Does Your Company Need a Logistical Executive?

Traditional responsibility for logistical management has been fragmented throughout the organization. In the past, companies were able to control the various parts of the goods flow independently of each other because of long throughput times and by keeping considerable inventories. Today, customers demand an increasingly higher level of customer service. The fully integrated control of all aspects of the goods flow, integrated logistical management, has thus become a necessity. Companies must not be confronted with overly high logistical cost or too low customer service performance. It is often assumed that appointing a logistics executive solves logistical problems (low service performance, high inventory levels or high logistical cost). The following article provides answers to practical questions such as ‘does a company need a logistics executive?’. The authors will show that the answers to these questions depend on the company's logistical complexity and task predictablity.