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The spread of the Covid-19 pandemic and its resulting developments over the past year have demonstrated the importance of both shipping (manufacturing and trading) companies and logistics service providers in everyday economic activities. The following article deals with the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on shipping companies as well as logistics service providers. To this end, a general description of the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic on economic events, as well as specifically on logistics, trade, and manufacturing companies is provided. These descriptions are then followed by a presentation of the empirical results of a survey on the effects of the Covid-19 crisis as well as on supply chain management and logistics in the Hamburg metropolitan region. The survey was conducted in August 2020. Based on the results of the survey, the authors derive future corporate recommendations before concluding with a short summary.

Purpose– Regulatory pressure, consumer awareness, and the quest for competitive advantage place sustainable products in today’s decision-making spotlight. The purpose of this paper is to explore supply chain dynamics as they relate to sustainable product programs and to empirically develop a framework to align efforts across the supply chain to bring sustainable products to market.Design/methodology/approach– Grounded in systems design, stakeholder theory, and the theory of planned behavior, the authors conduct an inductive empirical study of 28 European and US companies.Findings– The authors make three contributions. First, the authors identify six dimensions of product sustainability, which map to the Greenhouse Gas Protocol’s sustainability scope model. Second, the authors model relational dynamics using systems diagrams to provide a framework that: first, communicates a common understanding of product sustainability; and second, facilitates tradeoff analysis. Third, the authors elaborate behaviors needed to reduce ambiguity and compliance costs.Practical implications– Managers can use the framework to assess product sustainability and evaluate tradeoffs across product dimensions and supply chain participants. Using this insight, managers can design sustainable product programs that engage supply chain participants.Social implications– By identifying dimensions, defining costs, and uncovering tradeoffs, managers can more effectively implement sustainable product programs.Originality/value– The framework provides a much needed source of clarity to mitigate role ambiguity, reduce compliance costs, and promote collaborative behavior in bringing sustainable products to market.

One of the main goals of simulation in supply chain management is to evaluate the performance and how it can be increased by effectively managing a complex supply chain. Simulation supports managers in decision making at strategic, tactical and operational levels through visualizing, understanding and analyzing the dynamics of the supply chain (SC). This paper provides a detailed analysis of the practice of simulation for different supply chain management (SCM) processes. The supply chain operation reference (SCOR) model is used for the classification of SCM processes. It reports the results of a review and analysis of simulation applications based on literature published within peerreviewed journals until 2013 in order to provide an upto-date picture of the role of simulation techniques in SCM. A structured methodology is followed to narrow down the publications (n=569). This research paper mentions different types of simulation in the context to SCM, describes their main characteristics as well as the implementation at different SCM process levels. This leads us to interesting trends and patterns on how different simulation types are applied to different SCM processes in order to answer different managerial questions.

This chapter introduces a game-theoretic approach to supply chain risk management. The focus of this study lies on the risk of a single supply chain member defecting from common supply chain agreements, thereby jeopardizing the overall supply chain performance. The chapter goes on to introduce a manual supply chain game, by which dynamic supply chain mechanisms can be simulated and further analyzed using a game-theoretic model. With the help of the game-theoretic model, externalities are identified that negatively impact supply chain efficiency. The conclusion drawn from this chapter is that incentives are necessary to overcome these externalities in order to align supply chain objectives. The authors show that the game-theoretic model, in connection with the supply chain game presented, provides an informative basis for the future development of incentives by which supply chains can be aligned in order to reduce supply chain risks.

The design of distributed product development processes is a core element of supply chain management. The approach of collaborative engineering, which is discussed in this paper, supports companies to integrate their suppliers efficiently. Besides technical challenges, organizational aspects have to be faced to guarantee a successful industrial application. Considering shipbuilding as an example, the main challenges of distributed product development are described, industrial requirements on collaborative engineering concepts are pointed out and an actual research project on this topic is introduced.

Nowadays companies are faced with an increasing risk exposure. This is mainly caused by a greater dependence of supply chain partners on each other, e.g., due to the close integration of their business processes aiming at the reduction of channel inventory. Based on findings from the literature and results from an empirical investigation, a model for an inter-organisational risk management process is introduced. It is shown how a top-down approach can be used as a methodology for efficient risk identification. In addition an empirical-based evaluation of supply chain risk sources and risk mitigation measures is integrated in this model.