The concepts of logistics and supply chain management must be compared or, more appropriately, related to each other. Supply chain management is defined using a pipeline analogy with the start of the pipeline representing the initial supplier and the end of the pipeline representing the ultimate customer. In other words, it was an extended set of enterprises from the supplier’s supplier to the customer’s customer. Another perspective on supply chain management is to view it as a network of the logistics systems and related activities of all the individual organizations that are a part of a particular supply chain. Individual logistics systems obviously play a role in the success of the overall supply chain.


The coordination or integration of the logistics systems in a supply chain is a challenge; no logistics system operates in a vacuum. For example, the inbound part of a manufacturer’s logistics system interfaces with the outbound side of the supplier’s logistics system. The outbound portion of the manufacturer’s logistics system interfaces with the inbound side of its customer’s logistics system.