The Importance and Impact of Logistics Training

It has been recently an issue whether logistics training is a business necessity or not. In many planning stages of an organization, it is not uncommon to witness the absence of a logistics expert. This results not only in poor company planning but disorganized processes as well. Simply defined, logistics is the art or science of integrating all aspects of the business. This includes transportation, production, gathering of resources, marketing, advertising, and the actual consumption of the product. According to a standard reference, logistics is an actual action of putting together all these business sections in sync from the very start of a process until it reaches its consumers. The current issue, really, is that there is no official definition for logistics yet.

With the definition given earlier, it may be assumed or safe to say that logistics has also something to do with cost cutting. Just like different approaches, the goal of logistics is to make all process more efficient and less defective to ensure that financial revenue is maximized. If there are flaws in an existing process, the defective parts of it will surely cause loss of revenue.

Many employees feel that there is a need for logistics training. Not only will this help them understand how they play a critical role in their jobs, but this will help them provide inputs in the current processes to elicit change or culture within the organization. Current processes that are outdated should be eliminated, and the others should be improved if they are still applicable. Other than that, this will be a benchmark of a standardized training methodology. This means all employees that will go on board will receive adequate knowledge that will enrich them and empower them to do what is expected of them.

Adequacy in the knowledge and the actual practice will also make consumers satisfied customers. The very issue of consumers is that many products of their preference are out of stock. This occurs because of poor logistics. Somewhere down the line, there must have been a mistake made during the calculation of how much of the product should be manufactured. Or perhaps, there was something wrong with the delivery flow. Other times, the issue does not originate from the actual manufacturer, but from the supplier of the raw materials.

All these factors, whether they are the root cause or not, play a role in the system. If one of these key factors fails to deliver the standard, there will be definitely be a breakdown in the process. The goal of every business, one should remember, is to put a smile on the end consumer’s face. If logistics is not applied on a company process framework, it will result to failure in customer satisfaction. When this happens, a company should not expect revenue loss for that unhappy customer only. The very same dissatisfied customer, due to lack of logistics training, will tell ten or more people about his experience; and the impact this will make on the decision of the others will severely affect the company and how it is perceived.