This can be the case when measures affect different decision-making levels as presented in Table V, which summarised the barriers.
Two summative findings from the research stand out. First, although there is
evidence across the surveyed companies of all the initiative types identified in the
literature review there is a still a long way to go before all the companies adopt all of
the initiatives. It is notable that no one company has adopted all the initiatives,
for instance. This suggests there is still plenty of scope for further development.
Secondly, it is interesting to reflect on the point that the companies studied have mainly a tendency to apply operational to tactical decisions (e.g. routing optimisation or consolidation), whereas tactical to strategic measures are more infrequent. Unsuitable decisions taken at higher levels would vaporise gains achieved at operational levels (McKinnon et al., 2010): for example, the reduction in the length of haul obtained by the adoption of routing software could be offset by changes in network structure.