Dimitrios Aidonis, Dimitrios Folinas and Dimitrios Triantafillou
EDITORIAL
This special issue is composed of six selected papers from the 2nd Olympus International Conference on
Supply Chains held on October 5-6, 2012, in Katerini, Greece, covering different aspects of the Supply Chain
Management. The selected papers were submitted in two double-blind review process by academics. The first
review process was conducted for the purpose of the Conference and the second for the special issue, ensuring a
significant contribution to higher quality papers. A short presentation of the selected papers is following.
Blanas et al. in “Reverse logistics strategic antinomies: The case of the automotive sector” examine the
impact of the European Parliament Council (2000) Directive 2000/53/EC on the European Union automobile
sector reverse logistics activities in the light of the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) principle. Their
analysis reveals that while reverse logistics can save considerable energy and materials to the society as a whole,
a number of strategic structural antinomies impede its wider application in the automotive industry.
Zikopoulos in “Remanufacturing Lot-sizing under Alternative Perceptions of Returned Units’ Quality”
studies a remanufacturing system in a multi-period setting in which returns’ quality information is exploited
during remanufacturing planning. Author’s objective is to examine the advisability of acquiring advanced
quality information in order to be used during sub-optimal decision-making processes, in comparison with
alternative policies which do not take explicitly into account returns’ quality information. Finally, an extensive
numerical analysis is conducted in order to examine the implications of alternative considerations regarding
returned units’ quality on remanufacturing planning, lead-time and service-levels and evaluate their impact on
the overall system operational cost.
Vidovic et al. in “Two mathematical formulations for the containers drayage problem with time windows”
study the containers drayage problem in ISO container distribution and collecting processes, in regions which
are oriented to container sea ports or inland terminals. Authors propose methods for the optimal trucks’ routing
in containers drayage operations by presenting two optimal MIP mathematical formulations for the case when
pickup and delivery nodes could be visited only in specific time intervals - time windows. Finally, numerical
examples are provided in order to examine the proposed approaches and obtain useful managerial insights.
Adamidis et al. in “An evolutionary algorithm for a real vehicle routing problem” examine the NP-hard
Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP). Specifically, an Evolutionary Algorithm is developed in order to solve the
VRP of a specific transportation company in Volos, Greece with different vehicle capacities. The algorithm has
been tested with different configurations and constraints, and proved to be effective in reaching a satisfying
solution for the company’s needs.
Vidalis et al. in “Performance evaluation of a merge supply system with a distribution centre, two reliable
suppliers, one buffer and Erlang lead times” examine a two echelon merge supply chain. A supply network is
modeled as a continuous time Markov process with discrete states. The structures of the transition matrices of
those systems are explored and a computational algorithm is developed. Authors’ objective is to generate
stationary distributions for different values of system’s parameters so as the various measures of the system can
be estimated. Finally, for the mathematical programming model and the rest of the calculations the Matlab
software is used.
Folinas and Aidonis in “The effects of economic crisis to logistics outsourcing” investigate the effects of
the economic crisis on the logistics services sector in Greece. Authors analyze the findings of a research, which,
via a questionnaire, asked managers at the examined sector first to identify the effects and second the practices
and approaches that the managers suggested to confront with these effects. The findings of the research revealed
that the logistics’ service providers have been significantly affected by the crisis and these effects have
influenced all the main functional areas of the logistics management. This research can be considered as a pilot
study, as the Greek economy has been seriously affected during the global financial crisis. Worldwide, 3pl
companies can use the findings of this study in order to overcome potential difficulties that might face in near
future.
The papers received to this call for contributions gave a clear sign that supply chain management will still
remain to be a hot topic of research in the forthcoming years. Specifically, supply chain optimization has been a
topic of significant academic interest in the operational research discipline for the last decades. There are many
issues that are still not fully resolved but, the authors of the above papers have made their contributions to bring
this ultimate goal one step closer.
