Generic mechanisms for coordinating operations and sharing financial benefits in collaborative logistics

Abstract

Collaborative logistics is increasingly emerging as a new opportunity for cost reduction through internal and cross chains coordination. This paper presents different coordination mechanisms to support collaborative logistics. These mechanisms are differentiated by their planning function, their sharing approach and the information, decision and financial flows. Often, the logistics planning is run first, and secondly, the sharing is set on the basis of the plan. However, recently, new approaches have been proposed where both the logistics plan and the sharing are optimized simultaneously. Constraints on the financial flows also introduce specificities to the coordination mechanisms and these are described and discussed. Finally, the proposed coordination mechanisms are used to describe a series of research and applied projects in which collaborative logistics has been implemented. © 2010 IFIP.