Some of NITL’s academic staff recently attended the annual conference of the Logistics Research Network (LRN), which was held at the Cardiff University Business School. LRN is a special interest group of the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport (CILT – UK) which brings together academics and practitioners in the fields of logistics and supply chain management (SCM). Its annual conference is a major event and provides participants with a forum for the discussion of the latest thinking in the area. NITL has long been active in the LRN and hosted the annual conference in 2004.

The theme of the conference was ‘Volatile and Fragile Supply Chains’. This theme recognises the key role of logistics and SCM in today’s volatile economic environment. NITL was represented at the conference by Edward Sweeney, Claudia Wagner and Antonino Raspagliesi (a visiting scholar from Politecnico di Milano).

The two papers presented by NITL staff were:

• ICT adoption and impact on the Italian logistics service providers’ performance by Pietro Evangelista, Riccardo Mogre, Alessandro Perego, Antonino Raspagliesi and Edward Sweeney;
  
  and
• An analysis of freight logistics requirements for the island of Ireland by Claudia Wagner, Edward Sweeney, Colm Ryan and Pietro Evangelista.

The former was based on NITL’s ongoing collaborative research with its partners in Italy and the UK. The latter was based on the work NITL conducted as part of a consortium funded by InterTradeIreland on future freight transport requirements.

Further information about the event is available at http://www.lrn2009.org.uk.