round selection was carried out by carefully reading the abstract of each document. The inclusion and exclusion criteria for this round focused on whether the document was consistent with the research topic, i.e., with green logistics initiatives, practices. and other G&SL innovations, rather than broader research, such as production, manufacturing or urban transportation. Unless it has a strong relation with G&SL. In particular, the following topics were excluded: (i) green design on the specialized logistics technology e.g., biomass and biofuel; (ii) business competition and (iii) offshoring and lean production. Finally, 91 records were removed, leaving 306 full-length articles in our review portfolio.

Results of literature retrieval and selection.

3. Scientometric Experiments and Analysis

3.1. chronological publication trend.

Figure 2 displays the number of papers published annually from 1999–2019 in the portfolio. Obviously, research on G&SL was virtually stagnant until 2009, and since 2010, it has increased significantly year by year. By 2018, a staggering 62 articles were searchable. The vigorous development of academic research indicates the expansion of the scope and branch of G&SL. Furthermore, from the publication number and the recent discussed topics of G&SL, it is evident that the public awareness, market acceptance, social demand and real-world practice of sustainable logistics measures are undergoing remarkable ascent.

Year profile of indexed documents.

3.2. Journal Allocation and Co-Citation Analysis

All 306 documents were found in 81 different journals. As shown in Figure 3 , the top 15 journals contributed 155 papers, accounting for 51% of the total. The impact factors of journals were also attached based on the Journal Citation Reports (2018). Sustainability ranks first (35, 11.4%), followed by Journal of Cleaner Production (24, 7.8%), Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment (17, 5.6%) and International Journal of Production Economics (13, 4.2%). Among the top 15 journals, eight are from UK, four from The Netherlands, two from Switzerland, and one from Germany. The papers are mainly distributed in the three academic fields of environment, traffic engineering and operations management, but they obviously account for a larger proportion in the environmental science and sustainable field, which is in line with the connotation of G&SL.

Rank of journals in G&SL publication number.

As shown in Figure 4 , among the 12,408 references (corresponding to 2349 different journals), a network of 46 items and 1025 links was formed by identifying the journals that had been cited more than 50 times. In general, the journals that influenced G&SL research are concentrated in three interrelated clusters. First is the operations research (OR), such as European Journal of Operational Research (TLS = 13,076, citation = 494), International Journal of Production Research (TLS = 252, citation = 8260), Expert Systems with Applications (TLS = 4748, citation = 153), Omega (TLS = 5139, citation = 150) and Computers & Operations Research (TLS = 4234, citation = 137), which can offer quantitative methods for the decision-making and optimization issues related to G&SL. The second cluster is transportation research (TR), such as Transportation Research Part A (TLS = 2057, citation = 103), Part D (TLS = 3883, citation = 176), Part E (TLS = 7576, citation = 260), and Journal of Transport Geography (TLS = 2089, citation = 91), which accumulates enormous knowledge towards transportation planning, technology and operations that can enlighten G&SL research from real-life transport demand and practice. The third cluster, including Supply Chain Management (TLS = 6546, citation = 232), International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management (TLS = 6357, citation = 235) and Journal of Business Logistics (TLS = 2837, citation = 96), etc., reveals that a large amount of G&SL research was conducted based on the research foundation of logistics and supply chain management (SCM). Among all the publications, Journal of Cleaner Production (TLS = 13,799, citation = 555) and International Journal of Production Economics (TLS = 13,903, citation = 495) are the two most co-cited journals. They often act as hubs, integrating the results of OR, TR and SCM with social, environment or economic implications to provide cross-domain knowledge crucial to the diverse development of G&SL.

Mapping of the journals co-cited.

3.3. Countries/Organizations Collaboration Analysis

Table 2 lists the countries or regions that are actively studying G&SL, showing six measurements, including number of publications (NP), TLS, average citation year, total citations, average citation per country/region, and average normalized citation. The average normalized citation was calculated by dividing the total number of citations by the average number of citations published per year [ 34 ]. Figure 5 displays the collaboration network among countries and regions. The minimum number of documents and citations for a country was set at 5 and 30 respectively. Finally, a map with 25 items and 58 links was generated.

Mapping of countries/regions contribute to G&SL research.

Summaries of countries/regions active in G&LS research.

According to Table 2 , G&SL research is widely distributed, especially in Europe, Asia, and North America, which is a field of worldwide concern. Mainland China has the most publications, but the United States has the highest total citation. Other countries/regions such as Italy, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan present a lower number of publications; however, they keep significant figures of average normalized citation which can strongly express their high influence. Besides, most of the documents contributed by these countries/regions were published in the last three years, which means they are playing an increasingly active role in promoting G&SL.

Two evidence can be observed from Figure 5 . First, based on a partnership, the global G&SL research is divided into four communities. Therein, two communities are leaded by European counties, such as UK, Spain, The Netherlands, and Italy, while the other two communities are “Mainland China-Hong Kong-Singapore” and “United States-India-Australia-Portugal-Taiwan”, dominated by China and USA, respectively.

Second, the international collaboration is not significant. Taking mainland China for instance, about 70 percent of 49 publications are completed entirely by domestic institutions. The Swedish publications do not have any co-authors from other countries or regions. This phenomenon may be due to the large differences in the background and model of G&SL development in different countries [ 35 ]. Moreover, the knowledge gap caused by the wide extension of G&SL and the scattered knowledge structure make the research still focus on the respective fields of researchers, such as sustainable development [ 36 ], environment governance [ 37 ] and transportation planning [ 38 ]. Therefore, at present, the cooperation between academic institutions of different backgrounds has not been widely carried out.

Among the 402 organizations that contributed to G&SL research, those with more than five documents and over 30 citations were built into a network of 22 items and 22 links, as shown in Figure 6 . None of the organizations published more than 10 papers (3% of 306) and the studies were relatively independent. Therefore, it can be argued that no organization has yet been able to lead G&SL research so far. However, some of the institutions located in Asia Pacific and Europe have a higher reputation in G&SL due to higher citations, including the Hong Kong Polytechnic university (Hong Kong, 388 citations), Wageningen University (The Netherlands, 370 citations), Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Greece, 324 citations), National Chiao Tung University (Taiwan, 330 citations), Iowa State University (USA, 206 citations), University California Berkeley (USA, 160 citations) and Nanyang Technological University (Singapore, 137 citations). In addition, Figure 6 also shows insufficient collaborative research across organizations.

Mapping of global collaboration network among organizations.

3.4. Influential Research Highlight

Through the document co-citation test of the portfolio, the most influential G&SL publications in the past two decades were analyzed and the co-citation network was constructed. In VOSviewer, the minimum number of citations was set to 30 to build a co-cited visual network map of 83 items and 350, as shown in Figure 7 . The nodes in the map denote the documents that were identified by the first author name and the publication year. The colors of the nodes and the links represent the time of publication and the time of two documents that are co-cited, respectively. The co-occurrence of the literature shows an obvious type of “local concentration and overall dispersion”, indicating that some G&SL studies were widely recognized and produced some common ideas and results. Most papers with high citation appeared around 2010, which was a landmark year for G&SL research. The co-citation time series indicate that G&SL knowledge spreads faster and faster.

Mapping of the influential documents and their co-citation relationship.

The top 15 most cited papers are presented in Table 3 , showing their publication year, title, TLS, citation counts and topics. The most cited study was by Dekker et al. [ 39 ], one of the first methodological studies to link the operations research knowledge (such as design, planning, and control) to the field of green logistics. The second is Sheu et al. [ 40 ], whose main contribution is to propose a modeling technique for sustainable logistics operations and management decisions to maximize supply chain profits. These were followed by papers by Lai and Wong [ 41 ] and Ubeda et al. [ 42 ], which focused on using the scenario-based approaches, such as the questionnaire and case study, to evaluate the environmental performance of green logistics practices. The main topics of other highlighted documents involve: (i) management insights from industrial practices [ 43 , 44 ]; (ii) multi-criteria evaluation system for green logistics (e.g., policy [ 45 ], environment [ 46 ], and transportation planning [ 47 ]); (iii) network facilities design and optimization [ 48 , 49 ]; (iv) reverse logistics [ 50 , 51 ]; and (v) enterprise responsibility and third-party logistics [ 52 ].

List of publications with the highest impact in G&SL.

3.5. Keywords Co-Occurrence Analysis

The keywords co-occurrence analysis was conducted to describe the internal composition and structure of G&SL and to reveal the frontiers [ 31 ]. The options “All Keywords” and “Full Counting” in VOSviewer analysis were checked to obtain a holistic intellectual landscape of G&SL research. Before the scientometric test, the keywords, such as “third-party logistics providers” versus “3PL”, “transport” versus “transportation”, which are necessary due to differences in expression, were manually simplified on the original data file. The minimum occurrences of each keyword was set to 4, forming a network of 112 nodes representing keywords (1455 keywords in all documents) and 2067 links, as shown in Figure 8 .

Mapping of co-occurred keywords.

Figure 8 displays the mainstream of research keywords in G&SL and their co-occurrence relationships. Divide these keywords into four clusters and distinguish them with different colors. Therein, Cluster #1 contains 18 items focusing on the practice and management of logistics sustainability (e.g., collaboration, case study and intermodal transportation), while Cluster #2 covers 25 items, concentrating on the environmental issues of freight transport, such as carbon emission, energy consumption and lifecycle assessment. Cluster #3 (34 items) and Cluster #4 (34 items) emphasize on the “model, planning and optimization” as well as the “supply chain performance, development strategy and competitiveness”, respectively.

Table 4 shows the detailed information of the significant keywords. The top 10 most frequently studied and highly connected terms are sustainability (Feq. = 80, TSL = 547), green supply chain (Feq. = 68, TSL = 629), management (Feq. = 58, TSL = 411), model (Feq. = 55, TSL = 394), green logistics (Feq. = 48, TSL = 325), performance (Feq. = 47, TSL = 367), logistics (Feq. = 46, TSL = 299), framework (Feq. = 43, TSL = 356), impact (Feq. = 41, TSL = 312) and reverse logistics (Feq. = 39, TSL = 323). These keywords play a critical role in forming G&SL research topics and connecting major branches of knowledge. According to the metric of average citations, the following keywords, including transportation, environmental sustainability, production, reverse logistics, and efficiency, aroused a lot of attention.

Summaries of significant keywords and theme clusters of G&SL research.

Keyword co-occurrence network is a static expression of a particular area that does not take into account changes over time in the manner that the terms are used [ 54 ]. Figure 9 shows a time zone view of keywords that occur more than eight from 1999 to 2019. Each term is arranged in chronological order to present the trend and interaction of keywords. Studies on management, model and green supply chains had been published extensively before 2005 and had been going for a long time, showing that these early topics are still the hotspots of current research. In contrast, articles related to collaboration, transportation planning, modal shift and stakeholder were published from 2015 to 2017, which are emerging themes discussed frequently in recent years and may become the hotspots of future research. Additionally, a large proportion of the keywords were proposed between 2007 and 2015, indicating that G&SL research was greatly enriched during this period. Table 4 presents the time span of all highlighted keywords.

A time zone view of clustered research themes: 1999-2019.

4. Discussion

4.1. knowledge taxonomy of current research.

Through the aforementioned analysis, the research progress, evolutionary trend, and hot-discussed topics of global G&SL are clarified. However, the generic scientometric results cannot accurately reflect the explicit division of the multifarious knowledge of a domain [ 31 ]. Based on the clustering analysis of high-frequency keywords, a comprehensive taxonomy of G&SL knowledge from 1999 to 2019 was further proposed, and each separated branch was thematically discussed in-depth subsequently. Topics with similar attributes were integrated into different categories of themes and manually renamed to make the taxonomy more compact and easy to understand. Figure 10 demonstrates the mind mapping of G&SL research themes, where a total of 5 alignments and 50 sub-branches are assembled. The number of representative articles of each theme was also attached.

The knowledge taxonomy of G&SL themes.

4.1.1. Evaluation on the Social, Environmental and Economic Impacts of G&SL Initiatives

Nearly a quarter of the literature (71 out of 306 papers) focused on evaluating and quantifying how the potential green logistics initiatives improve the “triple bottom line” (i.e., social, environmental and economic performance, SEE) of existing freight activities. The subjects of these studies were basically originated from four aspects: carbon emission, energy consumption, social sustainability, and external cost-and-benefit. Mattila and Antikainen [ 15 ] provided a backcasting method for the long-term prediction of greenhouse gas emissions and fossil fuel consumption in long-distance freight transport, considering the sustainable goals and policies developed by the EU governments. Similar research was conducted for assessing the U.S. scenario [ 46 ]. A questionnaire survey conducted by Makan and Heyns [ 55 ] found that the pressures from consumer, brand protection, top management, and cost-saving and revenue are the major drivers for freight organizations to implement the sustainable initiatives. Khan et al. [ 56 ] modeled the impact of G&SL performance on the countries’ economic development and macro-level social and environmental indicators. Papoutsis et al. [ 57 ] and Solomon et al. [ 58 ] both maintained that logistics sustainability is closely related to operational efficiency and social acceptance from an economic and environmental perspective. Through the expert scoring, Morana and Gonzalez-Feliu [ 59 ] identified the most prominent factors affecting the sustainability of urban logistics are monetary saving, services quality, and customers’ satisfaction rate (economic), pollution emissions and congestions (environmental), and the number of employment created/destroyed (social). Social and environmental activities play a more important role in promoting sustainable logistics than financial-economic activities [ 60 ]. Rashidi and Cullinane [ 61 ] found that the national logistics industry with high SEE index has the following features: (i) well-planned logistics network infrastructure; (ii) high quality of service operators; (iii) shipments tracing technology; and (iv) efficient timetable scheduling.

Another part of emphasis was given to SEE performance of G&SL based on logistics operations and business. Guo and Ma [ 62 ] evaluated the energy consumption and emission level under different logistics business modes, concluding that the third-party logistics provider and the joint distribution modes have obvious environmental advantages in developing green urban distribution. Wang et al. [ 63 ] found that green logistics performance would impose positive effects to the exporting countries in the international trade. Herold and Lee [ 64 ] investigated the carbon reports disclosed by some giant international logistics enterprises, e.g., UPS, FedX and DHL, and compared their sustainability-related strategies, namely legitimacy-seeking arguments versus energy and emission reduction. In addition, a variety of qualitative analysis measures, such as fuzzy multi-criteria evaluation modeling [ 65 ], data envelopment analysis [ 66 ], and analytic hierarchy processes [ 67 ] were also widely applied to illuminate the logic between SEE performance and G&SL.

Except for the three-dimensional evaluation system, some scholars also analyzed the critical success factors and barriers for G&SL initiative implementation from the SEE perspectives. For instance, Arslan and Sar [ 68 ] found that the managers’ intention towards green logistics initiatives is generally determined by the environmental attitude, perceived behavior control and subjective norm. Besides, government subsidizes [ 69 ] and internalization of externalities [ 70 , 71 ] were considered to be the effective models to reduce negative external cost in the logistics industry, thus promoting the greening process of the logistics market.

4.1.2. Planning, Policy and Management Research of G&SL

This knowledge branch focuses on two basic G&SL topics, (i) the planning, development, and policymaking from industrial level, and (ii) the collaboration strategy and management from project level. For the former, Lindholm and Blinge [ 2 ] indicated that the public support, stakeholder partnership, and excellent management skills are the most significant factors to achieve sustainable development of the logistics industry. The coordination among metropolitan economy, logistics infrastructure investment, and industrial chain upgrading is the essential foundation of G&SL [ 36 ]. Integrating freight activities into the general planning procedure or transport planning is also considered important for the implementation of G&SL. Shankar et al. [ 72 ] quantified the dynamic uncertainties and intrinsic sustainability risks of freight transport and stated that most of the risks were socially induced rather than financially driven. The risks of multimodal green logistics were analyzed by Kengpol and Tuammee [ 73 ]. A system dynamics simulation conducted by Sudarto et al. [ 74 ] revealed that the economic performance of G&SL is directly affected by freight policy, while environmental performance is indirectly affected. Klumpp [ 75 ] proposed two strategies to develop green logistics, namely encouraging public investment and imposing heavy taxes on carbon raw materials.

For the latter, the collaboration and game among logistics service providers (LSP), government, shippers, and enterprises are paid more attention. Commonly, a positive cooperation strategy of stakeholders will significantly improve the operational performance of G&SL [ 76 ] and even the entire supply chain [ 19 ]. Therein, the benefits brought by the collaboration between suppliers and customers [ 77 ] and LSPs-shippers [ 78 ] are particularly salient. The government plays a dominant role in the knowledge dissemination [ 79 ] and economic incentive of greenization [ 20 ], leading to the innovation of logistics technology. Moreover, the shippers’ willingness to pay for G&SL products [ 80 ], the exploitation of green logistics knowledge [ 81 ], as well as the gaps between green logistics demand and supply [ 82 ] also aroused research attention.

Furthermore, several novel business and operational modes of logistics aiming at improving the sustainability in transportation process were proposed, e.g., freight consolidation [ 83 ], smart logistics [ 22 ], and low emissions zones [ 84 ]. The most hotly debated topics are outsourcing and crowd shipping (CS). CS, proposed for the last-mile delivery problem, is a concept that means the parcels and passengers are co-transported along a passenger trip [ 85 ]. According to Ameknassi et al. [ 86 ], freight transportation, warehousing, and reverse logistics are the three major outsourced logistics activities. The outsourcing strategy has proven to be advantageous in reducing energy use, global warming, and supply chain risk, compared with common logistics operations [ 87 ].

4.1.3. Real-World Application Areas and Practices

Over the past decade, research on the G&SL practices were carried out over a broad range, including SCM, reverse logistics (RL), e-commerce, urban distribution, multimodal transport, and other dedicated logistics such as food [ 88 ] and manufacturing [ 89 ]. Much valuable experience and instructions can be obtained from real-world applications. For example, the unsustainability of the supply chain is largely due to the poor logistics practices in the downstream [ 90 ], which specifically refers to transport operation delay [ 91 ], poor communication [ 91 ] and the lack of effective management of carbon footprint [ 92 ]. A sustainable SCM is an effective measure to improve the competitiveness, financial and environmental performance of logistics enterprises. However, this is not absolute, Hazen et al. [ 93 ] believe that some green SCM practices might not necessarily lead to competitive advantage, but make users feel that they are getting low-quality products.

Reverse logistics is convincingly one of the most efficient solutions to reduce environmental pollution and waste of resources by capturing and recovering the values of the used products [ 94 ]. Legislation, social image, corporate citizenship, and market competence force enterprises to integrate RL into their supply chains [ 95 ]. In real-world application, improving RL sustainability and greening process is the primary goal to optimize the overall supply chain performance. Our review found that most green-related RL studies focused on the network design [ 96 ] and system planning [ 14 ]. Other topics are waste recycling management [ 97 ], benefits assessment [ 98 ], reverse operations outsourcing [ 99 ] and social responsibility [ 50 ].

The unsustainability of urban logistics makes it the most urgent goal of greening. Huge logistics demand, such as rapid business-to-business and business-to-customer logistics activities, make freight transportation in big cities face the dilemma of air pollution, poor accessibility, and livability [ 31 ]. The practice of integrating green logistics planning into smart cities construction has been carried out for a long time, especially in Europe, mainly including last-mile delivery [ 100 ], traffic management [ 101 ] and lean logistics [ 102 ].

Compared with G&SL in urban domain, the sustainability issues regarding inter-city or regional logistics are more emphasized on the intermodal application. The shift of road-based modal to other transportation system, such as rail and water has the potentials of ensuring environmental sustainability, flexibility, and cost reduction [ 17 ]. However, despite the encouragement by the government, the practice of intermodal transport is still in a preliminary stage due to the difficulties of infrastructure investment [ 103 ].

4.1.4. Emerging Technologies Proposed for G&SL Development

Developing advanced facilities and technologies is a sustainable and forward-looking solution to meet the challenge of freight transport. Many emerging logistics systems were proposed in recent years. Such as urban consolidation center [ 104 ], electric road system [ 105 ], intelligent transportation system [ 106 ] and packaging benchmarking system [ 107 ], etc. Meanwhile, some soft applied techniques, such as big data [ 108 ], internet of things [ 109 ] and cloud computing platform [ 110 ], have also been applied to logistics operations to support the sustainable development of the emerging systems.

Electric vehicles (EVs) technology, which has been widely applied in passenger transport, is also waving a revolution in the field of G&SL. Current research on freight EVs mostly focuses on energy efficiency [ 111 ], fleet optimization [ 16 ] and environmental benefits [ 112 ]. Simulation results from various cities show that EVs achieve extremely high benefits in carbon emission reduction, with over 80% relief rate tested by Giordano et al. [ 112 ].

For reducing the negative externalities such as traffic congestion and disturbance, another interesting concept, i.e., transferring the ground logistics process to underground space, namely the Underground Logistics System (ULS), has aroused increasing attention. ULS refers to using a group of hierarchical underground nodes, pipelines, and tunnels to distribute cargo flows in and between cities with 24-h automated operations [ 113 ]. ULS can be designed as a network form connecting urban logistics parks and last-mile delivery, or a dedicated underground container line established between seaports and urban gateways, leading to huge environmental and social benefits (e.g., energy-saving, accidents and congestion mitigation and improving urban logistics capacity, etc.) [ 114 ]. So far, the technological feasibility of several ULS projects was acknowledged, yet the large-scale implementation has not started due to the relatively high construction cost and low public awareness [ 5 ]. For this reason, the collaborative strategy of retrofitting existing urban rail transit systems, such as trams, light rail or subways, to achieve mixed passenger-and-freight transport has received higher recognition and was successfully stepped into engineering practice in some European cities [ 115 ]. Compared with ULS, the collaborative modes are easier to implement, since the dual use of transportation infrastructures would moderate the system cost to an acceptable level [ 49 , 116 ].

4.1.5. Operations Research and Optimization Methods for G&SL Decision-Making

The operations research (OR) of G&SL issues that are originated from real-world applications is always being a well-concerned topic because it is directly related to the quality of some critical decision-making in logistics operation. The OR method applied for G&SL is defined as a better of science to identify the trade-offs between environmental aspects and costs, so that the corresponding decisions such as location, transportation, warehousing, and inventory can be optimized and the limited resources can be reasonably assigned [ 39 ]. Dekker et al. [ 39 ] classified the application of OR in green logistics as follows: logistics services network design [ 48 ], facility location [ 117 ], vehicle routing problem [ 118 ], inventory management [ 40 ] lifecycle production optimization [ 119 ], supply chain planning, control, and procurement [ 120 , 121 ] and model choice [ 122 ]. A variety of OR techniques, such as heuristic algorithms [ 121 ], stochastic programming [ 53 ], and robust optimization [ 123 ], were developed for the above issues. In addition to the objectives of general logistics planning e.g., cost and efficiency, the G&SL version focus more on the minimization of environmental influence, e.g., carbon emission and energy consumption. Currently, OR is increasingly applied to optimize the G&SLs’ decision-making in a complex scenario set, such as demand uncertainty [ 48 ] and facilities failure [ 124 ].

4.2. Research Gaps and Agenda

Through the above scientometric analysis and thematic discussion, the comprehensive research trend, mainstream academic topics, and knowledge taxonomy of G&SL domain were revealed. Although researchers and practitioners achieved substantial results in promoting G&SL theory and practice, there are still some shortcomings that need to be elaborated in future studies.

4.2.1. Limitations of Global Collaboration and General Evaluation Framework

In terms of research model, international cooperation is still lacking. The broad applicability of most G&SL knowledge based on local cases deserves further discussion, such as planning methods and evaluation systems. European countries made great efforts in rebuilding the integration of green logistics. However, the lack of international cooperation and universal solutions hinders the dissemination and deepening of knowledge, and the current achievements are far from enough to promote the globalization of G&SL, which is reflected in the imbalance of global G&SL practice.

To fill this gap, although it is recognized that logistics policy has a strong regional character, cross-institutional and cross-national collaborative research on market operation, industrial metrics, technology innovation and macro development strategies should be strengthened under the trend of supply chain globalization. For example, more attention can be paid to the horizontal comparison of green logistics mode, scheme and performance under different case backgrounds. Additionally, more empirical studies are needed to be carried out in some developing countries in Asia and elsewhere in the world, considering they are the fast growing economies with higher population and logistics demand.

4.2.2. Complement Research from a Global/Holistic Perspective

Although the knowledge branch of research is flourishing, it is acknowledged that there is still a need to supplement the overall or holistic research to improve the knowledge system of G&SL. Research on sustainability and green has always been complex and multi-variable, interactive, with far-reaching implications. Besides, sustainability and green are public and social issues. Current theoretical applications are limited to the analysis of local or one-way relationships, such as LSP/retailer/carrier responses to green policies, planning and performance evaluation of green and sustainable initiatives.

The operation and decision-making of G&SL involve many stakeholders, such as local authorities, manufactures, LSP, carriers, customers, and even the sharers of transportation resources. The impact of G&SL should also be long-term and dynamic. Thus, the whole picture includes multiple perspectives, such as the dynamic evaluation of the whole life-cycle of green logistics practice, the decision interaction among multiple stakeholders, and the follow-up research and report on a new green technology or practice.

4.2.3. Lack of Effective Platform to Accelerate the Research of Innovation Technology

Without green innovation technologies, the effect of implementing G&SL from a management perspective alone is minimal. However, it takes a lot of time for some innovative technologies that can fundamentally improve the negative effects of logistics to move from laboratory to application. Applications such as the EV took decades to implement [ 125 ]. Although the technology is constantly updated and improved, more management lag. Another competent concept, the ULS, ASCE has published a feasible technical system as early as 1998 [ 126 ], but only in a few countries has it been publicly piloted in recent years.

The introduction of a new thing does require a long period of demonstration, such as the reliability of the technology, the acceptability of the market and the ambiguity of the real benefits. However, the problem is often the gap and lag in the research of application management in the transition from technical problems to market application and practice management. Therefore, building effective platforms based on multidisciplinary, cross-organizational collaboration to accelerate the research and application of innovative technologies is particularly important for G&SL practices, such as ULS, RL, and CS. Such calls are all the more urgent in their own research.

5. Conclusions

The concept of green and sustainable logistics has received increasing attention and consideration government sectors, scholars, practitioners, and international organizations. A large amount of practical achievement was made at both the industrial and theoretical levels. This study reviewed 306 valuable contributions regarding G&LS over the past two decades through a three-step review program. They were described in year publication, journal allocation and citation counts. Then, the bibliographic networks of countries, organizations, journal and document co-citations, keyword co-occurrence and timezone clusters of research themes were visualized to help understand the overall research status and academic progress worldwide. Grounded in the scientometric analysis, an integrated knowledge taxonomy of the G&SL field was presented, including five major alignments and 50 sub-branches.

Results indicate that the chronological publication of G&SL shows a trend of rapid increase. The quantity of literature published in 2018 is fifteen times more than that of 10 years ago. Sustainability , Journal of Cleaner Production , Transportation Research Part D: Transport Environment and International Journal of Production Economy are the top four journals, which contributed over a quarter of all G&SL papers since 1999. The maps of journal allocation and co-cited journals show that the current research is most relevant to the environmental science and transportation science. In terms of countries, China, the United States, the UK, Sweden, and India are the major territories of G&SL research. The network across co-authored organizations and countries revealed that the collaboration among different research communities is not strong. Hence an active and robust global collaboration atmosphere has not formed yet.

The map of co-occurred keywords showed that the most frequently discussed G&SL themes in each cluster were sustainability and management (cluster #1), freight transportation and carbon emission (cluster #2), model and reverse logistics (cluster #3), and green supply chain and green logistics (cluster #4). The timezone view of keywords showed that articles related to collaboration, transportation planning, modal shift and stakeholder were largely published during the recent years. On this basis, the knowledge taxonomy of G&SL was manually synthesized from five aspects: (i) evaluation on SEE impacts of G&SL initiatives; (ii) planning, policy, and management research; (iii) real-world application areas and practices; (iv) emerging technologies and (v) operations research and optimization methods for G&SL decision-making.

Finally, the potential roadmap for filling current research gaps was recommended, which were divided into three streams: (i) more global research collaboration should be advocated to jointly develop and supplement the comprehensive evaluation framework of G&SL performance; (ii) future research efforts could focus on the interactive and dynamic relationships among sustainable development goals, green policies and the decision-making of multiple stakeholders; (iii) the application-oriented platforms and management research for some most advanced green logistics initiatives would be highly beneficial in promoting G&SL innovation.

However, it should be noted that the data used in this study was confined to those research articles and review articles that were published in the peer-reviewed journals, and they were retrieved only from the two mainstream databases considering the applicability of software. Although the indexed documents could represent most of the convictive viewpoints of G&SL research, some valuable articles that were published in other forms or included in other databases might be overlooked inevitably. To sum up, this review has great room for improvement in terms of material selection. A systematic investigation incorporating valuable conference proceedings, reports, and books in the field of green logistics or green supply chain is expected to portray a more comprehensive knowledge map for future research. Additionally, the in-depth review of the hotspot themes in G&SL domain e.g., OR application and SCM, may also contribute to multidisciplinary integration and interaction.

Acknowledgments

The editors and anonymous reviewers of this paper are acknowledged for their constructive comments and suggestions.

Author Contributions

R.R. and W.H. proposed the research framework, analyzed the data and wrote the article; B.S. and Y.C. contributed to data collection; J.D. and Z.C. contributed to revising article. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grants no. 71631007, no. 71601095 and no. 51478463), and the Postgraduate Research & Practice Innovation Program of Jiangsu Province (Grant no. SJCX19_0230).

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declared that they have no conflicts of interest to this work.

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