Make the Tradeoffs Explicit: Stakeholders, Constraints, and Competing Objectives

Logistics strategy is full of objectives that sound compatible until somebody has to make the operating decision. Lower cost, higher service, less inventory, greater resilience, faster response, and more flexibility are all desirable. The engineering work begins when two or three of them collide.
The point is not that these decisions are impossible. It is that the tradeoffs exist whether the organization acknowledges them or not. Systems engineering makes them explicit. The transportation-wareho