The Daily Grind of Logistics: the Operations behind "Getting Business Done"

The warehouse at the quiet, industrial part of the town started as, literally, an empty concrete shell, with no furniture, no goods, no ventilation, and no sign of life.  Truckloads of item and upholstery shipments later, combined with more than 12 hours of continuous work by more than a dozen cheaply hired foreign moving men, the new warehouse is finally looking like a warehouse, with the shelving racks, desks, and chairs arranged in their proper positions, and shifted items ready for unpacking.

It is hard to believe that the whole operation practically occurred overnight from Friday to Saturday, with the company logistic staff sacrificing sleep to supervise the entire move of the warehouse from the complete opposite side of the town in the cover of eerie darkness.  And on Monday, mere couple days since the packing of the old warehouse began, the logistic operation is expected to be back in full operation, as if the massive move did not happen at all.

Such is the reality of the day-to-day on-the-ground operations of “logistics management,” the uninterrupted flow of which ensure items purchased by customers are sent out on time, new items are properly registered, and in essence, make sure that the start-up e-commerce company maintain its revenue and good reputation are not damaged by its actual performance.  And, a small team of less than 10 men, making up less than 5% of the entire company staff, squarely shoulders this entire responsibility.

For anyone with previous, but exclusively non-logistic aspect of a commercial enterprise, witnessing the massive warehouse move is a further reinforcement of the utmost significance logistical organization is for the entire company.  Especially as the company attempt to continue growing its user base and revenue, having a smooth logistical operation with little bottlenecks for delays and mistakes is essential to ensure the continued viability of any marketing efforts for expansion.

Furthermore, one needs to consider the fact that any reliable data for company performance is actually generated by the small team of logistic operatives as they go about their daily business of processing hundreds of orders everyday.  Amid the non-stop receiving and sending out of purchased items for customers, the logistic team actually ends up tallying just how successful marketing efforts have been, noting just how many extra orders made became real sales with real revenues.

Yet, the hard work and significance of logistics seem not highly recognized or even appreciated within the company as a whole.  For most of corporate staff that spend majority of time analyzing customer preferences and purchasing trends, the warehouse is considered somewhat of a “black box” that they can mindlessly input orders and expect more shipments as a straightforward outputs.  They seem not to be willing or able to comprehend why this simple input-output mechanism can go wrong so often.

Such mentality is particularly evident when marketing launch new promotions with considering at all issues of actual implementation.  The time-tested linear processing procedures of logistic operations, time and time again, are torn apart by the “special requests” made by the marketing and customer service teams, while with good intentions of catering to the needs of certain specific segments of customers, end up ultimately working against the holistic mission of efficiency improvement.

At the site of the new warehouse, with its distinctively non-corporate-looking environment despite the steadily progressing transformation into a processing space, more than a few staff, even those with long-term experience in logistics, would secretly grumble about the substandard working conditions.  Perhaps some of our corporate staff should experience our on-the-ground difficulties before setting us with unrealistic expectations of operational perfection.  For them to come take a look at the warehouse may be a needed first step.