The Impact of IT on Logistics – Part 3
Warehousing is as old as the hills. Since the dawn of time, man has stored reserves of materials acquired in better times for consumption in harder times. Moreover, this does not apply only to humans; the storage of supplies by the proverbial hamster or the consumption of them during hibernation by a bear is well known. Biologists can certainly easily explain the purposefulness of these actions, but they probably cannot explain the principles and rules for retrieving supplies by these charming animals. Does a hamster store supplies according to some storage strategy? Does a bear consume stored reserves from adipose tissue according to some retrieval strategy? Surely not according to FIFO and certainly not according to FEFO, unless instincts dictate some logic of procedure. It must be assumed that only Mother Nature can know the answer to this problem.
Man, as a rational being, stores supplies according to orders established by himself. A housewife in times not so long ago always knew what, in what quantities, and in which place of the pantry was currently located. An artisan (today one should rather say: entrepreneur) providing services related to car repairs maintains a stock of necessary spare parts—which experience shows are frequently rotating—in such a quantity and in such a storage order to ensure a sufficient level of customer service. Besides, why does he need a larger stock? It is enough to approach a computer with the Internet and order the missing parts from the nearest (or cheapest) supplier. Neither the housewife nor that artisan, if we allow ourselves a somewhat nostalgic professional nomenclature, need be equipped with an IT system managing supplies in the pantry or car workshop. However, a different situation is faced by the car parts supplier who cooperates with several dozen or even several hundred artisans, and each of them wants to have the needed spare parts “here and now”, which is why they invested in a computer with the Internet.
A large supplier of automotive spare parts, wanting to maintain the assumed level of customer service, must store a significantly larger amount of various components, extremely similar to each other as is the case in the automotive industry, not so much for better times as to quickly and efficiently serve their Customer—our artisan—so that he can quickly and efficiently repair our (my or the Reader’s) car within the 2-hour deadline allowed by us (that is exactly how much free time we have today in which we can do without a car).
Managing the storage of a dozen or several dozen thousand car parts is no longer the same as a few or several dozen jars of strawberry jam or cherry preserves stored in the pantry of a former housewife. A serious car parts distributor therefore equips themselves with computers, barcode reading and printing equipment, and an IT system that will organize “all this mess” by itself. They are lucky if they encounter consultants who will make the right diagnosis, establish therapy, and write prescriptions for improving the situation. They are unlucky if they encounter salespeople who, instead of treating, cheaply and quickly insert a prosthesis (sell an IT system).
P05-03.pdf
