What You Always Wanted to Know About Supply Chain Logistics

As any business will tell you, the end success of a company depends on the value and popularity of the output they are selling. In the end , if it’s an item that everybody wants, sales go up and everyone is happy. Although having the proper product at the right time is key, it’s really  supply chain logistics that determine the success or failure of a product.

How are supply chain logistics involved?

Just toss on your television, and next time you are watching it, watch and see supply chain management and logistics at work. It might be a television commercial to you, but it’s so much more.

It doesn’t matter what type of product is being advertised, the mere fact that you are watching that commercial means that product is standing by for you to purchase it in some form. Maybe it is a marketing trailer for a movie that is opening the next day at the box office. The fact is that you’re being given the invitation to go out and acquire that product by viewing the commercial. This could be right away, or at a predetermined date; but the supply chain logistics have already been up and running to make sure you get that product.

Let’s take the example of buying a new car.

You might be in the market for an upgrade or trade-in, or just curious. That TV commercialconvinces you to check out a local dealer and go for a test drive ride. After you’ve done a little research as to the closest auto dealer in your neighborhood, you head out and hopefully see the car that was advertised.

This means that a certain number of those particular cars had to be fulfilled, shipped and logistically routed to that car lot from as close as the next town over, to as far away as Japan or South Korea.

Supply chain and its associated management logistics provide for the mechanisms to get that car into the showroom at on a timely schedule.

Dealerships already know when those cars are going to be ready to be shipped. Now it becomes just a question of moving them from point “A” to “B.” But unlike smaller products , you can only transport so many cars at one time! A typical trailer will hold maybe ten cars, for example. So, that’s ten cars per trip.

How many trips to stock all the dealerships in a given zone? It could be large. But the ultimate end result of how many can be found through the application of supply chain logistics.

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