Logistics Management 22 / Logistics in Belgium

Recently, we received an interesting email at the editorial office from a certain Ben Benjabutr, a Thai student at the King Mongkut University of Technology Thonburi. Since daily emailing with the King Mongkut University of Technology Thonburi is not exactly one of our core tasks, Ben's message immediately caught our attention. After all, the man has taken the trouble to delve into the history books of logistics, to unravel all the notable developments and to list them for us in a logistics timeline. Did you know, for example, that the term 'logistics' first appeared in the year 1898? More than 20 years later, in 1919 to be precise, the first supply chain courses worthy of the name started at the American Syracuse University. We jump back in time, and in the early 1970s we see the term 'reverse logistics' first being discussed. These are all factors that seem self-evident today, but which were barely an issue just a few decades ago. Ben's email gave us ideas. The steps that logistics has taken in the past decades are enormous. However, our sector will have to make even bigger leaps in the coming decades to keep our global economy running in a sustainable way. In our special 'Logistics in Belgium' we try to further complete the logistics timeline by means of a number of exclusive interviews. Thanks to Ben, we now know how it all started, but the key question remains the same: where should we go from here?