Abstract:
This thesis describes the development of heuristic guidelines to
aid logistics management in manufacturing industry, in this case
pharmaceutical manufacturers, to make decisions when faced with
the appraisal of alternative methods of operation. A number of
research suppositions are proposed which suggest that a more
formalised approach to decision making than is current practice
can be implemented in assessing the total logistics costs and
customer service implications of operations.
A study is made of existing research in logistics and related
areas, the pharmaceutical industry in general, and in particular
the logistics activities of pharmaceutical manufacturers and the
service requirements of their customers. A research programme is
devised whose primary purpose is to enable a comparison to be made
between the implications of the research suppositions and the
empirical data obtained by administering questionnaires to manufacturers and samples of customers.
A model of the decision making process is presented around the
framework of a cost-effectiveness analysis. A systems approach is
used to analyse a manufacturer's logistics operation, highlighting
as it does the interactive effects between logistics activities.
The research suppositions provide heuristic guidelines which relate
an activity's position on a manufacturer's material flow path to
that of the proposed change, and which assign service priorities
in terms of lead time to customer types. These guidelines serve
to decrease the number of considered interactions and, subsequently,
to reduce the complexity of the analysis.
A number of implications of the findings for manufacturing industry
in general, for pharmaceutical manufacturers in particular, and
for logistics research, are presented. Suggestions are also made
to aid any company wishing to apply its own logistics systems
analysis along the lines pursued in this study.
