saaw update
| by Austin Gamble
Celebrating Logistics
When I was invited to attend a media preview of the CeMAT 2014 show in Hannover, Germany, I attended
a conference and factory tour arranged by Linde Material Handling in Aschaffenburg, Bavaria, Germany.
As I absorbed all the information been thrown at me, I started to realise the importance of logistics, the
enormity of the logistics industry, and the role logistics plays in every aspect of one’s life. And as I surveyed
the ever widening panorama, it got me thinking.
I
t does not take a great leap of
imagination to realise that logistics
plays an enormous role in a country’s
economy. Whilst logistics is all about
moving something from A to B, if one
adds all those something’s, the full gamut
becomes apparent.
Whether it is raw material, or finished
goods, or people, logistics is behind every
single economic activity, and without
logistics, nothing happens.
The simple truth is that if you cannot move
goods, or people, or even information,
the economy, and the country, is basically
snarled-up.
Developed countries understand this – that
is why they are developed. They learnt the
lesson of logistics in their developing stage.
Developing countries are still in the learning
phase. Just look a little deeper at this
philosophy. Developed countries celebrate
logistics, whereas developing countries
tolerate logistics.
To illustrate my point, Germany celebrates
logistics by holding many logistics
exhibitions and conferences, year in
and year out. And they define logistics
in different ways, dicing and slicing the
various aspects. CeMAT for example,
celebrates intralogistics, a term the
Germans invented for “inside the fence”.
Intralogistics is just about that one element
of logistics- moving things inside the
defined boundaries of a factory or logistics
yard.
In South Africa, we do not celebrate
logistics, but we tolerate it. Just look
around you. Potholes, robots out of
order, poor road signage, are patent and
clear symptoms of logistics tolerance.
E-tolling existing roads is a clear
manifestation of logistics tolerance, and
to justify this we insist on the user pays
principle, even though we are basically
charging motorists for the use of roads
that their taxes have built. We are clearly
logistics tolerant.
Some would argue that this means we
are logistics intolerant, but not really,
because if we were intolerant, we
would not accept barriers to logistics
excellence. We need to become
intolerant before we can celebrate.
Institutions like SANRAL try to confuse
us by saying that to have decent road
infrastructure we need to toll road
users and they point to findings such
as the World Economic Forum’s 2012
Competitive Report that ranks South
Africa as 42nd in road infrastructure.
But they are missing the point, and are
putting the cart before the horse.
I’ve recently seen an article that
says that only 17% of South Africa’s
population has access to the internet,
vs. 30% in Kenya and Nigeria. And we
only have the 25th fastest internet in
Africa, and 120th globally.
Our internet connection speed is less
than a quarter of the speed in the US,
and the US is not even close to being
a world leader in this. We are thus
logistically speaking, a late developer in
the developing world!
I could go on and on, but to put it into
a nutshell, it is the responsibility of all
South Africans to participate in this
debate, and it is the responsibility of
all publishers to provide a platform for
those who are logistics intolerant, and
a platform to all who want to celebrate
logistics, and a platform for those
who want to tell their logistics story,
and a platform for a path to logistics
excellence. The more stories we tell, the
more we turn the tide.
This is typical third world thinking and
all the more reason why the debate
around intelligent logistics must become
a national priority. It is a logistics
imperative.
And to take this thinking further, logistics
in not simply about the movement of
physical goods. The movement of ideas
and information is also logistics.
We must lay the table.
We must invite everyone
to bring food to the table.
We must ask everyone to be
seated. All must hoist their
knives and forks. Let the
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| words in action
8
october 2014
feast begin.