Logistics Handbook [Paperback]

The Logistics Handbookencompasses all of the latest advances in warehousing and distribution. It provides invaluable how to problem-solving tools and techniques for all the ever-increasing logistical problems managers face -- making it the most complete and authoritative handbook to date.

Special features include:

* The most in-depth coverage of a wide range of topics, including information systems, benchmarking, and environmental issues

* Contributions found nowhere else from the leading executives, consultants, and academics in the field, such as C. John Langley, James Heskett, and David Anderson

* State of the art graphics

* Information-packed appendixes of logistics publications and organizations

This all-inclusive reference will enable the next generation of managers to thoroughly integrate their logistics operations at all levels -- strategic, structural, functional, and implementation -- into a comprehensive logistics strategy.Chapter 1

Evolution of the Integrated Logistics Concept

Bernard J. La Londe

One of the challenges in writing on the subject of evolution of the integrated logistics concept is trying to decide where to begin. To be sure, logistics was an integral part of warfare dating from the dawn of recorded history. The ability to move people, machines, arms, and supplies was an important determinant of the winner and loser in early conflicts and remains so today. In a book on the Gulf War, it is noted on the first page that U.S. forces planned, moved, and served 122 million meals during the brief engagement -- a task comparable to feeding all the residents of Wyoming and Vermont three meals a day for forty days. There is a long and illustrious history of logistics as an element of both ancient and modem warfare. One view of the derivation oflogisticsis that it comes fromlogistique,the title given to an officer in Napoleon's army respolÃn