Best Practices in Logistics and Supply Chain Managment The Case of Poland

The forces of giobalisation, technology and competition continue to redefine markets making it harder than ever for managers to rely on traditional con-cepts, approaches, techniques, methods or processes. In the current global economy of the 21 st century, where companies morę than ever arę being for^* ced to optimise their operations as a matter of survival, the term ”best practi-ce”gains morę relevance and morę interest from key management personne! every year. Best practices might be programs, initiatives, business processes or activi-ties with demonstrated ability to achieve superior results, that have been shown in practice to be the most effective and arę considered leading edge, or exceptional models for others to follow. The best practice cannot be an acceptance of mediocrity; it must be supported by an achievement of unique success, ensuring the company a competitive advantage and ability of achie-ving resutts which arę better than the competition. Using proven patterns as a base saves us from running into problems that others have already run into, and also prevents us from reinventing the wheel and wasting effort. It pays to work smart by leveraging on and building upon existing information or proven patterns to fit our need. The focus of this up-to-date book, written from an International perspective in an easy-to-read format, is on the best practices with special emphasis on those developed and implemented by companies acting within the Polish marketplace. It presents a good mix of theoretical overview of best practice phenomenon and real world case studtes based on first hand Polish expe-rience. It tries to summarise the current state of the art with respect to best practices for logistics and supply chain management. The underpinning of the theoreticai as well as case analyses contatned in this book is based on research work being undertaken by the Logistics Department at Warsaw School of Economics over recent years, especially on the statutory research project of the Collegium of Business Administration at WSE, and the BestLog project, initiated by the European Commission.