Is a professional supply chain manager a professional logistician? Maybe the transport manager or the ZED manager are professional logisticians? Let’s figure it out together.
Logistics departments in corporate structures can have from one to seven or even more divisions. It all depends on the corporate manager’s “fantasy” and the size of the company or corporation.
My personal story began at a company where there were: a motor vehicle division, a railway division and even customs brokers with their own customs office post.
As an export sales manager, I had to: find the buyer, sell the goods, sign the contract, agree the letter of credit, arrange the transport, arrange all the supporting documents for the customs brokers, including printing CMR, TIR Carnet or SMGS waybill, and prepare the package of documents for receiving, for example, a certificate of origin form “A”. And it was not very difficult in terms of organizing communications between units. Because the partial functions of managers: marketing, sales, financial, transport, were performed by one person. Therefore, there was no communication at all.
Weaknesses have always appeared at the junctions of the links of the supply chain of goods. The economic department may not agree to your contract price on terms such as CIF because you calculated it incorrectly. They managed their business processes, but did not see the whole chain. And you had to learn to understand pricing algorithms, starting with prime cost. Customs brokers, for example, could refuse registration because some documents did not contain the necessary data or information. They also managed the business processes of their unit and did not think about the final result. And then you should have clearly understood the requirements and rules for processing export and customs declarations. The railway division could refuse to supply wagons because you did not agree with the plan for the next month’s transportation, and the additional plan was submitted late. They had the experience of managing railway transport, but they were not focused on the final result of all the logistics chain of the company. And then you had to delve deeper into the rules of transportation by rail.
Sometimes all these communications were accompanied by “specific agreements”. And it didn’t look much like healthy corporate interactions. But all this knowledge added professionalism to the person who partially managed business processes and these divisions as well. This person saw the entire supply chain of the product. He was client-oriented and understood the weak points of connections between the links of the entire logistics process.
A specialist who sees and freely manages the movement of material, information and financial flows of the entire logistics chain is a professional logistician. Supply chain managers, transport managers or ZED managers who have professional skills in managing all links of the goods supply chain can be considered professional logisticians.
Our team professionally designs, develops and manages all links of logistics processes. And modern automation and digitalization tools help us to meet the needs of our customers qualitatively, reliably and quickly.
