The Oxford English Dictionary defines logistics as “the detailed organization of a large and complex exercise, origin French, movement and supply of troops and equipment”

The use of the term in France in Napoleonic times is well known and we have seen many different definitions but our favourite is from The Macquarie Dictionary –

      “The process of strategically managing the acquisition, movement, and storage of materials, parts and finished inventory (and the
related  information flows), through an organisation and its marketing channels to fulfil orders most cost-effectively”

From experience, logistics often involves the entire organisation and it means change. The saying “the only management practice that’s now constant is the practice of constantly accommodating to change” has never been so true. It is also important to distinguish between the two types of change, i.e. planned and un-planned.

A review of logistics usually means looking at trade-offs, e.g. – do we concentrate on the 80% of stock, by size/volume, which has a value of 20% of our overall stock, or do we first and foremost examine the 80% of the total value of stock which takes up only 20% of space.

Another trade-off may be increasing the size of orders, with higher warehousing, capital investment, obsolescence and shrinkage costs, lower production and unit transport cost versus smaller more frequent orders with lower inventory carrying costs and higher unit transport costs.

For further details please contact us