OSA in Revista Empresarial & Laboral, on digital technology and the understanding of logistics today.
“Digital Technology for Supply Chain Control” is the title of the article our own CEO, Roderick Woolvett, has landed in the colombian digital entrepreneurship magazine “Empresarial y Laboral”. A reflective read on how we think about logistics.
Logistics is defined as the organization and movement of volumes in space. Meaning we can even think as children and play with a ball inside our own room to fulfill that definition. A minute won’t go by for us to find “new spaces and ways of doing it”, to understand this from the very core of the concept.
A sensible translation for our spanish definition on logistics by the “Real Academia Española” would be “The allotted means and methods to fulfill management of an enterprise or service, specially about distribution”, which to this day seems as a perfectly explicit concept checklist we executives can rely on to answer one of the most dreaded questions in the last years. One that dramatically increased during the past covid-19 pandemic: How is our logistics faring?
If logistics nowadays is so explicit and curiously one of the few disciplines defined more by actions than by definitions, as in ‘what logistics takes care of’, then why so many enterprises and so many executives struggle each time they’re scrutinized with today’s harshest question: How are we going in terms of standard of service?
From that little ball we used to move through our room, to the complexity of organizing resources and techniques to achieve the delivery of a product or service in time, constantly and according to promised conditions, we have met lots of enterprises which didn’t make it, we still work with those that are pushing everyday to achieve it and we admire all those who shine in this business.
In the book “Fedex Delivers” by Madan Birla (2005), the author notes this and explains the reader through the subtitle and further content: “how the world's leading shipping company keeps innovating and outperforming the competition.”
Innovating is a science in which the japanese developed their own mastery with their Toyota Production System: “Strive to improve what we do, constantly and in a controlled manner” (Kaizen) stands translated as “the importance of doing the process well, understand it and then improve it again”. When they talk about a ‘controlled manner’ they refer to the information they gather around the process. This involves its capture, visualization and analysis. Otherwise, we wouldn’t know if we improve, disimprove or actually don’t know what we are doing, which happens more often than not.
Just like before, a lot of non-explicit concepts build around the discipline leaders achieve with their collaborators regarding: improvement, satisfaction and relevance. Improvement is an art that will mature in the hands of the people and it refers to the satisfaction they get when they feel and confirm what they do has a meaning, and that they themselves will improve when what they do improves. Maybe this can even be measured by the length of the smile of both clients and supervisors.
In OSA, a chilean tech company with focus in the digitalization of the supply chain, we have dedicated our efforts to those workers who strive to work in a better way, measuring their results, allowing them control ‘from sea to store’, making the improvement discipline something friendly.
Follow the link to the original article in spanish at Revista Empresarial y Laboral:
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