The main subject was put in order about engaging to the PFI business of the local self-governing body based on the PFI law promulgated in July, 1999. Actual business progress is from now though there are many local self-governing bodies to reply for concern against the PFI business and an advantage when to be. It has the applicable possibility of the PFI business by the harbor, airport construction and a wide area like terminal construction about physical distribution field, the recycling facility construction, and so on, and applicable at the fact, Kitakyushu port and Hitachinaka port. But, there are many subjects that “securing of the public society”, “the deregulation”, “the difficulty of the business execution in the local area” are left.

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Recent developments of wireless technology mean new opportunities to operators of small package delivery service. In this paper we propose a general idea of Highway Automated Guided Vehicle Network (H·AGV·N) through which we send small packages as a one-stop solution with fast and reliable same day delivery service in Japan. The system is powered by the shipment management and tracking technology from package delivery system via the fastest and most efficient system available. The dynamic tracking system enables us to track its package every step of the delivery process with real-time notification via email or phone. Customers send their small package, forwarders assort and deliver them to destination distribution center by way of H·AGV·N. We put the package weight and size limitations per package as 20-40 kilograms with the maximum size per package of 200 total cm (add the length, width and height). The technology systematically selects the optimal shipping solution by digitally linking commercial small package ground carriers, thus the system effectively works the usage of future highway with resultant traffic congestion, as well as decreasing population and environmental problems.

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This article organized the change of the research focus by investigating the literatures on the basic causality of logistics performance.
The present research focus was to prove the relation of the activity/result of logistics and competitive advantage about supply chain, and that some problems were left about the method/index to use there.

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The postal systems in Europe are currently undergoing radical changes, especially in their institutional framework. The Postal Directive of the European Union has promoted several giant European postal companies to go public : the communication market, the express and logistics market. The wake of massive privatization processes has forced the postal operators to adopt various strategies to the express and logistics sectors.

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Though concept of reverse logistics has been discussed by some scholars and specialists, there is still no general consensus about its definition. It has often been defined ambiguously and is not clearly defined. In order to evolve this field of research, we should reconsider the concept with a view to various elements. This paper reviews the past research results and examines the concept with focusing on cost saving behavior or competitive strategy. Then it points out that these days major companies have increasingly attached importance to reverse logistics as their own strategic measure. Finally, it synthetically reviews reverse logistics in terms of efficiency, strategy and sociality.

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To cope with the ever changing logistics market, forecasting the changes and adapting to them are important. In this paper, we analyze the perspectives and directions of Japanese logistics market in about 2010 based on the questionnaires to shippers and carriers. The shippers and carriers perspectives on physical distribution management, information technology (IT), environmental problems, globalization and human resources are discussed. Also their directions to cope with the changes and perception gaps between shippers and carriers are shown.

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This paper proposes a Lagrangian relaxation approach toward the solution of the multistage lot-sizing problem with multiple constrained resources in general product structures. Dualizing the resource constraints this problem results in an uncapacitated problem that can be solved efficiently by reformulating it as a simple facility location representation. The Lagrangian dual costs are updated by subgradient optimization. A Lagrangian based heuristic procedure to generate good solutions for the problem is also proposed. Numerical results are presented for some test problem instances of differing sizes.
(Lot-sizing; Capacity constraints; Echelon stocks; Lagrangian relaxation)

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At present, there are few experimental studies that clear the validity of SCM in our country. Based on such a critical mind, the actual condition of SCM in our country and that validity are examined from the data analysis of the questionnaire for the manufacturing industries. We verify how much it contributed to the performance of the enterprise by using a covariance structure analysis.

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In the 17th century of Japan, coastal cities founded by the shipbuilding industry had been established tosupply cargo ships for the transport of goods and commodities. Inter-city freight transport during this period had mainly relied on these cargo ships using the developed coastal ship routes.
The objective of this study is to clarify the relationship between the development of the shipbuilding industry and the coastal ship routes. The paper also aims to clarify the development process of a particular shipbuilding city from the viewpoint of industrial growth by examining the case of Ohminato city.

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The trucking industry in Japan had a large economic deregulation in 1990. On the one hand, the deregulation of entry caused a more competitive freight transport market. On the other hand, the deregulation of vehicle operation brought the carriers with more flexible truck operations. The larger-scale carriers were able to enjoy the latter effects to a great extent. Then the cost advantages of larger-scale carriers have become more remarkable after deregulation.

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It is expected that promotion of unit load systems, such as through-transit-palletization, contributes to the increase in efficiency of a physical distribution or an improvement of work environment. Then, this research aims at the promotion of use of the pallet by the operational improvement of the pallet rental system. For this reason, the field survey of the depot in the pallet rental system was carried out, and the support tool for extraction of problems and an improvement was developed. Moreover, we examined the improvement proposals using the developed support tool, and verified the validity of the tool.

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In recent years, we have worked out various measures for the environmental issues caused by truck transportation and are planning to take some of them. It is very useful that we understand truck operators' attitudes toward the measures which will be taken. Understanding their attitudes will help us to reach a consensus. In this study, we analyze truck operators' attitudes toward measures for the environmental issues caused by truck transportation by employing Covariance Structure Model and AHP. From these results, we show what truck operators' anxiety about the measures is and consider a way to reach a consensus on taking the measures for the environmental issues.

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Many shipping global alliances have been formed after the formation of “The global alliance” in 1994.Reorganization has been repeated so far and will be in near future. In this research, at first we have carried out the data analysis and comparison examination on present big alliances. And then the formation factor of the present alliance has been considered. At last the directionality of these alliances has been considered from the viewpoint of economical efficiency and service.

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Supply of goods is indispensable in order for people to live in a city. The river freight transport by using boats was used to pick-up and deliver the goods and commodities from/to the large cities in the time without the railroad or the car. There is little what paid its attention to the logistics system in the conventional research although there was much research on development, a decline, a Kashi, and a ship of the river shipping. This study try to clarify the background of the development of the river freight transport system, to make clear the characteristics of the goods and commodities of the river transport and to analyze the locationa conditions of Kashi, from the view point of logistics in Edo period.

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At this article, it aims at the inventory performance of the company and proposes the method which measures logistics productivity/value indices and is possible to compare among the companies.
As a result of the measurement, a difference was seen to the size of the difference of the inventory performance by the category of business. And as for the category of business that the difference is big, the tendency that the difference of the firm performance becomes big was seen.

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According to “the freight area flow investigation”, the freight flow quantity in the Chugoku area is surpassing the present in 1999 and Okayama Prefecture is passing predominant Hiroshima Prefecture. Also, that Okayama Prefecture has begun to increase time and arrival freight together in that the whole freight flow quantity is a decreasing tendency is characteristic. Is it the one where this phenomenon is temporary or it is the inevitable one which is due to the change of the environment, it clarifies and it begins to find out the placing of Hiroshima Prefecture about the physical distribution in the Chugoku area.

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Many researches on the port logistics problem were carried out so far. In this paper, the problem has been classified to clarify the countermeasure in the future from the viewpoint of the port transportation entrepreneur. From the result of this classification and some case researches, it can be said that the problem is considered as small and medium-sized enterprise problem. At last, the forms of enterprise to survive and the strategy in the future are shown from the aspect of five economics.

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Now The Japanese firms are trying to reduce logistics cost to keep up the pace of re-construction trend. Meanwhile the accurate estimation of nationwide logistics cost is so difficult that only the few approaches have done. This paper tries to grasp total distribution cost including IT. Our estimation indicates that IT logistics cost amounts 8 billion dollars in the fiscal year 2000, and that total cost consist of about 10% of GDP.

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