The purpose of this research is to made a comparison analysis on logistics and environment issues between U.S.A and Japan based on enquetes survey conducted respectively and to make clear characteristics of conscientiousness, Japanese industrial firms have had in the field of environment of logistics.
As a result of this research there could not be found great differences from theoretical view points while Japan is far behind in terms of practical fields.
This research is of a great significance in terms of the first comparison analysis on environmental aspects of logistics between Japan and U.S.A. However, enquetes survey should be executed, based on the same contents and the same period.

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It is significant to deliver the telephone directories efficiently in a short period of time to the 60 million of business firms and households nationwide in order not to interfere any daily urban activities. Further, it is strongly desired for NTT, the original publisher and distributor of the telephone directories, to securely collect and recycle all used telephone directories distributed in the previous year regarding the global environmental preservation. Under these circumstances, the distribution and collection process of the 130 million telephone directories published by NTT every year was studied and analyzed in various ways. As a result, several ideas for improvement in regard with the urban environmental preservation were proposed and examined by the field tests. These proposals introduced in this study were found to be extremely effective, however, some of the hypotheses require additional studies for further improvements. This methodology shall be applied to other industries which involve such similar distribution and collection process, and will be completed as a theoretical and practical one.

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Logistical strategies of Japanese major manufactures are defined by factors such as trends of price and added value rate, attributes of demand, market growth rate, market regulation. The Japanese major manufactures construct logistical strategies of four main sub strategies, logistical network strategy, logistical process strategy, production strategy and market targetry strategy. Logistical strategy of major Japanese manufactures have been shifted their positions as follows; cost reduction, relocating logistical bases overseas, downsizing → enhancement of flexibility, application of IT, strategic alliance → responsibility fore environment problem, alignment with the external organizations, business process reengineering. Organizational structure of logistical business process has three phases; logistical management phase, logistical process control phase, logistical operation phase. Logistics department doesn't have main responsibilities in physical supply and total logistical process control, but they tend to use more flexible measure such as project team.

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Data exchange among enterprises is necessary to improve the efficiency of goods flow in the computerized information society. Thus, there is a need to carefully evaluate the characteristics of the data which are communally exchanged in the process of goods flow among the different enterprises. This study aims to analyze the characteristics of these communal data in the process of transportation, warehousing, processing and forwarding, respectively. The ratio of communality of each datum that shows the extent of which the datum is utilized through goods flow activities is examined. It can be seen that the data related to commodity and the consignee have high ratios, but the data regarding the transportation have low ratios.
Also two principal components, the communal data factor and the node data factor, could substitute thirty one data observed from the survey. Finally, these data were classified into four groups in relation to each datum and each stage of goods flow.

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In Japan, truck transportation which has been important on logistics has such problems as exhaust gas, traffic jam, shortage of drivers, and so on. Then the modal shift from truck to another means of transportation has provoked a great deal of controversy in several places.
In this paper, the authors study the modal shift from truck to middle/ long-distance ferryboat services effective to the problems of truck transportation. Firstly, it is analysed about the present conditions and problems of the ferryboat services in search of the factors affecting modal shift. Secondly, considering those factors, ferryboat choice model are constructed. Finally, it is examined that the speeding-up of ferryboat is effective in modal shift.

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The Japanese government has been developing policy in Japanese agriculture in a new international environment. A new Food Law, i e, the Law Concerning the Stabilization of Supply, Demand and Price of Staple Food was established in 1994 The old Food Control Law had been provided for all governmental control over the production, purchase and pricing of rice, but the new Law confines its role mainly to Storage.
On conditions that the government runs a projection for the supply and demand of rice to ensure the stabilization of supply and demand and to establish the price of rice and plan the smooth implementation of production adjustments and to coordinate a flexible stockpiling system to secure proper and smooth distribution, a simulation study was made to obtain a basic information about the operation of stockpiles and the amount of planned distribution of govenmental purchases and imports. Assuming that rice is shipped through the voluntarily marketed rice channel or through government channels, a system dynamics model of the rice distribution was constncted.
We reveal that our simulation greatly helps to understand and study that the voluntarily marketed distribution plan may be approved to maintain stockpiles and to withhold some rice from the market if necessary.

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In resent years, distribution and marketing system is requested to change drastically by digitalization of social system. In another word, distribution and marketing system will be disbanded and customer support system which takes a serious view of demand side will be developped rapidly.
Therefore, strategy of physical distribution system is also requested to change to network strategy which is based on collaboration thought. So strategy of physical distribution system of department stores is expected to reform as a new form of management innovation system.
And then, on the bases of these critical mind as an approach of innovation in physical distribution of department stores, I will mention about prospects of business logistics of department stores from the view point of merchandising strategy and customer service strategy.

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MMFLA model is the abbreviation of Multiechelon Multiactivity Facility Location Allocation model. This model was proposed in 1984 by Mahmoud, Mohamed Moustafa of University of Pennsylvania for solving plant location problems. This model is used for two echelons (input source ↔ plant ↔ market) where we input raw materials, manufacture products in multiplex production lines and ship them to markets. MMFLA model is defined as the objective function shown in (1) and relaxed and subdivided problems are solved by an approximation algorithm. However, since exponentially larger amount of computation for MMFLA model is needed as the number of variable is increased, which we call NP completed problem, and the algorithm for solving by MMFLA model is too complex, its application to real world problem is limited to special cases : the number of plant, market, input source, product and input are 6, 5, 5, 4 and 4, respectively. And it is necessarily desirable that a new algorithm much more sophisticated and extended MMFLA, for reducing computation time as well as expanding variables is urgently needed to be developed for the application to real cases. The purpose of this paper is to propose a new algorithm for MMFLA model based on Genetic Algorithm (GA) and to show our proposed algorithm applicable to more practical problems by extending the models size and reducing execution time of computation.

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