thoughtleaders
agement environment?
AFirst, I want to talk about the relation between logistics clus-
ters and globalization because it is
interesting. Logistics clusters are
very efficient in terms of transporta-
tion. And as long as the globaliza-
tion trend continues, more stuff will
go to clusters, so they kind of feed
each other. There is very little freight
that goes directly from a factory in
Shenzhen to a consumer in New
York, basically nothing. It will go
through some process of aggrega-
tion, some breakbulk process. You
have transportation efficiency
because there is a lot of freight that goes
in and out of the cluster: Trucks, trains,
airplanes, ships are more full. You have
higher frequencies in and out of the
place. So the level of service is better and
the service costs less. As a result, it
attracts even more companies and it
becomes even more efficient, so there is a
positive feedback loop in the growth of
these clusters.
If I may say something about jobs:
This is where logistics clusters actually
shine. Where do you start when you have
only a high school degree? You could
start on the ground floor in a warehouse, driving a truck, whatever.
Interestingly, in this industry, there is
upward mobility. If you look at companies like UPS, most managers, most
executives, started on the ground. It is
true not only of UPS; it is true of every
company that we visited. And logistics is
a growing industry.
Logistics clusters attract manufacturing
companies. Because they offer good
transportation connections in and out,
you can have a just-in-time operation, a
just-in-sequence operation. So you have
these clusters generating sub-clusters of
industry. That is another element of long-term job creation.
QWhat do you hope readers will take away from the book?
AI hope that people will take away the fact that logistics is a lot more
than moving boxes. There are a lot of
people who don’t understand logistics.
They don’t understand, for example, the
complexity. They don’t understand that
this is one of the areas that need the
most advanced information technology
applications.
I also hope they will get a glimpse of
what the profession is actually doing,
what the profession does for improving
economic development. It can create jobs
for people that the high knowledge industry cannot. Logistics is not offshore. You
cannot do distribution to all your retail
stores from China. You have to bring it
here and you have to do it locally, which
means you are creating jobs and you are
protecting them from being offshored
next year. ;
