Framing the future: sme logistics service providers and scenario planning

Abstract

In recent years, the transport industry has encountered numerous challenges. It experienced strong growth, but also many uncertainties. In many cases, logistics service providers were forced to change their strategy. So, the question for logistics service providers arises “how to deal best with uncertainties?” We build a hypothesis on the question how SME logistics service providers had been dealing with the uncertainties and developments they had been faces with. In order to test this hypothesis, we questioned 13 SME logistics providers from the Dutch region of Nijmegen on their policies how to cope with the near future. Our initial impression was that they tackled these problems mainly on a day to day basis. That proved not to be true. But our research shows that they are aware of the changing environment and but do not translate this into targets which makes it difficult to be prepared for such occasions. Another finding is that SME logistics service providers want to give scenario planning an important role to determine their strategy.