Abstract Manufacturing systems, transportation networks, and supply chains are all logistics systems, which are required to operate efficiently without waste of resources or time. Synchronization is a widely used term in connection with logistics systems, and it promises to increase efficiency by coordinating supply and demand over time and space. However, there is neither a common understanding of synchronization in logistics, nor an accepted way of measuring and quantifying it. This article investigates definitions of synchronization from various disciplines with the aim to come up with a commonly applicable interpretation of synchronization in logistics systems. This new comprehensive definition of synchronization in logistics systems is intended to avoid a misleading application of the term “synchronization” and to foster future developments of a concrete quantification and operationalization of synchronization in logistics systems. Our investigations show that the measurable and quantifiable phenomenon of synchronization in logistics is mainly composed of a temporal and performance-related coupling of the state of individual logistics elements or complete systems.
