Objectives, Educational Developments and Structure of the Book

Operations, logistics, and supply chains are essential enablers in a modern economy. At the same time, operational, logistics, and supply chain systems are changing fundamentally as a result of technological and societal developments, requiring both researchers as well as skilled professionals to rethink them and to incorporate new functionalities. This in turn poses new demands on the way vocational and academic learning, as well as on-the-job training programs for operations, logistics, and supply chain management are designed. This book is an attempt to serve students, researchers, and business practitioners by providing information and background material at various levels. In this introductory chapter, we discuss the scope and structure of the book. Reading this chapter is recommended to determine how to use the book in classroom lectures and seminars, gather background information or for studying specific topics. In each chapter, suggestions for further reading and resources for the growth of lateral and critical thinking are provided in order to spread the learning curve—sometimes even slightly beyond the operations, logistics, and supply chain management domain. Readers are encouraged to explore the additional material for their own development and to build general learning and research capacities.