Items to Include in a Logistics Support Plan

Will Charpentier reports:

"Business has elements in common with a war, including the need to move supplies in and goods that fill a demand out. To satisfy this need, you must develop a logistics support plan that identifies your logistical goals based on your customers’ needs, the appropriate modes of transportation available and the levels of service available...Understand your customers’ delivery needs. Once you know when your customers want to receive the goods they order from you, you can identify the mode of transportation needed, based on the distance from you and the time required to transport your goods. How quickly customers want to receive the goods they order from you influences how much they are willing to pay for transportation...Discuss delivery speed with your customers...A shipment to a distant location, delivered the next day, travels by air express and costs more. The customers' needs -- not their desires -- are the essence of good logistics. Once you identify those needs, you can identify the modes of transportation that are cost-appropriate for your customer and cost-effective for you...There are five modes of transportation – air, truck, rail and ocean, or the combination of modes, called intermodal freight. Not all are appropriate for every shipment. You can transport small quantities of goods across town by truck more quickly than when you send the same goods overseas by ocean freight. Intermodal freight uses a combination of the other four means of shipment to provide loading dock-to-loading dock freight movement with minimal interruption...Assemble the information for each customer. Match each customer’s needs to the appropriate transportation mode based on the customer’s location and the required speed of delivery. Determine what cost a customer is willing to pay. Fine-tune the plan as needed. Adjust the mode of delivery for each customer, if necessary, based on the customer’s transportation budget. If a customer’s transportation costs are more than the customer is willing to pay, adjust manufacturing or shipment schedules to match the customer’s needs."