Business Logistics

Aleksandro Stulginskio Universitetas |
Business logistics |
Theory and practice in a Spanish company: Inditex |
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INDEX:
1. Introduction
2.1. Military Logistics
2.2. Business Logistics
2.3. Production logistics
2. International trade
2.1 The Ricardian model: labor productivity as a source of comparative advantage
2.2 Heckscher-Ohlinmodel
2.3 New trade theory
2.4 Is my product exportable?
2.5 Opening to the world
2.6 How do I sell my products?
3. Importance of supply chain management
4.4. Historical development in supply chain management
4.5. Components of supply chain integration
4. About Inditex

1. Introduction
The term logistics comes from the Greek logos (λόγος), morespecifically from the Greek word logistiki (λογιστική), meaning accounting and financial organization. The word logistics has its origin in the French verb loger to lodge or to quarter. Its original use was to describe the science of movement, supplying & maintenance of military forces in the field. Later on it was used to describe the management of materials flow through an organization, fromraw materials through to finished goods.

Logistics is considered to have originated in the military's need to supply themselves with weapons, ammunition and rations as they moved from their base to a forward position. In ancient Greek, Roman and Byzantine empires, military officers with the title Logistikas were responsible for financial and supply distribution matters.

The Oxford EnglishDictionary defines logistics as "the branch of military science relating to procuring, maintaining and transporting materiel, personnel and facilities." Another dictionary definition is "the time-related positioning of resources." As such, logistics is commonly seen as a branch of engineering that creates "people systems" rather than "machine systems". When talking in terms of human resourcesmanagement, logistics means giving inputs, i.e. "recruiting manpowers", which ultimately work for the final consumer or to delivery.

Logistics is the management of the flow of goods and services between the point of origin and the point of consumption in order to meet the requirements of customers and involves the integration of information, transportation, inventory, warehousing, material handling,and packaging, and occasionally security.

Today the complexity of production logistics can be modelled, analysed, visualized and optimized by plant simulation software.

1.1 Military logistics
In military science, maintaining one's supply lines while disrupting those of the enemy is a crucial—some would say the most crucial—element of military strategy, since an armed force without resourcesand transportation is defenceless. The defeat of the British in the American War of Independence and the defeat of the Axis in the African theatre of World War II are attributed to logistical failure. The historical leaders are considered to have been logistical geniuses.

Militaries have a significant need for logistics solutions, and so have developed advanced implementations. IntegratedLogistics Support (ILS) is a discipline used in military industries to ensure an easily supportable system with a robust customer service concept at the lowest cost and in line with (often high) reliability, availability, maintainability and other requirements as defined for the project. In military logistics, logistics officers manage how and when to move resources to the places they are needed.Supply chain management in military logistics often deals with a number of variables in predicting cost, deterioration, consumption, and future demand. The US Military's categorical supply classification was developed in such a way that categories of supply with similar consumption variables are grouped together for planning purposes. For instance, peacetime consumption of ammunition and fuel...