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Blink 3 of 8 - The 5 AM Club
by Robin Sharma
Logistics Clusters summary
Yossi Sheffi
Delivering Value and Driving Growth
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4.1 (10 ratings)
18 mins
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What is Logistics Clusters about?
Logistics Clusters (2012) is the textbook for logistics operations in the modern world. You’ll learn how logistics clusters develop – such as Europe’s largest logistics park in Zaragoza, Spain – and which geographic and governmental factors influence their development. Importantly, you’ll discover exactly how logistic clusters affect both the local and global economy.
About the Author
Yossi Sheffi is the Elisha Gray II Professor of Engineering Systems at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and director of the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics. He has also worked on supply chain problems with top logistics service providers and manufacturers.
Table of Contents
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A logistics cluster makes it easier for companies to get their products from point A to point B quickly.
How exactly did your favorite pair of shoes get from the factory that produced them to the store you bought them in?
The set of operations needed to coordinate this complex chain of events is called a logistics cluster: a group of logistics-related business activities concentrated in a single geographic area.
Interestingly, different companies utilize clusters in different ways.
Zara, a Spanish clothing retailer with over 1,500 stores across the globe, uses a logistics cluster located in Zaragoza, Spain. (Although Zara was not named after Zaragoza!) The company chose this small Spanish city as the site for a major distribution center and springboard for coordinating the company’s worldwide logistics.
Why Zaragoza? Why not a fashion capital such as Paris or Milan, or some city in China that specializes in low-cost clothing production?
Zara’s distribution center is a part of Europe’s largest logistics park, called the PLAZA – or Plataforma Logística de Zaragoza – which means the logistics platform of Zaragoza.
This park boasts excellent highway, rail and air freight infrastructure, allowing Zara to deliver ready-to-sell products within 24 hours to all its European stores, and within just 48 hours, to all its stores worldwide.
Another company that benefits from PLAZA’s logistics prowess is Caladero, Spain’s largest processor and distributor of fresh fish. With its 80 fishing boats worldwide, Caladero’s distribution chain needs to be flawless: no easy task, as the company only has a few days to deliver fish to ensure freshness.
So Caladero centralizes all its distributional operations at this one site, with its optimal location and transportation infrastructure.
But how does this benefit Caladero exactly? Conveniently, Zaragoza is equidistant from Spain’s four biggest cities: Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia and Bilbao. This enables the fish company to deliver the freshest fish possible to the most customers.
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Who should read Logistics Clusters
- People involved in supply chain management and logistics
- Entrepreneurs, business owners and politicians concerned with local business
- Consumers curious about how a product gets from A to B globally
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