Logistic for Urban Life

Today I got news that supply of mineral waters to Jakarta is limited, due to damage of a main bridge close to Sukabumi, the resource area of the water. It is another evidence of how fragile the situation of urban life, after a shortage of electricity, gas, water supply, now the mineral water. Three weeks ago there were two bombs had been exploded in the ‘twin hotels’ JW Marriott and Ritz Carlton in central Jakarta. 

The situation actually remaining us how fragile and sensitive is the urban life, especially the city like Jakarta, or Surabaya, Medan, Denpasar. Anytime the villain can sabotage the city with only damaging one or two point of logistic lines. It can be supply of electricity, gas, water supply, food (rice), flour, meat, etc.

Logistic management is very important to maintain urban life. Once we fail, people will easy to be panic. We should protect the logistic system against the villain or terrorist sabotage, but before that we should maintain it to improve image of the government. Any failure of the logistic system will give bad image to government. People will upset and their trust to the city management will decrease suddenly.

In this case any local government unit should learn from management of grocery stores and their distribution outlets. How they develop and maintain network and partnership with local suppliers (villagers for fresh fruits and vegetables, or manufacturers for consumer goods), how they manage the stocks in the warehouses and their locations, then how to manage the networks of retailers. The strong logistic management can manage the flow efficiently and anticipating any risk of failure in delivery flow. Any risk is calculated, so that if something happen, the system has alternative sources of supply to take-over the failure.

 Any big city will need an expert in urban/regional management or economic to do these logistic analyses, plan and management capabilities to manage the logistic to support urban life of our cities? [Risfan Munir, Urban Public Service Management Specialist]