It dawned on me the other day that I entered the logistics business at the ripe age of 14. My learning field was at the Ben Franklin variety store in central Illinois. I started out at 60 cents an hour and four years later was raking in 90 cents an hour. That's about a 12% average annual increase. Not too shabby.
Every Thursday, a shipment came in. My boss first showed me how to get a count on every box that was unloaded. You know, we were checking for any shortages. He showed me how to open the boxes and check the contents to see if there was any readily apparent damage.
He showed me how to remove all the contents and check off each group of items against his order sheet. At the same time, he had the retail prices available and we would put the price onto each item. Then I would move the inventory to their respective storage areas - usually in the basement.
This was the old fashioned way and, to some extent, these same basic procedures are followed to this day.
However, in other areas of logistics, there have been gigantic leaps forward. The large distribution centers have extremely sophisticated mechanisms to automatically pick products for order fulfillment. The picking devices, the conveyors and the laying out of each order - they are all modern day marvels where exceptional efficiencies are obtained.
When you go about your daily business, ask yourself which procedures and functions that were used many years ago are still in place. And which ones are brand spanking new.
It just proves one thing. Many old standards and procedures are needed to this day and not everything "old" needs to be chucked to the wayside.
Can you relate to any of this? Logistics, including the entire supply chain, is a fascinating industry and I would bet many of you have your own stories of yesterday compared to today.
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