What caused ICI's share price to stutter briefly last week? Answer: rumours, no more, of logistics problems at a Dutch subsidiary of the British chemicals company. What is the biggest challenge facing Nokia with its new smartphones, which bring the power of a PC to a mobile handset? Answer: logistics, the Finnish company's ability to get all the parts into its mobile phones, and get the phones out to the market where and when they are wanted. Logistics is a word that you see most often on the side of trucks. But it has a bigger meaning: the management of the flow of materials through an organisation, from raw materials to finished goods. "It's one of the most abused terms in business," says Peter Bakker, boss of TPG, a transport group. The Oxford Dictionary definition of logistics is first, the "science of movement, supply and maintenance of military forces in the field." Poor logistics helped to defeat Napoleon, and later Hitler, on the road to Moscow and Stalingrad: both overstretched their supply lines. The same problem did for Rommel in North Africa, when his tanks lacked enough fuel to fight Montgomery effectively at El Alamein.
展开▼
