Logistics engineering

Logistic Engineering deals with the science of Logistics. Logistics is about the purchasing, tranportation, storage, distribution, warehousing of raw materials, semi-finished/ work-in-process goods and finished goods. How to manage all these activites for an organisation satisfying some performance measure is the main question at the back of the mind of any logistic engineer.

The most popular and widely used performance measure is the total cost. The total cost of purchasing, transporting, warehousing and distributing raw materials, semi finished and finished goods.

Another performance measure equally important is the end customer fillrate. It is the percentage of customer demand which is satisfied immediately off-shelf. Howmuch ever efficient your logistics processes are, unless it is of use to the end customer, the logistic process does not have the effectiveness. Because all the processes you are doing are for the end customer. The end customer can be the process just upstream, may be the shipping or the warehouse where items are stocked or can even be the final customer who is going to use the product.

Another much more popular usage of the logisctic term which has appeared in recent years is the Supply Chain. The supply chain more than looking only at the manufacturing and immediate purchase and distribution processes as in logistics, also looks at an efficient chaining of the supply / purchase and distribution sides of an organisation. It is based on the basic premise,that the supply and distribution activities if integrated with the manufacturing / logistic activities, can result in better profitability for the organisation.