FACTORS THAT INFLUENCE LOGISTICS DECISION MAKING IN THE SUPPLY CHAIN OF THE AUTOMOTIVE INDUSTRY

Logistics activities are present in different business functions, which is why unified decision making in logistics has a significant effect on the organization of logistics processes in companies. Scientific literature highlights various aspects of logistics decision making, but so far, no survey has been conducted that can accurately illustrate the effect of centralized logistics and the effect of the level of logistics knowledge of employees from other departments on unified decision making in the organization of logistics processes. For this purpose, a statistical analysis was carried out on a sample of companies from the Slovenian automotive industry, which is one of the leading high-tech industries in the world. The results of multiple linear regression show that the greater the knowledge of logistics among the employees from other departments, the more logistics costs are taken into account during the development of the product. This is an important finding for the automotive industry, as well as for other manufacturing industries, especially with respect to efficient planning of logistics processes, starting from the early stages of product development. This enables better control over logistics costs, as all business functions within the company participate in the process. The results presented here highlight future guidelines for the organisation of logistics processes in the high-tech automotive industry. It was verified by multiple linear regression.