Course overview

Logistics and transportation is about the processes of planning, implementing and controlling the efficient and effective flows of goods, services and related information across supply chains. In many businesses, it absorbs a large portion of sales value.

The management of these processes is therefore crucial in meeting customer service goals and is typically considered essential to a firm’s competitive strategy. Part of successfully managing these processes has to do with general management knowledge and skills. The other part has to do with analytical ability and systematic, logical approaches to unravelling complex problems.

Our course aims to develop your theoretical understanding and practical, analytical and computing skills as a base for developing applied mathematical solutions. The course will teach you advanced problem-solving skills, which you will be able to apply in many different ways in a wide choice of potential careers.

The flexibility of our course means that during the first year you will have the option to change between logistics and mathematics degrees. All the mathematics degrees have an optional sandwich year that involves working for a paid employer in the UK or overseas.

Whilst studying logistics and mathematics at the University of Portsmouth you will:

• Study both a continuation of A Level mathematics, together with completely new approaches to the subject.
• Have access to ultra-modern computing facilities and advanced teaching and learning resources.
• Use specialist mathematical and statistical computing packages, for which you will receive full training.
• Develop advanced problem-solving skills.
• Explore ideas within a supportive environment.
• Acquire the skills needed for a successful career in industry, business and commerce.
• Have an opportunity to assist in a local school as a final-year option.

Career focused

The entrance criteria of this degree have been designed to comply with the requirements of major graduate programmes. Competent students can have the opportunity to apply their skills to real-life practical problems as part of the department’s partnership scheme with charities, local and global organisations. Please view the 'Career prospects' section for further details.

To find out more about placement opportunities in the Faculty of Technology, please visit our Placements Office pages.

Course content

During the course you will be studying various management and decision-making techniques for logistics and transportation, including approaches to:

• planning and scheduling of people, products, services and equipment
• supply chain management and reverse logistics
• inventories and stock control
• transportation, transhipment and vehicle route planning

You can choose between optional units to strengthen your personal profile and interests, covering topics such as project management, eCommerce, investment analysis, international management or learning a computer programming language to implement decision-making or management support recipes. There will also be project work in areas such as supply chain rationalisation, management of logistics operations or quality and safety in the transport of hazardous materials.

The course has a good mixture of modelling techniques and varying applications. The theoretical content carefully underpins the more practical elements of the course, which is strong in system analysis and case studies, optimisation and applications of statistics. You will also learn advanced problem-solving skills throughout the course, which you will be able to apply in different ways in a wide choice of future careers.

Teaching and assessment

You will be taught through a mixture of lectures, seminars, tutorials, laboratory and project work. Lecture classes can be large and you will have about 12 hours of this type of contact every week. A further two to three hours will be spent in small group seminars and tutorials, where you can get individual help in those areas in which you would like to know more or are perhaps experiencing some difficulty. Some lectures will also be provided via the internet so you can work at your own pace from any location.

Assessment is geared towards the subject matter in a way that encourages a deeper understanding and allows you to develop your skills. It takes many forms and includes examinations and multiple-choice tests, presentations and mini projects. In the final year, all students undertake a major project on a topic connected with mathematics.

Career prospects

Placement opportunities

In the Faculty of Technology we feel that students should be given as many opportunities as possible to gain meaningful work experience and build employability skills throughout their studies to make them more attractive to future employers.

Working with other University services, the Faculty’s Student Placement and Employability Centre (SPEC) ensure students have access to a range of volunteering and work experience opportunities, including year-long industrial placements, and provide support for the different types of application processes.

To find out more about how you can gain work experience whilst studying BSc (Hons) Logistics and Transportation, please visit our Placements Office pages.

Graduate roles

A degree in logistics and transportation opens up a broad range of career opportunities - management, planners, analysts or consultants in the areas of purchasing, production, quality control, distribution, warehousing or supply chain management. The majority of posts are in the private sector and include manufacturers/suppliers of goods or services, third party logistics service providers and software developers or consultants in any of the above mentioned areas.

Other opportunities can be found in sectors traditionally associated with the public sector, such as passenger transportation, postal and express delivery and fire and rescue emergency operations. Finally, there is the military and defence industry and the cradle of the systematic approach called operational research that has resulted in techniques that tackle many issues in logistics and transportation.

The above are just a few career possibilities. Logistics and transportation are actually important to any firm where customer service is a strategic objective - whether its core focus is on products or services.

Facilities and features

You will have easy access to modern computing laboratories equipped with a wide range of powerful hardware and software, including multimedia applications. All students will receive instruction in the use of the computer algebra package MAPLE and the numerical methods and matrix algebra package MATLAB. Statistical computing will use MINITAB.

Depending on your choice of pathway you will also use C++, MICRO SAINT SHARP, EVOLVER and MPL. You will certainly use the standard IT packages for word processing and spreadsheets, and almost all students now make use of PowerPoint for presentations. In addition, all students have full access to email and the web. Apart from this, the Department’s main asset is the academic staff who are always at hand.

You will also have use of our recently extended library, which houses over 600,000 volumes in printed format and gives you access to thousands of ejournals and ebooks, as well as a full range of student services that can help you with finance, accommodation, careers and recruitment, and study in general.

Maths Café

The Maths Café is a daily drop-in facility, where ANY student of the University can receive help on any maths or statistics problem they encounter in their studies. We operate in a friendly, informal location which we hope will encourage students to visit us. Handouts on key topics are available to take away. Students can be shown how to use computer aided learning packages, which can be accessed from any computer attached to the University's computer network.

Entry requirements

View all the entry requirements for BSc (Hons) Logistics and Transportation for the academic year 2013/14 (opens in new window).