Logistics Engineering

Logistics Engineering. from the Perspective of Competitive Advantage. Blanchard, B. S. (1974) notes that "logistics is being viewed as the composite of all considerations necessary to assure the effective and economical support of a system throughout its programmed life cycle. . Logistic support must be initially planned and developed as part of the overall system development process to assure an optimum balance between the prime equipment and its related support." This leads to a definition of logistics engineering in terms of the genopersisatation recursion. Based upon Blanchard's definition, this recursion suggests that the functions of logistics engineering are to: conceptualize the support of the product evaluate the support of the product design the support of the product prototype the support of the product test the support of the product produce the support of the product deploy the support of the product operate the support of the product support the support of the product evolve the support of the product retire the support of the product manage the support of the product. A second important set of functions, which are related to concurrent engineering, are: support the conceptualization of the product support the evaluation of the product support the design of the product support the prototyping of the product support the testing of the product support the production of the product support the deployment of the product support the operation of the product support the support of the product support the evolution of the product support the retirement of the product support the management of the product. In the context of current world competition, "appropriate" is highly correlated with "competitive." An appropriate logistic support system, thus, must have low cost and high value. It must ,thus, be designed for value. My seven years as a cost estimator taught me that the quality of the product and the architecture and quality of the logistics support system are often the major cost drivers in life cycle cost. The Taguchi quality loss function (Taguchi, 1986) provides a simplistic but appropriate model which links unquality with cost. Quality characteristics such as reliability and availability have a great deal to do with value through customer satisfaction. Thus, logistics engineering plays a very important role in designing for competitive advantage. References. Blanchard, B. S. (1974). Logistics and Engineering Management, Prentice-Hall Inc, Englewood Cliffs NJ. Taguchi, G. (1986). Introduction to Quality Engineering: Designing Quality into Products and Processes, Asian Productivity Organization, American Supplier Institute, Dearborn MI.