At the Junction

An Introduction to a Logistics Perspective of the World

This series was imagined as a light-hearted examination of “life at the junction,” or how just about every moment is defined by logistics. I chose a junction because of an old saw from a long-serving Marine Red Leg: on the motto of the base at Quantico, what do you find at a crossroads? Confusion. Of course, you also find the Devil at the Crossroads, so it becomes perhaps a doubly apt title for this run of writings.

Logistics is everywhere. And of its many facets, junctions - the points of change in the journey of a good or service to its destination - are uniquely difficult. The long miles, complex processes, periods of preparation, and similar are what would be considered as the challenge, but no. Junctions are challenges for demanding information and decision-making, complicated maneuvers, safe keeping, and smooth movements.

But let us take a step backwards to ensure that our use of logistics is understood and shared. My use is defined by the influence of military operation: I consider goods, services, transportation, warehousing, and their chain of design, procurement, and support. In principle, logistics is about resources rationally, effectively, and efficiently to defined or necessary outcomes or objectives. In reality, logistics is a swirling universe of interconnecting systems, like hour hands upon the clock we experience their operation largely invisibly, never quite fulling seeing their movement, but knowing it has happened.

Until, that is, when things go wrong, even just a little. A holiday lands on garbage day and catching up at the next is an effort. Or bigger, like when storms loom and grocery store shelves are stripped bare in the days leading up to it. And sometimes, catastrophically. When entire civic daily demographics change and product streams cannot compete. That is why we ran out of toilet paper in the retail market - because bums were meant to be in schools, offices, restaurants, transport using industrially spooled loo roll of lesser quality (because nobody gives away Charmin for free - or risks the blockages from the excess ply density). The two lines of this same item being produced, packaged, and packed separately to pre-understood distribution systems and nodes meant that shifting gears as COVID reshaped the world took time.

So why are we at the junction? Because within this wide critical universe of logistics, everything depends upon the ability to manage junctions. Without this, nothing else matters. If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere along the supply chain. If you can’t, failure is fast and unavoidable. Not industrial capacity, not lift and transport, nor organization or training will save you from that deficit. Nothing moves without skill in junctions. And everything falls apart if it can’t be managed.

J.