Improvement in logistics practice becomes more noticeable when logistics decisions are reviewed rather than repeated. In the logistics scenario, feedback isn’t the reaction of other people, but the reaction within the scenario itself. When a logistics decision leads to a late arrival or a stockout, that’s feedback. Learning how to review that feedback is how logistics practice becomes practice instead of trial and error.
One example of how to review your logistics decisions is to review a completed logistics scenario, and ask what went well and what didn’t go so well. Instead of classifying the result of a logistics decision as simply good or bad, review the logistics decisions that lead up to the result. For example, if your goods arrived late, think about the logistics transportation decision you made, the logistics scheduling assumptions you used, and the logistics timing estimates you used. Each of those steps will give you an opportunity to refine your logistics decision-making skills, making the logistics feedback more specific than general.
One common error is overlooking logistics inefficiency because the end result was “good enough.” For example, the goods may have arrived on time, but at a higher logistics cost and with extra logistics steps. Over time, all those little logistics inefficiencies add up to big problems. The fix is to approach every outcome as an opportunity to refine logistics skills, even if everything seemed to go pretty well. This will help you refine logistics practice to improve your logistics decision-making skills.
Try taking just a little time in your practice session to review a logistics scenario you have already completed instead of building a new one. Start by going through the logistics decisions you made from memory, and then check those against what actually happened in the logistics scenario. Identify one decision where an alternative would have made the outcome better, and mentally trace out how that change would affect the rest of the logistics scenario. This exercise will help you refine logistics skills to better your logistics practice.
As you continue to practice, you’ll start to notice trends in your logistics decisions. Certain logistics decisions will make for more timely delivery or more effective logistics coordination, while other logistics decisions will introduce avoidable risk. The more you notice those trends, the less you will hesitate in the logistics scenario, because you will be using experience instead of intuition to make your logistics decisions. In this way, logistics feedback becomes part of the process instead of a discrete event.
If you’re still struggling to identify trends in your logistics decision-making, try narrowing the scope of your review. Instead of looking at an entire logistics scenario, focus on one logistics decision, such as the choice of transportation or the establishment of a reorder point. Look at that single logistics decision in detail, thinking about what information you used to make it, and what information you didn’t consider. With this level of granularity, logistics feedback will become even more concrete, and each practice session will yield stronger, more reliable logistics decisions.