Logistics Revolution Research Articles

Intelligent warehouse space optimization using convolutional neural networks

In the era of rapid digital transformation, global commerce and its intricately woven supply chains face unprecedented demands and challenges. As businesses strive to meet the ever-expanding consumer expectations, the spotlight is increasingly on warehouses - the vital nodes of these supply chains. Warehousing, once considered a mere storage facility, is now at the epicenter of a logistical revolution, with the quest for optimized space and streamlined operations becoming paramount. Amidst this evolving paradigm, the present research delves deep into the capabilities of Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), an advanced machine learning construct, examining its potential to redefine warehousing strategies. Delving into the intricate architecture of CNNs, we explore their robustness in analyzing and interpreting spatial relationships, a skillset inherently suited for space optimization tasks. This paper aims not just to present the technological prowess of CNNs, but to showcase how their integration could mark a paradigm shift in the warehousing domain, paving the way for smarter, more efficient storage solutions in an increasingly digital world.

Postcapitalist Planning and Urban Revolution

Through what kind of spaces might postcapitalist planning emerge? How will the process of wresting collective control over the relations of production and reproduction, and over our metabolic exchange with the rest of nature, unfold through struggle? In seeking answers to such questions, this article reviews the literature on democratic economic planning beyond capitalism and makes the case for a renewed engagement with issues of space and the urban through a closer reading of Henri Lefebvre’s work on planetary urbanization and the production of space. We argue that, to date, the economic planning literature has tended to focus on overcoming abstract labour time rather than abstract space – an oversight that prevents us from fully apprehending the urban form through which capitalism produces and reproduces its conditions of possibility and carries the seeds of its own destruction and potential supersession. Engaging with recent critical theorizing on the logistics revolution and the logistical state, we argue that postcapitalist forms of planning will arrive through an urban revolution, through struggles over urban everyday life. We suggest that future investigations into the possibilities for a democratic economic planning beyond capitalism should attend to actually existing empirical struggles over the urban – as the mediator of capitalist relations – and look for inspiration to historical and contemporary examples of municipalist praxis aiming to reinvent the commune.

Evolution of Military Logistics

Background: Military logistics has been present from the moment a soldier was created, and its evolution has been influenced by the technology used. Indeed, it has been observed over time that every military revolution was intrinsically caused by a military logistics revolution, directly promoted by the technology applied to the manner of making war. Few papers have been written about military logistics in relation to the development of war itself. Its application was conceptualized in two dimensions: as an art and as a science, interdependent on decision-making. With the evolution of human beings, the way of making war also evolved and therefore a transformation was generated. This makes it necessary to deepen the application of mathematical modeling, statistics, and new technologies in military logistics, promoting the application of concepts based on technology to improve the effectiveness of armies. The aim of this paper is to review the evolution of military logistics. Methods: A systematic approach to the literature review is followed. The backgrounds of the military logistics thought, key authors, trends and a new definition of military logistics is presented, among others. Results: The findings allow us to identify a set of 21 definitions of military logistics since 1792.

Fossil food: landed property as a hidden abode of global warming

This article analyzes the relation between climate change and the globalization of food systems. Although the corporate food regime made possible by the logistics revolution has been deemed highly intensive in its use of fossil fuels, the political economy of its energy foundations is yet to be deciphered. Based on EDGAR-FOOD, a global database that measures carbon emissions in the food system, we built a sample of nine South American economies to assess the extent to which capital mobility triggers emissions across different sectors. Findings from our study reveal that although food distribution was the most dynamic sector during the period in assessment, land-based emissions remained overwhelmingly larger in absolute terms. This, the paper concludes, highlights the definitive role that landed property – and the structural heterogeneity of agrarian capitalism more broadly – performs in the politics of carbon emissions. Accordingly, our findings lay bare a hidden abode of heterogeneous relations of production – chief of which are unpaid work, petty commodity production, and rent – that lies at the basis of a polarizing, hierarchically-structured international division of labor.

Coercion, Consent, and Class Consciousness: How Workers Respond to Amazon’s Production Regime

Although the “logistics revolution” has powerfully transformed contemporary capitalism, little is known about how logistics workers view such changes. To address this gap, the authors explore how Amazon’s labor practices shape workers’ orientations toward their jobs and class positions. Using a mixture of in-depth interviews and survey data, the authors find that Amazon’s production regime has contradictory effects on workers’ orientations. Digital surveillance augments managerial coercion, fostering an alienated relation toward work and a heightened sense of exploitation. Yet the company’s ability to hire precariously situated workers supplies it with workers who clearly consent to such labor practices. These results underscore the duality of managerial regimes among warehouse workers and begin to explain the ordeal of union formation, as workers adopt sharply distinct views of the working conditions they confront.

Situational Awareness for Autonomous Ships in the Arctic: mMTC Direct-to-Satellite Connectivity

The maritime autonomous surface ship (MASS) promises a revolution in naval logistics by offering sustainability, safety, and operational costs reduction. The MASS can bring to the Arctic and other hard-to-reach regions numerous social and economic benefits, thus contributing to equalizing access for human and machine terminals to connectivity, and equate the life quality of their inhabitants with that of other regions. In this article, we suggest a hybrid communication architecture that separates a ship's data traffic into awareness and emergency components. For the former traffic, we advocate the possibility of direct-to-satellite using massive machine-type communication (mMTC) and low-power wide-area network (LPWAN) technologies. To validate this hypothesis and investigate the potential performance and effect of different design and configuration parameters, we conduct simulations based on real-life positions of ships and satellites, traffic patterns, and the LoRaWAN connectivity model. Our results demonstrate the suggested approach's feasibility and clarify the different parameters' effects on the connectivity performance for the classical LoRa and novel long-range frequency hopping spread spectrum modulation coding schemes. Notably, the combination of multi-connectivity of LoRaWAN LPWAN technology and multi-satellite visibility dramatically boosts the probability of packet delivery.

Analysis of the Challenges of Artificial Intelligence of Things (AIoT) for the Smart Supply Chain (Case Study: FMCG Industries).

In today’s competitive world, supply chain management is one of the fundamental issues facing businesses that affects all an organization’s activities to produce products and provide services needed by customers. The technological revolution in supply chain logistics is experiencing a significant wave of new innovations and challenges. Despite the current fast digital technologies, customers expect the ordering and delivery process to be faster, and as a result, this has made it easier and more efficient for organizations looking to implement new technologies. “Artificial Intelligence of Things (AIoT)”, which means using the Internet of Things to perform intelligent tasks with the help of artificial intelligence integration, is one of these expected innovations that can turn a complex supply chain into an integrated process. AIoT innovations such as data sensors and RFID (radio detection technology), with the power of artificial intelligence analysis, provide information to implement features such as tracking and instant alerts to improve decision making. Such data can become vital information to help improve operations and tasks. However, the same evolving technology with the presence of the Internet and the huge amount of data can pose many challenges for the supply chain and the factors involved. In this study, by conducting a literature review and interviewing experts active in FMCG industries as an available case study, the most important challenges facing the AIoT-powered supply chain were extracted. By examining these challenges using nonlinear quantitative analysis, the importance of these challenges was examined and their causal relationships were identified. The results showed that cybersecurity and a lack of proper infrastructure are the most important challenges facing the AIoT-based supply chain.

When cities meet platforms: Towards a trans-urban approach

This paper focusses on the impact that the development and spreading of digital platforms have at urban level. In particular, lean platforms are transforming cities more and more in sites of production and circulation, so to change also actors and roles engaged with urban planning and public policies. Despite we will propose an investigation on a particular service, neither the analysis of a general process shared by all platforms, in the article we will investigate the socio-historical background for platform economy development more in general, in order to propose a methodological approach we call a trans-urban approach.In the first part of the article, we rest on the historical background of our digital era. Analysing the relation between technological innovation and productive organization, we will highlight how platform economy emerges as particular articulation of a more general long-time transition deeply entangled with the so-called “Logistics Revolution”. In the second part, we will consider more in depth the specificities of platform business model in relation with its urban dimension focusing on the platforms territorialization and on platforms conflicts. In the third and final part, we propose a trans-urban approach as an innovative perspective to study the globalized and variegated features of contemporary capitalism, in particular the urban impact of platform economy.The aim is to sketch few features of a new methodological approach towards the urban space as field of tension between several and different perspectives generated by the development of platform economy.This article summarizes some first outputs from Horizon2020 project PLUS (Platform.Labour in Urban Spaces) coordinated by University of Bologna.

A INFLUÊNCIA DA INDÚSTRIA 4.0 NA LOGÍSTICA AUTOMOTIVA

Industry 4.0 signifies a major revolution in automotive logistics, driven by the digitalization and automation of industrial processes. This article analyzes the definition and evolution of Industry 4.0, highlighting its core principles and the technologies that underpin it, such as the Internet of Things (IoT), Big Data, and Artificial Intelligence (AI). The application of these technologies offers numerous benefits in automotive logistics, including real-time traceability, predictive analytics for supply chain optimization, and automation of operations through collaborative robotics. Additionally, the article explores innovative trends shaping the future of automotive logistics, such as the integration of autonomous vehicles into the supply chain, the use of 3D printing for parts manufacturing, and the development of smart warehouses. These advancements not only enhance efficiency and reduce costs but also create new business opportunities and operational models. However, the implementation of Industry 4.0 in automotive logistics faces significant challenges, including data security issues and the need for workforce training. The article includes case studies, such as that of Tesla, which exemplify success in the practical integration of these technologies. In conclusion, the article reflects on the future prospects of automotive logistics, emphasizing that the ongoing adoption of Industry 4.0 technologies will be crucial for competitiveness and innovation within the sector.

The Turbulent Circulation of Rent: Towards a Political Economy of Property and Ownership in Supply Chain Capitalism

AbstractAlthough recent years have seen an efflorescence of research on rent, the emphasis has tended to be placed in the antagonistic relations of distribution that underlie this category. The ways in which rent relations also mediate the expansion of global networks of production and trade, however, are yet to be deciphered. On the other hand, an emerging scholarly interest in questions of logistics and supply chain capitalism has lacked a systematic theorisation of how increasing functional integration in the world economy shapes—and is also shaped by—rent relations. To bridge this gap, this article explores the complex, convoluted relation between property and the social circulation of capital in and beyond land markets. With this, we place into focus the extent to which the logistics revolution has elevated the importance of property relations—and thereby of the rentier class—in the dynamics of accumulation and political conflict under late‐stage capitalism.

Green Purchase and Logistics in the Hungarian Tourism and Hospitality

Green logistics has its origin in the mid-1980s and characterizes logistics systems and approaches that use advanced technology and equipment to minimize environmental damage during operations. The relationship between green logistics and tourism is a less researched topic. In our opinion, Hungary lags in green procurement in the tourism industry. The development plans of the Hungarian Tourism Agency include that by 2030 country will receive 50 million foreign guests, and the number of participants in domestic tourism will double. The tourism industry will account for 16% of GDP by the end of the decade, and 16% of the employed will also work in tourism hospitality. Hungary has also undertaken to make our economy carbon-neutral by 2030, but in the field of tourism and hospitality, only the larger hotel chains have started in this direction; the lag among small and medium-sized enterprises is still very large. Europe’s largest hotel chain, the Accor Group, is leading by example in the field of green transformation, but procurement logistics still seems unresolved. However, the 4.0 revolution in industry and logistics is also increasingly circulating in tourism, as evidenced by this study results. The authors tried to analyze the situation of green logistics in Hungary with the phasing questions. Data for analysis were collected through a questionnaire survey. The participants in this survey belong to the young age group, and their education is higher than average. It was found that the young age group has already grown up knowing the importance of environmental protection. More than 90% of young people are interested in environmental protection or are doing it in some form. Overall, thinking about carbon neutral operation is positive, but this doesn’t seem to impact the buying decision process.

Just-in-Time Imperialism: The Logistics Revolution and the Vietnam War

In this article, I argue that an important yet understudied consequence of the Vietnam War was an imperial turn toward modern logistics management. Drawing on archival documents collected from the National Archives and Records Administration, I track how the U.S. military and the U.S. Agency for International Development increasingly championed logistics management as a way of solving some of the “frictional” supply problems that threatened to paralyze the transnational war effort in South Vietnam. As part of this process, imperial agents cobbled together various infrastructures of supply and provision into a broader, more complex system for managing the transpacific flow of life-sustaining and life-eliminating commodities between the United States and South Vietnam. In this way, the Vietnam War served the U.S. empire-state as an experimental laboratory for repurposing logistics from a capitalist science of economic management into an imperial technology of rule and pacification.

Internet of Things (IoT) in logistics

The fourth industrial revolution (Industry 4.0) provides completely new resources to qualitatively change the way businesses and supply chains operate. This paper discusses one of the new technologies known as the Internet of Things (IoT) which has, along with other technologies of the fourth industrial revolution, such as artificial intelligence, cloud computing, “Big data”, a unique potential that can cause significant changes in the world. IoT allows businesses to use innovative services more quickly, with less risk. Russia goes behind European countries in the development of the logistics industry, which shows the necessity for innovative methods of management and control of delivery flows. Due the problems in the development of informatization of the logistics sector in Russia and the global trend of transition to a digital economy, the authors considered it relevant to study foreign experience. The Internet of Things guarantees a massive revolution in logistics over the next decade. This creates new business benefits by minimizing the price of device components, increasing the speed of wireless networks, and expanding the ability to receive data on the network. Work focuses on the implementation of IoT in logistics, real-world examples of the use among transport companies and perspectives for the development of new technology.

Conceptualising the quiet revolution: the post-Fordist revolution in western military logistics

ABSTRACT There is growing evidence that simultaneous to the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA), a less obvious, but equally profound, Revolution in Military Logistics (RML) has occurred that shapes and underpins western military effectiveness. However, there has been no conceptualisation of this RML nor its wider effect on Western force structures. This article addresses this gap in the security literature. Using an interdisciplinary literature review and case studies, it makes two central contributions: first, it details how western military logistics systems and practises have transformed following post-Fordist principles in the last two decades. In doing so, second, it contributes a major new conceptual framework to the military logistics and security studies literature. Finally, the implications of these processes for military effectiveness are examined, with the conclusion asserting that the cumulative effect of this post-Fordist RML has potentially increased western militaries’ strategic vulnerability.

‘Women’s Work’ in Indonesia’s Social Media-based Online Store Business: Social Reproduction and the Feminization of Work

This paper seeks to analyze ‘women’s work’ in Indonesia’s online shop businesses by looking at the forms of work that emerge in those businesses. This paper employs qualitative research methods by using transcribed in-depth interviews with 20 informants from six cities in Indonesia. By looking at flexibility as the defining characteristic of exploitation under platform capitalism, home as the central working space in the social media-based online store, and the ongoing process of feminization of work in the online business sector, this study advances two claims. First, the intersection between platform capitalism and logistics revolution in the online shop business has created new forms of work. Second, the social media-based online store, which is mostly operated by women, shows that flexibility and feminization of work under platform capitalism have direct impacts on the lives of the female business operators and their work. A closer look at the emergence of online stores also reveals how social reproduction work shapes ‘women’s work’ in the online business

Circulating Violence and Value

In recent years, a new critical scholarship and movement organi-zation that is adopting the lens of logistics has emerged, marked by a profound interdisciplinarity. Powerful voices from a wide spectrum of radical theoretical and political commitments are delineating critical logistics as a field of vitality. This dialogue with Deborah Cowen sums up and expands some of the main interpretative lines of research and action in logistics by insisting on the ways that the revolution in logistics has reshaped work and the conditions of work for those in positions or occupations that may not seem immediately logistical, including quite centrally, in the production process, which Cowen suggests are inextricable from logistics today. However, logistics is a paradigm that cannot be reduced to the mode of production in a classical meaning. Logistics enables us to understand peculiar forms of racialization, social reproduction, and social difference, along with geopolitical dynamics. In fact, logistics is a specific character of contemporary forms of power, and struggles over logistics and its infrastructures are imperial and tied to conflicts over land and livelihoods in a much broader frame, as well as impossibly entangled, as they are all concerned with the power to define who or what moves, where, when, and how. Therefore, logistics can be framed as a complex and productive multifaceted lens through which a new critical comprehension of actual dynamics needs to be framed and deepened.

Innovative solutions for the wine sector: The role of startups

The economic globalisation has opened new pathways for commerce and triggered a logistical revolution, which in turn has produced enormous technological innovations. In this context, the role of startups is becoming increasingly crucial since they are positioning themselves as innovation enablers among large and small companies. Between these innovations, IoT, Big Data Analytics and Blockchain can be used in various domains, among which the logistics of the whole wine supply chain. Here we will consider some of the issues and needs that arise in this market sector, showing how Wenda – a startup born in Bologna in February 2015 that works to improve sustainability and traceability in Food & Beverage supply chains – has been able to leverage IoT, Big Data Analytics and Blockchain to empower the wine supply chain with solutions that enable wine traceability throughout the distribution and the after-buying-in preservation and commercialisation phases.

Labour and the contradictory logic of logistics

Since the early 1980s, the way in which goods and materials are exchanged and moved has changed in what has been called the ‘logistics revolution'. In the USA, the value of goods moved as freight has doubled since the late 1990s, the number of warehouses has grown by two-and-a-half times, while the amount carried by intermodal transport has grown by five times over these years. This article will argue that the system of logistics that has taken shape in the last two or three decades is deeply affected by contradictions inherent in capitalism that magnify the potential power of labour to disrupt supply chains. Among these are: the tension between the desire for the seamless movement of goods and the disruptive reality of competition and the fight for value appropriation up and down the supply chain; the push by both retailers and manufacturers for ever faster delivery of goods to market; the burden of high fixed costs that underlie the structure of contemporary logistics; and the growth of huge ‘logistics clusters’ concentrating tens of thousands of manual workers in important metropolitan areas. It will be argued that each of these contradictions renders the firms in these logistics networks highly vulnerable to worker actions. While such actions have been relatively rare so far, community-based pre-union organising in some major clusters, such as Chicago, is laying the basis for a future upsurge in worker organisation.

The Georgian logistics revolution: questioning seamlessness across the New Silk Road

Georgia, the post-Soviet republic in the South Caucasus, is undergoing its own logistics revolution. The government has pledged to complete by 2020 a spatial plan which aims to turn the country into a transit corridor for the New Silk Road. While this development is still underway, logistics zones - infrastructural hubs, free industrial zones (FIZ), manufacturing areas and malls - are emerging across the Georgian space. The New Silk Road initiative is promoting a perspective of a world without barriers, where logistics is not a means but an end: a world in which connectivity is productive in itself and where geopolitical reasoning has succumbed to geoeconomic calculations. This article aims at problematising this view by providing a grounded analysis of the workings of logistical spaces in Georgia, exploring the discourses, frictions and histories which engender capital accumulation within and beyond the Georgian space.

Unfree shipping: the racialisation of logistics labour

The logistics revolution has transformed the ways that goods are produced and transported around the world, producing numerous deleterious outcomes for workers, including the deterioration of wages and labour standards, attacks on unions, and the increase of precarious contingent labour conditions. A related, yet underexplored, process related to the logistics revolution has been the role of racialisation in further amplifying the deterioration of working conditions across the global supply chain. In this context, this article explores how the racialisation of labour impacts logistics workers in the greater Los Angeles metropolitan region. Drawing on case studies of low-wage, non-union Latinx workers in the warehouse and port trucking industries of Southern California, I argue that racialisation has accelerated the negative labour impacts related to the logistics revolution across these sectors.