The results indicate that educating companies in both the long and short-term benefits would encourage the adoption and application of e- procurement. Critical success factors identified within the study include adequate financial support, availability of interoperability and standards with traditional communication systems, top management support and commitment, understanding the priorities of the company and having suitable security systems. These factors are arguably generalizable to e-procurement adoption in other regions and environmental contexts.
A growing trend in logistics is the consideration of ‘closing-the-loop’. Managing product returns is an important dimension of this emerging trend. Traditionally, product returns have been viewed as an unavoidable cost of doing business, forfeiting any chance of cost savings. As cost pressures continue to mount in the competitive logistics industry, a growing number of 3PLs have begun to explore the possibility of managing product returns in a more cost-efficient manner. However, few studies have addressed the problem of determining the number and location of repair facilities where returned products from retailers or end- customers were inspected, repaired and refurbished for re-distribution. To fill the void in this area of research, ‘‘The Dynamic Design of a Reverse Logistics Network from the Perspective of Third- Party Logistics Service Providers’’, by Min and Ko proposes a mixed-integer programming model and a genetic algorithm that can solve the reverse logistics problem involving the location and allocation of repair facilities for 3PLs. The usefulness of the proposed model and algorithm was validated by its application to an illustrative example encountering 3PLs offering value-added services.