Managing a modern company operating in the broadly understood areas of logistics cannot be achieved without the support of more or less sophisticated information technology. Modern logistics is a fairly broad concept. Its scope covers many areas, among which the dominant ones are:
– integrated logistics systems
– supply chain, production, and distribution management
– optimization of logistics activities within the enterprise and its external environment
– application of automatic identification and simulation of logistics processes
– tracking of logistics resources and other ventures.
The broad task spectrum of logistics requires the enterprise to fully integrate logistics tasks and processes. The integration of logistics processes should manifest itself in two cross-sections: at the level of the internal structure and the external operations of each company. Consequently, this necessitates the rational management of the logistics supply chain. Logistics in today’s economy is primarily an integrated supply chain closely connected to the market, which focuses its contemporary problems.
The modern market therefore places increasing demands on logistics. The time in which a ordered product must be delivered to the customer is constantly shortening. The sales process is often unstable, subject to constant or periodic fluctuations resulting from, among other things, competitive struggle, the intensity of marketing activities, as well as a lack of information about where the demand for specific products is growing rapidly. Such dynamics of market operations lead to logistics activities becoming increasingly complex and having to be carried out in shorter and shorter timeframes. The development of information technologies and the continuous decline in hardware and software costs allow for increasingly frequent applications of IT solutions used in information flow processes within logistics systems.
Consequently, this leads to the search for newer, more perfect integrated information systems that enable efficient management of logistics.
The article comes from the magazine “Logistyka” 3/2004.