TEMPLE UNIVERSITY
MSOM 5156: Logistics and Supply Chain Management:
Tools, Strategy, and e-Business Issues
Fall 2009
Course Syllabus
Instructor:
Dr. Edward C. Rosenthal
Alter Hall, room 526
215.204.8177
edward.rosenthal@temple.edu
Prerequisite: MSOM 5001 (formerly MSOM 500) or equivalent.
Medium:
This course is offered on-line through the Blackboard (Bb) platform at
https://tuportal.temple.edu .
The student body is expected to be a mix of students primarily from the MBA online program and the MBA e-business program.
Instructional
Materials:
The primary materials used for this course are the following:

Text: Business Logistics/Supply Chain Management (5th edition, 2004) by
Ronald H. Ballou. Prentice Hall, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. ISBN: 0-13107659-0. To purchase this text, I suggest shopping around on the Internet
(prenhall.com, Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, etc.) Please beware:
you will need to use software (“LOGWARE”) that the publisher bundles
inside the shrink-wrapped book, so do not buy the book used unless you can
be guaranteed that the software CD comes with it (unless you can borrow it).

Class notes: by Edward C. Rosenthal, available for free from Bb. These 177
page notes draw on a wide variety of sources.

Software: (1.) LOGWARE which comes with the Ballou text;
(2.) Microsoft Excel (used occasionally).

Articles: We will refer to a large number of current sources (mostly student
input, see below). But there are two older articles that you will need to
download (or photocopy from a good library, e.g. Temple’s Paley library) and
read now. These are:
(1.) “Managing Supply Chain Inventory: Pitfalls and Opportunities” by Hau L.
Lee and Corey Billington, Sloan Management Review, Spring 1992, pp. 65-73.
(2.) “What Is the Right Supply Chain for Your Product” by Marshall L. Fisher,
Harvard Business Review, March-April 1997, pp. 105-116.
Homework: Read both of these articles at the very beginning of the course!
To get you started, I have posted the Lee/Billington article (pdf) in our
Blackboard Course Documents folder.

Student Input: Part of the reading material will be found by the students
from industry magazines (on the Web) and (less likely, but still OK) on CDROM databases, and electronically distributed via Blackboard. (More on this
below.)
Overview:
Logistics, according to the Council of Logistics Management (CLM), is “the
process of planning, implementing, and controlling the efficient, cost-effective flow and storage
of raw materials, in-process inventory, finished goods and related information from point of
origin to point of consumption for the purpose of conforming to customer requirements.” Let’s
extend this definition to include services. More casually, logistics is about getting the correct
things to the correct places at the correct times, while
Supply Chain Management (SCM) is the planning and controlling of the integration of
the supply, production, storage, distribution, and sales functions in the most efficient and costeffective manner to meet one’s service requirements.
Although these definitions sound similar, in much of the literature logistics has a tactical,
problem-solving focus while supply chain management is more strategically oriented. This
dichotomy will influence the structure of this course. The course is meant to be an introduction
to and survey of the various logistical and supply chain issues that today’s organizations must
address to remain competitive in a business climate increasingly shaped by information, speed,
and flexibility.
One major chunk of the course will treat tools to solve logistical problems. The toolbox
is a varied assortment of quantitative methods that address problems in distribution, inventory
management, purchasing, warehousing, and customer service. This, roughly speaking, will be
the logistics part.
Another large portion of the course will address the strategic, integrative issues of the
supply chain, like information exchange, buyer-supplier relationships, distribution strategies,
outsourcing decisions, cycle time reduction, and strategic alliances. This is essentially the SCM
part.
Finally, there will be constant emphasis on how the topics we cover either remain vital or
else are being re-directed due to the impact of the Internet and other new technologies. As the
global economy gets more competitive and information is exchanged widely and
instantaneously, effective logistics and supply chain management are being recognized as the last
frontier (outside of technological innovation and new product development) in which
organizations can achieve significant improvements. A major objective of this course is to keep
abreast of how logistics and SCM impact on and are being impacted by e-business.
Objectives: To repeat what appears just above, one objective of this course is to apprise
students of the e-impact on SCM and conversely, on how SCM is growing more important as
more organizations embrace e-business. The overarching objective, though, is that through this
introduction to and survey of the field, students learn what today’s issues in logistics and SCM
are and how they are treated. That is, I expect the students not only to grasp what typical
logistics and SCM problem areas are, but also to become familiar and competent with some of
the analysis tools that managers use to address these problems. It is this competency with tools
that, I believe, provides students in this course value added beyond the knowledge that may be
gained simply by reading various nontechnical books on the subject that cover issues broadly but
dispense with the depth that quantitative analysis provides.
Course Requirements and Grading:



There will be one tools exam, worth 40% of the course grade. This exam will cover the
quantitative techniques we cover throughout the course. It will be done individually as a
“take home,” problem-oriented exam and submitted electronically.
There will be a paper, worth 40% of the course grade. This paper will focus on one or more
specific topics in logistics and SCM and will detail, either for a specific company or industry,
how the emergence of new technologies (such as, but not restricted to) the Internet have
affected the way the logistics and SCM problems are handled. The paper will emphasize the
“before-and after” nature of the managerial approaches. That is, the paper will demonstrate
how the newer management practices outperform the older practices (faster, cheaper, etc.)
Twenty percent of each course grade will depend on the student’s input. This input will
center on e-business logistics developments. Students will search websites (e.g. media sites
such as the New York Times Online, Wall Street Journal, online periodicals at sites like
www.manufacturing.net, www.cio.com, www.apics.org, www.industryweek.com etc.) as
well as CD-ROM databases for up-to-date articles that focus on impact on logistics and SCM
brought about by the dynamism of today’s increasingly global and information-technological
business climate. The students will not only locate and submit articles, but will also provide
short critiques on the impact of the new developments. The submitted articles will be
uploaded to the “Article Submission Board” arena under the “Communication/Discussion
Board” links in Blackboard. Other input that will impact on the grade includes submissions
to a separate “Weekly Chat” board also found under Bb’s “Communication/Discussion
Board”.
Note: There will be three (3) such critiques per student for the course. That is, each class
member is required to submit a (new and different!) media article to the Bb course site every
few weeks (according to the timeline below) along with a short summary/critique. The more
noteworthy such articles will be discussed. I will provide a couple of sample
summary/critiques and some more guidance so that people know what I am looking for.
Article/critique submission schedule:
Submission 1: anytime during weeks 3  5 of course
Submission 2: anytime during weeks 6  8 of course
Submission 3: anytime during weeks 9 – 12 of course.
Course Timetable and Weekly Topic Coverage
First, a note: For each topic I give the corresponding chapters in Ballou. We will not cover
everything in the listed text chapters. I suggest that you read the text and class notes in parallel.
However, with respect to the text, emphasize the material that corresponds to that in the class
notes, and de-emphasize the rest. This will reinforce your understanding and allow you to spend
less time on the topics in the text that are not covered in the class notes.
Week 1: Begins Mon. Aug. 31. Introduction to the course. Dissemination of course materials,
including course notes and foundation journal articles (from the 1990’s) on logistics and SCM.
The role of logistics. Logistics activities and strategies. Discussion of Enterprise Resource
Planning (ERP) and what logistics and SCM functions ERP will and will not subsume.
Text: Ballou, chapters 1 and 2;
Articles: Lee and Billington; Fisher.
Week 2:
The logistics product and customer service. Product characteristics. The 80-20
curve and ABC inventory classification. Pricing of the logistics product (geographic, f.o.b.,
zone, incentive pricing, etc.). Customer service issues and cost/benefit tradeoffs.
Text: Ballou, chapters 3 and 4.
Week 3:
Order processing and information systems. The customer order cycle: order
preparation, transmittal, entry, filling (including priorities and scheduling), and delivery. The
logistics information system. EDI systems, bar-coding, and point-of-sale data.
Text: Ballou, chapter 5.
Week 4 :
Transport fundamentals. Transportation modes and costs (rail, air, containers,
TL, LTL, U.S. and int’l.). Transport cost characteristics and rate profiles. Determination of
freight charges. Special service charges.
Text: Ballou, chapter 6.
Weeks 5 and 6 :
Transport decision analysis. Network design options. Transport choice
evaluation. Network analysis. Vehicle routing and scheduling. Introduction to the LOGWARE
software.
Text: Ballou, chapter 7.
Weeks 7 and 8 :
Inventory management. Advantages and disadvantages of holding stock.
Pull and push inventory systems. Review of EOQ models. Demand patterns, single period
demand, and EOQ models with uncertain demand. Inventory cost breakdowns. Turnover,
consolidation, 3PL issues, and e-business.
Ballou, chapter 9.
Week 9 :
Purchasing and procurement. Leveraging purchase cost savings. Buyer-supplier
relationships. MRP. Quantity and other discounts. Ordering with variability in lead time. epurchasing: B2B marketplaces vs. TQM long-term partnership approach.
Text: Ballou, chapter 10.
Week 10 :
Warehousing. Storage system functions and alternatives. Location issues and
analysis. Site selection. Center-of-gravity approach. Warehouse network table. Warehouse
size/dimension issues, space (capacity) and configuration. Cost concerns. Stock location and
order-picking strategies. Public vs. private warehousing.
Text: Ballou, chapters 11,12, and 13.
Week 11:
TOOLS EXAM. The “tools” (quantitative methods) exam will be a take-home
exam that is to be worked on and submitted during this week (in early November). In addition to
this, students will work on the term paper (due in week 15, a.k.a. “finals week”).
Weeks 12, 13, and 14: Strategic issues in supply chain management. Design for logistics.
Postponement. Demand management. The bullwhip effect. Customer-supplier relationships
and alliances. International features of SCM. There will be extra time during these weeks to
research and write the term paper (a 7 – 10 page paper on emergence of new technologies and
their impact on logistics and SCM).
Week 15:
Term paper due Monday, December 14.
Finally, note that I will be communicating regularly with you via Blackboard announcements and
e-mailings.