Originally posted at New Dominion Consulting:
Thanks to Sal Guasto for sharing his perspective on the current logistics landscape. Sal is a global supply chain, logistics, and freight expert bringing more than 30 years of experience to his clients. We appreciate the exchange with Sal and believe that anyone in the logistics market can benefit from his insights.
1 – What has surprised you in logistics recently?
US Companies during the extreme delays the past 2 years, decided to build tremendous amounts of back up product to protect their supplies of raw material and/or inventory. This decision is having long-term effects and will prove to be a bad decision.
2 – What is the most overlooked opportunity you see in the current logistics landscape?
With the current atmosphere in Logistics, the normal model 3 buckets, (Procurement, Supply Chain and Logistics), need to be combined into 1 bucket and remodeled to assure that Visibility and Control run business decisions and not panic buying.
3 – We have seen a proliferation of logistics software solutions. What is one thing you would like to see change in the logistics solution space?
Software is often sold in modules that don’t fit every user’s operational needs. This causes large amounts of time and expense required by the end user to modify “off the shelf” software. A better approach would be to build software that is customized for the end user and fits all their requirements for managing their business, within the budget required.
4 – What is the greatest challenge that you are experiencing with internal stakeholder relationships?
Making them understand the process of evaluating first their current business model, and the need to assign the correct people within the organization to assist. Usually, CEO’s or COO’s assign current managers to assist with developing the data and documents required to analyze their current business model. This tends to be a difficult process because they really don’t want to assist due to time constraints or job security; they can feel that you are looking to expose their weaknesses, which leads to them getting replaced.
5 – What is the number one piece of advice you would give logistics executives today?
DO NOT rely on 3rdParty Service Providers to manage your logistics business without having at least quarterly reviews to communicate all your requirements and making sure the lead time fits within their model to provide and maintain those requirements.