Showing posts with label Delivery. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Delivery. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 28, 2018

CONCEPT: Logistics

Logistics: This is the art and science of moving, transporting and/or delivering things (material, hardware, equipment or supplies), services or even people across geographical space. Crucial considerations here include: efficiency, coordination, timeliness, security and cost; or, in general, the appropriateness of the means in relation to the mission. Vehicular breakdown and safety of passage are, likewise, always a twin-concern requiring management's 'unblinking' attention and capacity for effective response and even 'networked' intervention.

To have good logistics, you must in the first place have clarity of purpose and a good strategy to realize it. Otherwise, whatever carriers and other transportation resources, routes, personnel or passion and related communication mechanisms that you may have will be of little avail. Thus, the adage that "if you don't know where you're going, you won't get there" tells us less than half the truth. You must have the means (of necessity dependable) to get there, as well. As a minimum, then, strategy should be based on a robust form of  SWOT analysis or its equivalent. In, a robust and pro-active 'supply chain management' system is a necessity for consistent success.

Partly driven by considerations of security (against international terrorism, in particular, as well as piracy) and of efficiency, logistics and IoT have increasingly become intertwined in 'heavy-duty' commercial shipping around the world. In hindsight, one can see that IoT was always implicit in both commercial (for example, in the worldwide cargo-delivery 'transactions' of FedEx and DHL) and humanitarian airfreight (for example in UNHCR and Red Cross operations). It was even there, in its 'infancy', in passenger air-travel -- and most pronounced in long-haul flight. 


But there has been, through it all, a periodically morphing sort of reverse 'cultural lag' (see, also, Godin) here -- between a 'driving' adaptive culture (that is, growing safety and security concerns and needs) and a 'responding' material culture (for example, as alluded to already, the technologies required to give assurance of passenger and shipping-line security). Quaintly, the intuitive tail was wagging the material dog here. With recent advances, however,  IoT's value-proposition has caught up with the need (the demand) for it. This proposition has indeed become more and more explicit and even routine in its effect.

Saturday, August 22, 2015

On Drones: Tweets and Retweets


  1. Sorry, here's the correct link to my piece on "The Dice, The Drones..."
  2. To suggest that the West has tough(er) regulations on drones due 2 mo congested airspaces is 2 simplify & distort the facts
  3. See what I wrote about drones>> . Even the is lately jittery about drones flying everywhere
  4. Kenya shd never surrender the operation of any drones to UNHCR, given our experience with their management of
  5. While U were otherwise engaged, here's what I said about a year ago (already!) , , ,
  6. Defence ministry to regulate use of drones on safety fears - Politics and policy -
  7. E-commerce firm targets local market with drones delivery - Corporate News -
  8. U.S. fighters carry out new air strikes to protect stranded Yazidis via
  9. Drones from the deep: Pentagon develops ocean-floor attack robots - Washington Times: via
  10. Game of drones: Why Google and Facebook are going head-to-head for control of the skies via
  11. Australia to buy giant surveillance drones
  12. Drones exposed them. A robust UN force has driven them off & will keep them out as DRC gains internal strength & external clout
  13. How Drones Could Revolutionize Farming via
  14. Drones Could Revolutionize Agriculture, Farmers Say via
  15. Amazon drones are 'fantasy,' says eBay CEO | PCWorld via [Will drones deliver parcel bombs just as easily?]
  16. Drones over there, total surveillance over here via
  17. Drones Memo Not Shared With Senate Staffers: Dianne Feinstein via
  18. Seasons/swarms of drones, the new locusts, in our long future. Their good 'side' will pale versus the harm/devastation they'll bring