We might as well examine the explanations of this concept in several famous English dictionaries first. Webster's Dictionary of New World College (4th edition) explains that logistics (1) is a branch of military science, which studies the procurement, storage and transportation of materials, personnel and facilities. (2) refers to the management of the execution of specific tasks. The Commercial Press/Random House Webster's Dictionary: Logistics is a branch of military science, which studies the acquisition, maintenance and transportation of equipment, materials and personnel, namely logistics. Cambridge Dictionary of International English: logistics is a plural noun, which means to carefully organize complex military operations or enterprise activities (that is, logistics management) so as to make them successfully and effectively implemented.
From the definition of the above famous dictionaries, it can be concluded that logistics in English refers to logistics, logistics management and logistics science. Logistics represents a series of logistics activities (such as transportation, storage, service, information, etc.). ), and logistics management is the management of a series of actual logistics activities. Because logistics is always organized and managed, logistics and logistics management are just two sides of the same thing. Logistics is a subject that specializes in logistics or logistics management. Therefore, logistics can be regarded as a polysemous word. If the domestic logistics industry directly introduced "logistics" from the United States at that time and translated it into logistics, logistics management and logistics science, it may not cause the ambiguity of understanding the concept of logistics today. However, because the domestic logistics industry first accepted the Japanese concept of "logistics", it used to correspond logistics with logistics, redefine it and write it into Chinese national standards. From then on, the word "logistics" is translated less and more (this article follows the domestic practice and translates logistics into logistics). However, the standard definition of logistics in China is different from that in Britain.
The definition of logistics in domestic standards is: "Logistics refers to the process of organically combining the functions of transportation, storage, loading and unloading, handling, packaging, distribution processing, distribution and information processing in the physical flow of goods from suppliers to receivers" (People's Republic of China (PRC) national standard: logistics terminology).