As many return readers have noticed, I have not posted much in a while. Call it the "holday spirit" and understand I have been swamped both with work and with preparing for the holidays. No excuse, it just is what it is. I will be aggressively posting in 2011 with both longer "in depth" posts about subjects and also short "link" type posts as well.
My belief for 2011 for the logisitics' industry is that it will be a year of "blocking and tackling". This means cost cutting will continue to be paramount along with using logistics as a "wrapper" around a product to become the competitive differentiator. As I have said before, many products have worked their way to commodities and the way companies will truly differentiate themselves is through logistics.
But, this is not "fancy" logistics. It is the basic blocking and tackling. Make the order management system very efficient, have availability (my belief is have high availability on a tighter number of SKUS v. having thousands of SKUS which all suffer in some availability), have a lightening fast delivery system, and have the billing and invoicing system be flawless. It is the things of Amazon.com and we all know how successful they have become. (although I will admit they have figured out how to have great availability on huge number of SKUs which really differentiates them).
As 2011 develops we will see if I have to move off my "playbook" but for now that is how I intend to work through the year. Let's see how we do!!
Have a happy Holiday Season and a very happy New Year!!
Kevin
A 25 year veteran of the supply chain and logistics industry blogs on all things logistics. Experience in 3PL, automotive and consumer goods logistics help bring a unique insight to this topic
