Third-Party Logistics Providers

Background - Logistics.

Logistics manages and controls the flow of goods, energy, information, and other resources.

Logistics has evolved from the military need for spare-parts supply. Now, it includes activities like purchasing, transport, warehousing, organization, and planning of these activities. Logistics managers use general knowledge of each of these functions. This is combined with specific knowledge of the industry, commodity, or business protocols governing the product types managed.

In business, logistics may have either internal focus, or external focus covering the flow from originating supplier to end-user, see supply chain management.

In military, logistics experts manage how and when to move resources to the places they are needed. In military science, maintaining one's supply lines while disrupting those of the enemy is a crucial, and some would say the most crucial element, of military strategy (since an armed force without food/fuel and ammunition is rather useless).

Types of Logistics.

There are two fundamentally different forms of logistics. One optimizes a steady flow of material through a network of transport links and storage nodes. The other coordinates a sequence of resources to carry out some project. third party logistics providers

Steady-state Logistics.

Usually, steady-state flow systems are optimized for one of several goals. These include:

avoiding shortages of the object (e.g. military systems depend on fuel and ammunition)
minimizing transportation cost
reduce time to obtain an object
decrease minimum total storage (time and amount) of objects.

This minimizes the interest losses of in-storage inventory.

For just-in-time manufacturing, logistic flow is particularly important. In this case, great emphasis is placed on minimizing inventory.

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