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This article has been withdrawn as it was published elsewhere and accidentally duplicated. The original article can be seen here: 10.1108/eb014263. When citing the article, please cite: BERNARD J. LA LONDE, JOHN R. GRABNER, JAMES F. ROBESON, (1971), “Integrated distribution systems: a management perspective”, International Journal of Physical Distribution, Vol. 1 Iss: 1, pp. 43 - 49.

The notion that a firm's total costs could be reduced, customer service improved, and interdepartmental conflicts substantially reduced if distribution activities were more closely co‐ordinated and centrally programmed, has emerged as an important concept in physical distribution and marketing. This concept has become known as “integrated physical distribution management” and has attracted the interest of practitioners and academicians alike. The National Council of Physical Distribution, an association of more than 2,000 distribution executives and educators, defines physical distribution management as: “Physical distribution management is the term describing the integration of two or more activities for the purpose of planning, implementing and controlling the efficient flow of raw materials, in‐process inventory and finished goods from point of origin to point of consumption. These activities may include, but are not limited to, customer service, demand forecasting, distribution communications, inventory control, material handling, order processing, parts and service support, plant and warehouse site selection, procurement, packaging, return goods handling, salvage and scrap disposal, traffic and transportation, and warehousing and storage.” NCPDM Revised Version—1976 This concept of tying together a number of distribution activities and viewing the result as a system represents an “integration” of the traditionally fragmented physical distribution management function.

The paper focuses on three main issues. First, an attempt is made to define more clearly alternative approaches to the development of integrated distribution systems. There follows a discussion of some of the primary reasons or causes for increased management interest in effective distribution during the 1950s and 1960s.

In recent years, the problem of transporting small shipments of general freight by motor carrier within an urban centre has surfaced to be, in the words of a Traffic World editorial, “the most important US transportation problem of the 1960s”. The chairman of the Transportation Association of America's Transport Technology Committee recently concluded, “Our metropolitan areas are being strangled by the inefficient movement of goods—the lifeblood of any city.”

The Role of the Channel in Marketing Logistics Marketing logistics has often been adopted as a synonym for physical distribution management (PDM), the two terms being used interchangeably by academics and practitioners alike. However, it is appropriate to introduce greater precision in our definitions—it is suggested here that whilst PDM is concerned with physical flow involved in distribution activities, marketing logistics is somewhat broader in scope in that it incorporates the selection and management of the institutional channel(s) of distribution for a company's products as well as the physical facilities required.

Inventory carrying costs represent one of the highest costs of distribution. Although they are a necessary input to the design of logistical systems, such costs are ignored by many companies and when they are used usually represent estimates or industry benchmarks. The authors present a methodology designed to provide managers with a practical framework for determining the costs of carrying inventory.

For more than two decades, industrial leaders in many countries, especially the trading nations such as the United States and Canada, have recognised the significant contribution that physical distribution can make toward the total corporate mission. In many companies formal departments have been created in order to manage the distribution activities. However, acceptance of the physical distribution concept is still growing and the associated responsibilities are becoming broadened in the current international climate of economic uncertainty. In an effort to develop a current profile of the distribution executive and his broadened responsibilities, detailed questionnaires were mailed to distribution executives in Canada and the United States. Specifically, the research sought answers to the following questions: (1) How is the distribution function positioned within the firm? (2) What is the scope of responsibility of distribution management? (3) Does the distribution management function involve distinctive career patterns, educational requirements, or job requirements? (4) What are the perceived educational needs of the distribution manager? (5) What does the physical distribution executive perceive as the major factors affecting his future role in the corporation?

A hidden enemy of distribution efficiency is at work in almost all distribution systems. It causes increased distribution costs, yet, in many firms, seldom receives much management attention. Who, or what, is this hidden enemy? Quite simply, it is goods which require return to the vendor or adjustment of sales terms once they have been received by a customer.

In the last four years, since Volume I of this Bibliography first appeared, there has been an explosion of literature in all the main functional areas of business. This wealth of material poses problems for the researcher in management studies — and, of course, for the librarian: uncovering what has been written in any one area is not an easy task. This volume aims to help the librarian and the researcher overcome some of the immediate problems of identification of material. It is an annotated bibliography of management, drawing on the wide variety of literature produced by MCB University Press. Over the last four years, MCB University Press has produced an extensive range of books and serial publications covering most of the established and many of the developing areas of management. This volume, in conjunction with Volume I, provides a guide to all the material published so far.

IN making the suggestion, as some of my friendly critics have done, that the classes Fine and Useful Arts should be restored, as in Dewey, they rather miss the humour of the situation. The Subject Classification is not an amended Dewey or Cutter, but a humble attempt at an entirely new system, designed to meet the needs of popular libraries. It is not even a classification of knowledge, but, as experience has proved, a very practical and simple rearrangement of the factors of knowledge as set forth and preserved in books. The scheme is not indebted to any other system for aught but suggestions of main classes; all the details of the tables having been worked out independently, without reference to any classification save the Adjustable. It will be manifest, on reflection, that it would be fatal for the compiler of a new system to allow himself to be fettered or influenced by the schedules of other authors. I am one of those who decline to believe in the value of standardization of ideas or practice, save to a small degree in certain mechanical matters, and it would therefore be foolish to follow in the same rut as certain predecessors, simply because a longer existence has to some extent established their findings as settled conventions.