A decision support system for strategic issues management of logistics

The strategic importance of logistics is steadily increasing and thus formal approaches to logistics planning is needed. A typical logistics strategic planning process is periodical and usually lacks the ability to cope with changes in the operating environment. In this paper, the authors present a framework for logistics strategic management where a strategic planning process is integrated with a continuous strategic issues management process. They develop a decision support system based on the Analytical Hierarchy Process that forms the basis for a systematic and flexible strategic issues management process. The proposed DSS supports the following main phases in strategic issues management: the analysis of the impacts of the identified strategic issues and determination of the actions to be taken by an organisation in response to the strategic issues.