A wide variety of electronic marketplace formats are used in the Truckload (TL) transportation industry, including combinatorial auctions, private and public exchanges, and electronic catalogs. Combinatorial multi‐attribute auctions are commonly used strategically to populate electronic catalogs, commonly called “routing guides,” with pricing, assignments, and priority logic. Private and public exchanges are used to complement the electronic catalogs in cases where the catalog fails. This paper discusses the TL transportation market, places the procurement of services in the context of electronic marketplace formats, and illustrates how these are currently used.

Logistics encompasses a complex set of activities which require a collection of metrics to adequately measure performance. Ideally, the performance metrics used should be selected and maintained as a system, so they complement and support each other and provide the decision makers with a well balanced picture of the logistics process. Often in practice, however, performance measurement systems are not formally managed or evaluated. The result is a performance measurement “system” where the interrelations between the metrics are not known, duplication is frequent, and omission is undetectable. This paper addresses this shortcoming by developing a set of evaluation criteria for logistics performance measurement systems and applying it in two case studies.

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Changes to the strategy, context or environment of a business unit may necessitate a revision of its supply chain strategy. However, rethinking a supply chain strategy is not an easy problem, and has no clear answer in the specialized literature. Some fundamental questions about supply chain strategizing -i.e., the process of doing supply chain strategy -have been largely ignored, while others have been answered with overly-simplistic typeand-match approaches of unclear validity. In this paper, we present a holistic approach to supply-chain strategizing, called Conceptual System Assessment and Reformulation (CSAR), we have developed through a series of collaborative management research projects over a decade. This paper presents the key ideas of CSAR, and explains how it can be used to capture, evaluate and reformulate the supply chain strategy of a business unit. We argue that these ideas can serve as a first step towards a theory of supply chain strategy. Finally, we demonstrate the practical merits of CSAR by presenting the case of a large world-class corporation that used the approach as a starting point for an initiative to rethink the supply chain strategy of most of its business units.Keywords: Supply chain strategy, strategizing, capture, evaluation, reformulation Acknowledgements:The authors thank our students Javier Martin, Leonardo Laranjeira, Daniel Mota and Manuel Rippel for the feedback they provided to early versions of this manuscript. AbstractChanges to the strategy, context or environment of a business unit may necessitate a revision of its supply chain strategy. However, rethinking a supply chain strategy is not an easy problem, and has no clear answer in the specialized literature. Some fundamental questions about supply chain strategizing-i.e., the process of doing supply chain strategy-have been largely ignored, while others have been answered with overlysimplistic type-and-match approaches of unclear validity. In this paper, we present a holistic approach to supply-chain strategizing, called Conceptual System Assessment and Reformulation (CSAR), we have developed through a series of collaborative management research projects over a decade. This paper presents the key ideas of CSAR, and explains how it can be used to capture, evaluate and reformulate the supply chain strategy of a business unit. We argue that these ideas can serve as a first step towards a theory of supply chain strategy. Finally, we demonstrate the practical merits of CSAR by presenting the case of a large world-class corporation that used the approach as a starting point for an initiative to rethink the supply chain strategy of most of its business units.