Logistics

Logistics is the science of moving it from there to here.  It is a fun part of the business, for me anyway. For most of us logisitics is a matter of complying with customer routing guides, for they have figured out the best/cheapest way to receive their goods.

In essence, the work of logistics is to identify bottlenecks, and eliminate them.  If the Hanjin Miami has five containers for you, you may want to spread delivery over five days, so you do not have a bottleneck in both space and labor if dealing with 5 containers in one day.  No big deal, but important part of the job.  (There is the 3-day rule and demurrage to worry about, but those would just be factors in an analysis.)

Pallets are expensive, take up valuable shipping space in a container, and have to be dealt with on the receiving end.  Back in the early 80's I saw the slipsheet being used in a pet food distribution center.  The slipsheet is a piece of cardboard the surface area the same as a pallet, but with a 6 inch flap off one side. Merchandise is stacked on these cardboard sheets like they would be on a pallet. A forklift outfitted with a plate instead of forks, plus a sort of grabber, can be used to slide the plate under the slipsheet loaded with goods, the grabber bites the flap, and pulls it completely on the plate, and also holds the slipsheet in place for extra security.  Well!  No more need for pallets, more shipping space in containers, easy to recycle.  Savings!

Logistics is also like fixing a leaky cooling system in a car.  You find the big leak, and fix it.  Then the pressure sends the leak out the next biggest hole.  You fix that.  The the next biggest...and so on...  what happens over time is you deal with ever more subtle problems as you distribution gets ever slicker.

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