The role of information and communication technology in small Italian logistics enterprises

Information and Communications Technology (ICT) is widely regarded as a key integration enabler in contemporary supply chain configurations. Furthermore, recent years have seen the vertical disintegration of supply chains as increasing numbers of manufacturers and retailers outsource significant parts of their supply chain functionality. In this environment, Third Party Logistics (3PL) providers - the majority of which are small companies - play a pivotal role. This raises important questions about the usage of ICT in this sector. However, there is a paucity of research in the field of small 3PLs with little empirical investigation into the usage of ICT by such firms. This paper presents the results of a survey on ICT systems usage in a sample of small Italian 3PLs. The results provide a technological profile of the surveyed companies, as well as an analysis of the role of ICT in customising services and of the factors influencing technology adoption.

A case study analysis on information and communication technology usage in small logistics service companies

The impact of ICT (information and communications technology) on the logistics service industry is reshaping its organisation and structure. Within this process, the nature of changes resulting from ICT dissemination in small 3PLs (third party logistics providers) is still unclear, although a large number of logistics service markets, especially in the EU context, are populated by a high number of small 3PLs. In addition, there is still a gap in the literature where the role of technological capability in small 3PLs is seriously underestimated. This gives rise to the need to develop investigation in this area. The paper presents the preliminary results of a case study analysis on ICT usage in a sample of 7 small Italian 3PLs. The results highlight some of the barriers to effective ICT implementation, as well as some of the critical success factors.

Information and communication technology adoption in the Italian road freight haulage industry

Despite the importance of information and communication technology (ICT) in the management of transport and logistics systems, there is a shortage of studies in the road freight haulage sector. This paper is aimed at filling this void through an exploratory survey on ICT adoption and the influencing factors carried out in the Italian road transport market. The paper provides a review of the previous research on this topic that allows the identification of research gaps that have been addressed through a questionnaire survey. The findings provide evidence of a passive stance on ICT usage characterised by the adoption of isolated applications. The financial risk associated with technology investment and human resources are the main barriers to ICT adoption, while the improvement of service level and the reliability of transport operations emerge as stimulating factors. The results suggest that the potential benefits of technology have not been fully exploited and a risk-sensitive stance on ICT is evident preventing the full incorporation of ICT into business processes.

Informational institutions in the agrifood sector:meta-information and meta-governance of environmental sustainability

In the agrifood sector, the explosive increase in information about environmental sustainability, often in uncoordinated information systems, has created a new form of ignorance ('meta-ignorance') that diminishes the effectiveness of information on decision-makers. Flows of information are governed by informal and formal social arrangements that we can collectively call Informational Institutions. In this paper, we have reviewed the recent literature on such institutions. From the perspectives of information theory and new institutional economics, current informational institutions are increasing the information entropy of communications concerning environmental sustainability and stakeholders' transaction costs of using relevant information. In our view this reduces the effectiveness of informational governance. Future research on informational governance should explicitly address these aspects.

Task-based annotation and retrieval for image information management

Continuing advances in digital image capture and storage are resulting in a proliferation of imagery and associated problems of information overload in image domains. In this work we present a framework that supports image management using an interactive approach that captures and reuses task-based contextual information. Our framework models the relationship between images and domain tasks they support by monitoring the interactive manipulation and annotation of task-relevant imagery. During image analysis, interactions are captured and a task context is dynamically constructed so that human expertise, proficiency and knowledge can be leveraged to support other users in carrying out similar domain tasks using case-based reasoning techniques. In this article we present our framework for capturing task context and describe how we have implemented the framework as two image retrieval applications in the geo-spatial and medical domains. We present an evaluation that tests the efficiency of our algorithms for retrieving image context information and the effectiveness of the framework for carrying out goal-directed image tasks. © 2010 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.

Design concept evaluation based on rough number and information entropy theory

Concept evaluation at the early phase of product development plays a crucial role in new product development. It determines the direction of the subsequent design activities. However, the evaluation information at this stage mainly comes from experts' judgments, which is subjective and imprecise. How to manage the subjectivity to reduce the evaluation bias is a big challenge in design concept evaluation. This paper proposes a comprehensive evaluation method which combines information entropy theory and rough number. Rough number is first presented to aggregate individual judgments and priorities and to manipulate the vagueness under a group decision-making environment. A rough number based information entropy method is proposed to determine the relative weights of evaluation criteria. The composite performance values based on rough number are then calculated to rank the candidate design concepts. The results from a practical case study on the concept evaluation of an industrial robot design show that the integrated evaluation model can effectively strengthen the objectivity across the decision-making processes.