Logistics service providers and the transport geography of global supply chains.

Abstract

Trade liberalization, advances in transportation and development of new telecommunication technologies has enabled industrial shippers to expand their supply chains on a global stage. But the globalization context has often forced companies involved in local as well as global competition to revise their production strategies. Thus, huge changes have been arising in production processes because the scale of production networks has changed considerably. Existing production networks have been extended geographically. Then today production systems are abounding with global strategies. These inter-organizational strategies asked serious questions of the logistics system and require more attention in order to control the supply chain. In fact, underestimating the management of supply chains increases the risk of undermining the global distribution network responsible for the physical movement of goods, information and finance. Transnational corporations tend either not to want to be responsible for managing the supply chain, or not to have the resources to carry out the logistics of traffic flows in space and time. These two factors have encouraged the emergence of logistics service providers. They are used to supporting industrial shippers in the development of logistics solutions to facilitate the mobility of traffic flow within the globalized freight system that underpins global production networks. A case study of the logistics service provider APL Logistics is presented as an example of mobilizing the concept of transport geography.