LOGISTICS LOADED WITH SUPPLY CHAINS

Abstract

The paper presents an open discussion on the role, place and meaning of traditional logistics in the process of supply chain management. For this purpose, selected definitions of supply and logistics chains were provided, which were used to identify systemic interdependencies and relationships between these categories. The introduction presents the origins and military roots of the concept of logistics, which only began to function in the structure of various supply chains on the basis of the market economy. Next, the most popular definitions of supply chains in the literature, oscillating around its traditional functional and organizational concepts, are discussed in detail. The place of classic logistics processes, such as transport, storage and packaging, in shaping the functionality of supply chains was also indicated. Service logistics acts as a kind of binder connecting individual links in the supply chain, guaranteeing its consistency and functional continuity. The subject of specific analyzes was the discussion about the supply or demand nature of the supply chain. From the point of view of the principles of market economy, the dominant determinant of the supply chain should be its suction function, illustrating the primacy of market demand over secondary market supply. It is the primary needs of customers, i.e. market demand, that determine the purposefulness of a specific supply chain. Unfortunately, the supply chain dominating in the literature clearly prefers the supply side, which constitutes a kind of antithesis of the market economy. Due to the numerous controversies surrounding the title concept of "supply chain", its logistic aspects were analyzed: market relations of demand-supply, network and chain structure, assortment diversity, spatial extent and synergistic effects generated by it. Finally, the semantic-set relationship between the concept of logistics and the supply chain was examined. The aim of the work was the authors' voices on a question as debatable and probably never closed as the relationship between the logistics approach and the pragmatics of supply chains. The method of review and critical analysis of the literature was used to investigate this problem, concluding with the comments and conclusions drawn from the research.