Types of Logistical Information System

Supply Management and Logistics

Supply management involves the planning and coordination of materials that are needed in a certain location at a specific time to support production or activity (as in the case with military supply). Supply logistics must include transportation of the materials and storage as well as a means for evaluating the level of supply at different stages of the process to make sure the flow of materials matches need. This can involve getting all of the construction materials to a construction site or parts that are needed in a manufacturing plant.

Distribution and Material Movement

Distribution involves managing how a supplied and stored material is then dispersed to the locations it is needed. This involves issues of material movement (loading, unloading and transportation), tracking of stock and accountability of use (recording how the supply is used and by whom). This can involve moving supplies from a central warehouse to the shelves of a retail store.

Production Logistics and Management

Production logistics manages the stages of combining distributed supplies into a product. This can involve the coordination required in a manufacturing or assembling process and in the case of applications such as military production, the logistics of coordinating space and areas for production to occur. In construction as well, production logistics will include the staging of material at the right time to coordinate with the phase of building taking place.

Reverse Logistics and Product Return

Reverse logistics involves the reclamation of material and supplies from a production or assembly process. For instance, in the logistics management of a construction project, reverse logistics plans for the removal of excess material and re-absorption of the material into a stock supply.

In military applications, it is commonly used for exit strategy planning and coordinating the transfer of material and equipment back to a storage base from an area where military exercises were performed.

It can also apply to the return of unwanted but unused products from an end customer seeking a refund. There is a whole industry that has been created in recent years to handle customer returns, including testing, refurbishment and adding items back into inventory. A customer might order something online like a printer or children’s toy that they never used. Before it can be resold, it should go through a process to ensure that it will be suitable to be sold to another customer.

Logistics information systems provide information on goods and follow their delivery path, with their progress and status, and the influence of changes on the purchasing, production, warehousing, financial and accounting systems. Logistic systems depend on external information and international standards to comply with regulations, and to use standardized ways of exchanging logistic information with other systems and with authorities.

An important difference between these systems is whether the emphasis is on the content of the goods or on the transport equipment or transport means used. Manufacturers and traders want to monitor the actual products and articles to know whether they will arrive on time and in proper condition at the delivery places, and to be able to take prompt action when incidents happen. Transporters are focussed on the progress and status of the transport means and the transport equipment in them. If incidents or delays happen, transporters can report these to their clients but the impact on delivering or restocking can only be understood by the traders and manufacturers. For commercial reasons, the transporter may not actually know the details of the goods.

Authorities, especially Customs and authorities responsible for security in transport, have an interest in the content of goods, as well as the transport means and equipment used to transport them.

Information Logistics (IL) deals with the flow of information between human and / or machine actors within or between any number of organizations that in turn form a value creating network (see, e.g.). IL is closely related to information management, information operations and information technology.

The goal of Information Logistics is to deliver the right product, consisting of the right information element, in the right format, at the right place at the right time for the right people at the right price and all of this is customer demand driven. If this goal is to be achieved, knowledge workers are best equipped with information for the task at hand for improved interaction with its customers and machines are enabled to respond automatically to meaningful information.

Methods for achieving the goal are:

• The analysis of information demand
• Intelligent information storage
• The optimization of the flow of information
• Securing technical and organizational flexibility
• Integrated information and billing solutions

The expression was formed by the Indian mathematician and librarian S. R. Ranganathan.

The supply of a product is part of the discipline Logistics. The purpose of this discipline is described as follows:

Logistics is the teachings of the plans and the effective and efficient run of supply. The contemporary logistics focuses on the organization, planning, control and implementation of the flow of goods, money, information and flow of people.

Information Logistics focusses on information. Information (from Latin informare: “shape, shapes, instruct”) means in a general sense everything that adds knowledge and thus reduce ignorance or lack of precision. In stricter sense information becomes information only to those who can interpret it. Interpreting information will provide knowledge.