The first edition of Global Logistics and Distribution Planning: Strategies for Management appeared in 1988. Since then the whole field of logistics has changed. Of course, there is still agreement about the basic principle of a supply chain as ‘the series of activities and organizations that materials – both tangible and intangible – move through on their journeys from initial suppliers to final customers’ (Waters, 2009). Then logistics – or supply chain management – becomes the function that ‘plans, implements and controls the efficient, effective forward and reverse flow and storage of goods, services and related information between the point of origin and the point of consumption in order.
