During this Session-long project, you will analyze a logistics firm such as UPS, FedEx, Maersk Line (ocean shipping), DHL Aviation, Landstar System (trucking), CSC (railroad), or Kinder Morgan (pipelines). Almost every company uses logistics in some way, but in a logistics course, companies that specialize in it are more useful as case studies.

Please select a publicly traded, for-profit corporation. Such organizations are required to publish annual reports, and make other information available to the general public. They are also more likely to have a strong presence on the Web.

Please do not select a company whose main activity is transporting passengers, such as United Airlines or Greyhound Corp. Owing to the high value and unique requirements of their “cargo,” transportation companies are different in many ways from other logistics firms. Further, do not select a company whose primary activity is the movement of information, rather than goods. Telecoms and online services are also in a world of their own.

For this course in global logistics, two additional restrictions are imposed. The company you choose must be active in international logistics, and not merely logistics within one country. (It need not be an American company; in the short list above, for example, Maersk Line is Danish, and DHL is German.) Further, the company must have been around for at least 50 years. That’s because some of the analyses involve the company’s responses to globalization, a relatively recent phenomenon.

If possible, choose a company with which you have some experience, either as a customer, employee, or the friend or relative of an employee. Further – and this is important — you should read all four SLP assignments in advance, and choose a company for which you can find the required information.

SLP1 Assignment:

This assignment has two parts. Please respond to both of them.

Part 1: Please give a brief, yet comprehensive description of the company you’ve selected. Your essay should include the following information (not necessarily in this order):

The industry segment to which it belongs.
The overall condition (size, strength, trends) of the segment.
The company’s position within the segment; dominant, competitive, or bit player?
The services provided by the company.
The company’s core technologies
Its position and reputation in the wider community
Its financial position; profitable, unprofitable, indebted, self-financing, etc.
Its trajectory; expanding, contracting, struggling, looking for a buyer, etc.
Its relevant history. Is it new, well-established, recently spun off, a recent IPO?

A valuable sources of information about any publicly-traded company is its annual report, available online from The Public Register (Bay Tact, 2014). Another service, which offers overviews and analyses of industries and industry segments, is the International Business Information Service, or IBIS (2015). Anyone studying any company should begin by consulting these two sources.

Part 2: Using the Background Info on globalization, plus information gleaned from your company-specific sources, please discuss one of the following:

(1) How one phenomenon associated with globalization has most strongly affected your company, with respect to the services they offer, and the way they do business.

(2) The biggest effect your company, and those like it, have had on the process of globalization.