One of the trendiest words in logistics in recent years has become outsourcing. In English, outsider – resource – using means using external sources of supply. Nowadays, this term no longer sounds foreign and colloquially has only one meaning: “outside”. Enterprises are moving everything “outside”: transport departments, logistics management, IT support, accounting, archive management, security, and even the work of some employees. The experiences of companies have caused the original meaning of outsourcing to blur. In the past, it was associated with a modern approach to business operations, but today it is treated by most companies as a normal and economically justified practice. It involves commissioning parts of work that do not constitute the core business of the enterprise to external parties in order to focus on one’s most important domain and thus become more competitive, which opens the door to market success. Of course, the undeniable value of outsourcing lies in searching for reserves and opportunities to reduce costs.
Until recently, one of the institutions that did not count costs was the army. This results, of course, from its tasks, namely that conducting combat operations and winning in battle is the most important thing, regardless of costs. At this point, it should be recalled that the concept of logistics has its origins in the military. The precursor of logistics was the Napoleonic general A. H. Jomini, who in 1837 in Paris published the work “Summary of the Art of War”. K. Rutkowski points out that the 6th chapter of this work, titled “On Logistics, or the Art of Moving Troops”, talks about the location and supply of warehouses, planning and execution of marches, preparation of transport means, arrangement of communication routes, and supplying troops—problems that modern logistics deals with mutatis mutandis. After being translated into English, Baron de Jomini’s work became essential reading for American officers, and logistics as a subject was included in the curriculum of the newly opened US Naval War College in 1885. In subsequent years, the concept of logistics was popularized in military vocabulary, understood mainly as an economic element of military operations. During World War II, the US Department of Defense established interdisciplinary teams tasked with developing mathematical planning models and applying them to solve the logistics problems of the American army. Some of the most important problems were the location and supply of warehouses and transport issues. In this way, these teams laid the foundations for the development of both the science of planning, known today as operations research, and the economic scientific discipline—logistics.
In Europe, it was only the creation of NATO and the leading role of the USA within it that not only caused the term logistics to become widespread in the terminology of allies but also led to the adaptation of organizational structures, principles, and procedures in their national systems. As M. Brzeziński writes, activities that were referred to as logistics in the West were called rear support in the countries of Eastern and Central Europe, including Poland, although the subject scope of these concepts was the same. The concept of rear support included: material, technical, medical, and communication support, as well as quartermaster and construction activities. The development of logistical support, both in the sphere of theory and practice, took place under the influence of the former Soviet Union within the framework of the functioning Warsaw Pact. Unlike logistics, within which there is full integration of logistical processes, rear support functioned in two independent branches: technical and quartermaster.
The reform of the political, economic, and defense system of the state caused the concept of logistics to begin functioning in the Polish military at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s, first in the sphere of theory and later in practice. The foundations for creating a logistics system in our army were: doctrinal changes in the sphere of state defense, the use of all sectors of the National Economy to support the logistics system of the Armed Forces (AF), the separation of civilian management of the Ministry of National Defense from the military command of the AF, the integration of dispersed logistical forces and resources and management bodies, the shaping of transparent organizational structures, and the unification of operating principles, competencies, and responsibilities.
Today, as in the past, military logistics is understood and defined in a non-uniform and very diverse way. It is worth citing the definition of logistics adopted in the Polish Armed Forces: “Logistics is a scientific discipline concerning the planning, preparation, use, and flow of items, people, energy, information, and services in order to achieve desired benefits” and “Military logistics is a branch of the art of war concerning the planning, preparation, and execution of supply deliveries and the provision of services ensuring effective training and combat operations for troops”. The last words of the definition define the core business of the military, i.e., the primary activity of the Armed Forces. Undoubtedly, training and operational activity, and in times of conflict, conducting combat operations and generating the needs resulting from these activities, are the most important tasks of the military, and especially of individual military units, primarily operational units. Poland’s entry into NATO and the increase in the participation of our troops in missions outside the country (Partnership for Peace, EU missions, Iraq, Afghanistan) have decisively changed the place of logistics in the modern army. From a traditional “back office” to the role of a “strategic salon”.
The article comes from the magazine “Logistyka” 4/2010.