Supply chain flexibility - Tailored logistics services as a means to increase flexibility in supply chains

Todays supply chains of the production industry are set up globally and have to cope with various external influences. One of the main requirements towards logistics processes, which connect production sites and customer markets distributed all over the world, is flexibility. Frequently, the efforts undertaken aim at a maximum degree of flexibility, which the customer does not require and thus also not honor monetarily. Tailored logistics services take this fact into account and can therefore be considered as a powerful means to a target-oriented increase in supply chain flexibility. The following contribution deduces the different dimensions of tailored logistics services and presents an empirical evaluation of the most important flexibility-promoting logistics concepts. © Carl Hanser Verlag.