Title: Estimating opportunities for errors in multimodal logistics system in global business

Authors: Deepankar Sinha

Addresses: Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, Kolkata Campus, Madurdah, Kolkata, 700107, India

Abstract: Global trade has greater complexity than domestic business as it involves multiple stages, multiple activities, and stakeholders in each stage. The author in this paper estimates around 13 stages in global movement with 67 activities involving 22 stakeholders. The errors in each stage affect the flows, leading to an increase in pipeline inventory. This increase impacts the inventory turnover ratio, and earlier authors, in their studies, focused on forecasting errors and or information errors affecting a firm's supply chain. Some authors have attempted to suggest ways of implementing Six Sigma in supply chain management. There is very little evidence of estimation of opportunities for errors. This paper attempts to answer the research question - how can the error in the multimodal global logistic chain be estimated? The sub-questions answered are: 1) what causes errors? Or how many opportunities for errors exist?; 2) what is the causality between the errors?

Keywords: multimodal logistics; global business; opportunities for errors; estimation of errors; coordination; Six Sigma; defects per million opportunities; containerised goods.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSOM.2024.136853

International Journal of Services and Operations Management, 2024 Vol.47 No.2, pp.256 - 275

Accepted: 01 Nov 2021
Published online: 22 Feb 2024 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article