Roots of Logistics

Prof. (em.) Peter Klaus, D.B.A./Boston Univ., held the chair of Business Logistics at Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuernberg, Germany, for nearly 20 years. He started his career in the transport industry, spent time in the United States, and headed up the Fraunhofer Center for Technologies in the Logistics Service Industries (ATL) at Nuernberg. He is Editor-in-Chief of “Logistics Research”, an academic journal published by Springer. Prof. Dr. Stefanie Müller holds the chair of Logistics and Transport Management at Georg-Simon-Ohm University of Applied Sciences, Nuremberg. Besides, she cooperates with logistics service providers offering advice in costing, performance measurement, and process management. Prior to her academic career, Stefanie Müller worked for a global fowarding company for more than 15 years, dealing with operations management, network planning, sales, customer service, and other functions.

• The „roots' of logistics: Physical distribution and traffic management.-How logistics understanding evolved.- Definitions changing during four decades.- Attempts to concretize logistics as a science and to establish a theoretical framework.- Instruments, practices, and methodologies of logistics.

From the book reviews: "As an Operations Researcher ... I welcomed the opportunity to dig up the roots of this discipline, to understand its history and how various disciplines contributed to it. ... The editors of the Roots of Logistics, through casting their net very wide in researching the history of this important discipline, were indeed, able to offer 'A Reader of Classical Contributions to the History and Conceptual Foundations of the Science of Logistics.'" (Hans Ittmann, IFORS Newsletter, Vol. 8 (4), December, 2014)