The Logistics of Business Is Big and ImportantLogistics adds value to the supply chain process when inventory is strategically positioned to achieve sales. Creating logistics value is costly. Although difficult to measure, most experts agree that the annual expenditure to perform logistics in the United States was approximately 10.1 percent of the $9.96 billion Gross Nation Product (GNP) or $1.006 billion. Expenditure for transportation in 2000 was $590 billion, which represented 58.6 percent of total logistics cost. As
further illustrated in Table1.2.1, the logistics of business is truly big business!