Logistical research at Molde University College

byØyvind Halskau

Background

• Transportation economy back in the 1970-es• Logistics come up late in the 1980-es• Institute of Business economy (BI) started with

logistics in the middle of this decenium. • We decided to be more quantitative• Later, we have also included more qualitative

aspects• Got masterprogram in 1998

History and facts about PhD at MUC

• We got the possibility in 2002• First defence in 2006• Per to day: 35 finished works• Time offered 3 or 4 years• Financing:– Full scholarships (public or as parts of projects)– Smaller scholarships (public – quota )– Industrial scholarships (private)

Ramifications

• All PhD-students get NOK100000 to take courses, travel etc

• 4 years contract: The student must work for the college 1 year (teaching, secretarial work,..)

• Main supervisor and co-supervisor• Some mile-stones have to be observed during

the time

35 defences

• Have we lost some during these years• 20 – 25 new ones in the pipeline• The 35 finished ones:– 10 women– 25 men– 16 Norwegians– 19 from: Pakistan, Nepal, China, Belarus, France

Tanzania, The Netherlands

The topics must be in logistics / Supply chain management

• So, what is logistics / SCM ?• A bit fuzzy these terms.• To do logistics / SCM you must be a thief stealing

methods from– Mathematics– Statistics – Economy / marketing– Computer science– Organization – Social sciences– Accounting.......

So what is logistics / SCM?

• A part of business economy, but could also be– Military– Humanitarian– Emergency / incident

• Deals with flows between actors in the value chain

• Improving the overall performance in one way or another

Methods versus content:vertically: use of methods

Horizontal: logistical content

HIGH Passable / can be a border case

Heaven

LOW Hopefully not a case

Good

LOW HIGH

Our PhD-es?

• Low – Low: will depend on the eye of the beholders, but we have had a couple close to this

• High on methods – low in logistics: Yes we have had some. One wants to develop a hammer (a tool) to solve some tricky problems which could be characterised as logistical

Our PhD-es, continued

• Low in methods – high in logistical contents: yes we have had some. The use of methods has been well-known, no development in these, but interesting results were obtained

• High – High: Yes, we have a few of these as well

Our PhD-es, continued

• Topics using quantitative methods: ca25– Operational research approaches– Game theoretical approaches– Using econometrical approaches

Our PhD-es, continued

• Topics that are more qualitative: ca 11- organisational approaches- interviews - explorative

Our PhD-es, continued

• More concrete examples:– Buyer / seller relationship– Vehicle routing problems– Inventory theory– Production theory– Logistics in hospitals– IT-problems in logistics– Networks and stochastic problems– ...........