ABSTRACT
If you were going to launch a marketing effort for a new product where would you start? Most people would say with the product benefits, but the effort actually starts way before that with what it takes to bring the product to market and how to support the effort. Without the back support the most wonderful marketing effort will fail. One recent example I read was very enlightening concerning D-Day. The battle started on June 6th, 1944, but the preparation started two years earlier. The key to winning the battle and the war was the preparation, including the supply chain. By June 1944, 17 million tons of cargo was shipped from the US to Great Britain. This included 800,000 pints of plasma, 17 million maps, and once the invasion began one million gallons of oil, 3,489 tons of soap in the first four months alone, and enough food to give each soldier 2,830 calories a day. The army’s “Red Ball Express” on a daily basis transported 900 trucks, 24 hours a day delivering a total of 412,193 tons of materials to the front lines. Without these supplies and the logistics D-Day would not work (Godfrey, 2015).
