Supporting Organisational Decisions for Logistics: the Logistic Configurations – Interfirm Coordination Decision Support Model

This paper concerns the organisational problems relevant to logistics. The paper is centred on organisational problems regarding the organisational structure variables and the coordination techniques involved in the management of typical activities in logistics. This paper, after analysing the literature and scanning the evolution of the principal approaches used to study logistics in organisational configurations, proposes an interpretation based on the suggestion of connecting the organisational configuration of logistics with the interfirm coordination referred to suppliers and customers. The Methodology is introduced as the “Logistic Configurations – Interfirm Coordination” Decision Support Model. This Model is useful for supporting decisions regarding the design of the coordination modalities and the design of the organisational structure for logistics. The proposed Model has been tested and confirmed by the real case-study analysis conducted on some successful business cases in Italy.