Global sourcing is becoming a prerequisite for companies competing in today's market. The logistics costs often comprise a large portion of the total global sourcing cost, thereby determining the effectiveness of this procurement strategy. However, evaluating the logistics cost in a global context is frequently difficult. This paper presents a five‐step evaluation framework and illustrates how this framework can be implemented using a case study at a leading firm in the US aviation industry and its part supplier in Chengdu, China. The framework not only identifies the key logistics cost items, but also suggests a way of quantifying each of the cost elements. The computational part of the framework can be easily implemented on spreadsheets and offers substantial flexibility to accommodate assessment of various transportation alternatives and sensitivity analysis.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.