As logisticians feverously realigns in the post-pandemic world, we are all scrambling to rebalance across our strategies.  Best Value is the most advantageous combination of cost, quality, delivery, risk, predictability, reliability, and increasingly sustainability to meet market requirements.  Do you have a Best Value solution to the current logistics puzzle?

Parse that Best Value definition.  We commonly consider cost, quality, and delivery to be foundational factors in Best Value.   Logistics risk compounds the size of these factors quickly.  Today we manage longer, more complex, and increasingly unpredictable international flows.  Risk now emerges as a more central variable in the equation.  

Add in predictability, reliability, and sustainability.  Today warehouse managers are facing a more complex problem.  I asked an academic how to approach the challenge and received a complex answer laced with big data analytics, obscure vocabulary, and complicated equations.

I asked a box-kicking manager in a large regional distribution center how to solve this complex problem, and heard, “Dunno.  But we’ll figure it out.”  I like that answer.

Let’s get to work.