The Chair in Detail
Overview
Editorial by David Damand
How do you boost the performance of a logistics platform? These echoes of recent research provide timely input into the creation or continuous improvement of processes.
"A platform’s competitiveness is directly linked to its location, layout, and internal flows," analyzes David Damand. And this is not a long, quiet river—no matter how relevant the original design. The organization of logistics platforms evolves on a recurring basis, according to its customers, products, and volumes stored. Service providers also carry out one-off operations such as personalizing products or applying promotional stickers. “It’s like a ball of wool.” That's how the researcher describes a logistics warehouse’s internal flows, if you were to model them, with movement on top of that. So many activities, so many trips: receiving goods, carrying out checks on them, placing them in storage, both short-term and long-term, packaging, preparing orders, inventory, shipping. In fact, explains David Damand, it is the experience and expertise of designers and providers that enriches practices, but they still risk remaining fragmented.
Our Research Areas
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Developing original methodologies for flow analysis and design
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Discussing the question: "How do we make and how do we improve the design and organization of logistics platforms?"
Our Mission
The concepts and thinking that we have been able to deliver are clearly fueled by the work carried out jointly by researchers and managers. In the end, what are the benefits for the FM Logistic Chair’s partners? For a PhD student, scientific productions and field experience. For research professors, scientific publications and information they can disseminate to students. We boost teaching with such projects! The company, for its part, benefits from a deliverable, therefore a very concrete return on investment. “Co-constructed methodologies are evaluated in situ, with managers, and in the context of a precise requirement in a warehouse.”
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