By Ronald H. Ballou. For undergraduate, MBA, and other courses in Business Logistics, Physical Distribution, Operations Management, Materials Management, and Supply Chain Management, in departments of business and engineering. This comprehensive discussion-covering the planning, organizing, and controlling of such activities as transportation, inventory maintenance, facility location, order processing, purchasing, warehousing, materials handling, packaging, customer service standards, and product scheduling-is specifically designed to help students solve actual challenges that they will encounter in today's marketplace. It provides the basic decision making tools and concepts used for finding cost reduction and strategic opportunities. Logware software on CD-ROM is included.