Determining the impacts of time-based logistics strategies in the Dutch food industry

The trend towards logistics acceleration and increasing time-sensitivity can be discerned in numerous industry sectors. The associated logistics concepts are called time-based strategies. In this paper, the logistics impacts of these strategies are analysed on the basis of case studies within the Dutch food industry and parts services industry. The aim of these case studies was to make an objective assessment of what actually changed as a consequence of the emergence of time-based strategies. As part of the case study research design, so-called conjoint analyses were carried out to measure and quantify the sensitivity of case study companies for several logistics decision variables. The conjoint analyses showed that time-based companies are generally far more sensitive to reliability of operations than to any other logistics performance criterion.