Sustainable Supply Chain Management in Urban Logistics - Sustainable Urban Logistics: Concepts, Methods and Information Systems - page 24

companies. Supply Chain Management is an integrated function with primary
responsibility for linking major business functions and business processes within
and across companies into a cohesive and high-performing business model. It
includes all of the logistics management activities noted above, as well as man-
ufacturing operations, and it drives coordination of processes and activities with
and across marketing, sales, product design, finance and information technology'' .
Generally, SCM can be examined on the basis of three types of prerequisites:
co-operation, customer satisfaction and performance (GRLT 1995 ; Lambert et al.
1998 ; Mentzer et al. 2001 ; Min and Mentzer 2004 ). But, nowadays, considering
the non-negligible weight of the human factor in the transportation and logistics
fields; we think that the human factor has to be specially studied in the Social/
Societal SCM. In fact, SCM approach focuses on the co-operation of intra and
inter-enterprise processes and the measure of its performance.
Firstly, and in a general way, the co-operation prerequisite highlights the
importance of a clear product/service design and process along the supply chain. In
this context, a reflection must be done on the entire supply chain (upstream, pro-
duction and downstream). Two elements are important in this prerequisite: trace-
ability (ability to trace and follow a product) and transportation (physical transport
of each product from point A to point B, defined respectively an origin and a
destination point). Secondly, the performance prerequisite consists of simplifying a
complex process for each organization in the business network. It highlights the
driving role of information systems such as Advanced Planning Scheduling (APS),
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Electronic Data Interface (EDI), etc. But also,
its recognition, from an organizational, tactical and strategic perspective, requires
in an end result the definition of Key Performance Indicators or metrics in order to
appreciate the competitive advantage through Balanced Scorecard (Morana 2002 ).
Specifically on the transportation component of the SCM, it is important to
carefully think about and to adapt the distribution (or upstream) network to the
economical, geographical, organizational and quality constraints (Gonzalez-Feliu
2012 ). More precisely, the main questions in freight distribution tactical and oper-
ational planning are related to supply and inventory policies (warehousing), vehicle
routing and scheduling (transportation management), vehicle assignment to a route
and crew assignment to each operation. In city logistics solutions, many aspects have
to be considered in strategic planning (Gonzalez-Feliu 2008 ; Ville et al. 2012 ):
• Financial aspects: financing is important for such systems. Many of them are
based on public-private-partnerships (PPP), or in strong public authorities'
subventions.
• Infrastructural aspects: the infrastructures' usage, alongside to the need of
realizing new infrastructures, is evaluated.
• Organisational aspects: the distribution system has also to be defined.
• Vehicle-related technological aspects: once the distribution system is defined, it
is important to find the adequate technological solution.
• Information and Communication Technologies: mainly related to traceability,
assistance to drivers, communication tools and intelligent transportation systems.