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The development and advancement of human civilization have led it to its next great step - the exploration and colonization of outer space. Humans have had a continuous presence in outer space for more than twenty years, but until now, this was on the level of individual, isolated space missions. Reaching the cosmic level of civilization requires the planning and development of sustainable, long-lasting systems of space logistics. Previous scientific literature did not define the space logistics system adequately, nor did it identify the key elements and stakeholders/participants of such systems. The contribution of this article is in providing an encompassing definition of space logistics, the definition of space logistics system structure, and the role of different categories of logistics centres in its planning and development. The article provides a brief literature review in the domain of all types of human activities that take place in outer space and relates them with the realization of logistics processes to support those activities. Based on that, the main processes and functions that would take place in space logistics systems are defined, which dictate the emergence of diverse, specialized categories of space logistics centres. The identification and planning of appropriate space logistics cetres categories impacts the development directions and patterns of sustainable space logistics systems and enables the spatial integration of systems that cover enormous geographical dimensions and distances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Procurement logistics stands out as one of the basic sectors in a logistics company. The other sectors in a company depend on procurement as it can cause downtime and delays that affect the entire company. In addition to the impact on the company itself, procurement can also have an impact on end-users, given that efficient procurement is one of the factors of competitiveness. One of the basic tasks of procurement logistics is the selection of suppliers. For this reason, the aim of this paper was to propose approaches based on AHP-QFD and ANP-QFD methodology in order to select suppliers. On that occasion, the evaluation of three suppliers was performed by applying eight criteria (price, product quality, on-time delivery, location, communication, reliability, flexibility, and reputation). The results of the application of the described methodologies also showed a different ranking of suppliers depending on the chosen methodology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The number and spatial dispersion of households and their resources (means of transport, storage space, human resources, etc.), a large number of daily trips of various motives (shopping, work, school, tourism, waste disposal, etc.), makes households important participants in logistics chains. Moreover, these features make them potentially very important providers of logistics services of delivery, storage, waste collection, etc., both for other households and for companies. The use of logistics services, resources of households, i.e. individuals, known as crowd logistics, is experiencing rapid development with the advent of numerous networks and applications, through which users connect with each other and get the opportunity to state and accept requests for logistics tasks. In this paper, the role of households in the performance of logistics demands of other households and companies is analyzed and the basic crowd logistics services are structured, with special reference to the services in the last mile of the supply chain. Also, the basic benefits were identified, as well as the disadvantages, problems and challenges in the application of this concept. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of intermodal transport (IT) systems is one of the global and European imperatives with the goal of mitigating logistics activities (especially transportation) negative impact on the environment, but also to improve the efficiency of logistics systems. Despite its importance acknowledged long ago, the treatment of IT greatly varies in different countries. In the developed countries, IT has an institutional character and clearly defined development directions, while in the developing countries, the problems of IT in most cases are ignored. The main scientific contribution of this paper is in being the first one to assess the status of IT in the countries of the Danube region. Seven criteria and six evaluation scenarios, that were not present in the existing literature in this form, are defined, which represents another contribution of the paper. The criteria are defined so that they would include the treatment of IT in strategic documents, the opinions of users and service providers, but also empirical/ statistical indicators of IT development degree. The evaluation scenarios differ in the criteria significance and the aspect of the problem. A novel hybrid multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) model, based on fuzzy SWARA and fuzzy MARCOS methods, is developed for the assessment, which represents an additional scientific contribution of the paper. According to IT results, the countries are grouped into five categories, micro-regions. The results indicate that with the degree of economic development the status of IT improves as well, so Germany and Austria are leading, followed by the Czech Republic, then by countries such as Hungary, Slovenia and Slovakia, while other countries fall behind greatly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]