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Don Ratliff, executive director of ISyE's Supply Chain & Logistics Institute wrote an article on the evolution of supply chain and logistics thinking for the February issue of the Atlanta Business Chronicle. "There has been a dramatic evolution of supply chain and logistics thinking over the 35 years that I have been at Georgia Tech and it has been exciting for the Supply Chain & Logistics Institute to be a central player," said Ratliff. "The recognition that logistics was sufficiently complex to require the attention of analytically trained experts emerged from the massive land, sea and air requirements for the U.S. to supply armies fighting in Europe and Asia in World War II. However, this recognition was almost totally confined to military logistics. For the private sector, the general attitude that logistics was a "bubba" field, requiring strong backs but not much thinking, persisted through the 1970s. There was very limited reliance on data for either operations or planning because data was simply not available."

View the article(subscription required) within the Atlanta Business Chronicle website.