Master Logistics & Operations Fundamentals: 10-Day Course

Overview

This ten-day Logistics and Operations Fundamentals programme follows a single pallet of goods from the moment a supplier loads it to the moment a customer signs the delivery note, and stops at every desk it passes: purchasing, receiving, the stores, the production line, the dispatch bay and the truck. Newcomers to logistics and operations learn what each of those desks does, the paperwork and numbers they rely on, and the everyday mistakes that cause shortages, damaged stock and late deliveries. The course is hands-on: participants count stock, calculate reorder points on a calculator, draw a store layout, plan a delivery run and walk through a process with a stopwatch. This course is delivered by Agile Leaders Training Center.

Who Should Attend

• New starters in stores, dispatch, transport or production planning
• Storekeepers and stock clerks who want to understand why their counts matter
• Purchasing and shipping assistants who handle orders and delivery paperwork
• Production and shift coordinators moving into a planning role
• Administrative staff and graduates transferring into a logistics or operations team

Departments and Industries

Suitable for any organisation that receives, stores, makes or ships physical goods.

• Central stores and spare-parts warehouses in plants and utilities
• Factory floors, packing lines and production planning offices
• Distribution depots and e-commerce fulfilment centres
• Hospital stores and medical supply rooms
• Retail and food distribution with short shelf-life products
• Transport yards and delivery fleets

Learning Objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Analyse a purchase from requisition to goods receipt and spot a missing document.
• Apply a reorder point and basic safety stock calculation by hand.
• Use an ABC count to reconcile a stock difference.
• Build a small store layout that puts fast movers near the dispatch door.
• Compare road, sea and air for a simple shipment and plan a delivery route.
• Diagnose a process bottleneck with a stopwatch and explain a red indicator on a basic operations dashboard.

Course Agenda

Day 1: What Logistics and Operations Actually Do

• Following one product from supplier to customer
• The difference between moving and storing goods and making them
• Who does what: purchasing, stores, planning, production, dispatch
• Common words: SKU, lead time, lot, batch, consignment
• Why a small error at receiving becomes a big problem at dispatch

Day 2: How Goods, Paper and Money Move

• Drawing the route of a product through your own organisation
• The document trail: requisition, purchase order, delivery note, invoice
• Where information gets lost between departments
• Service levels: what the customer was promised and what it costs
• Exercise: map the handovers in a sample order

Day 3: Buying the Materials

• How a purchase request becomes an order
• Getting quotations and comparing them fairly
• Checking a new supplier before the first order
• Following up late orders politely and firmly
• Receiving goods against the order: quantity, quality, paperwork

Day 4: Keeping the Right Amount of Stock

• Raw materials, spares, work in progress and finished goods
• Why too much stock is as costly as too little
• Reorder point and safety stock worked on a calculator
• ABC classification and cycle counting
• Exercise: investigate a stock count difference

Day 5: Running the Store

• Receiving, put-away, picking, packing and issuing
• Bin locations, labels and first-expired-first-out
• Racking, pallets and handling equipment basics
• Safe stacking, forklift zones and housekeeping
• Exercise: redraw a store layout to shorten picking walks

Day 6: Getting It to the Customer

• Road, rail, sea and air: speed, cost and typical uses
• Loading a truck and planning a delivery run
• Cross-docking and depots in plain terms
• Proof of delivery, returns and damaged goods claims
• Exercise: plan a five-drop delivery route

Day 7: Planning the Work and Improving It

• Shift planning and simple capacity checks
• Drawing a process with boxes and arrows
• The seven wastes seen on a real shop floor
• Asking "why" five times to find a root cause
• Exercise: time a process with a stopwatch and find the bottleneck

Day 8: The Systems Behind the Scenes

• What an ERP, a warehouse system and a transport system each hold
• Barcodes, scanners and why manual entry causes errors
• Tracking a shipment online
• Reading simple reports: stock on hand, open orders, late deliveries
• Good habits when entering data

Day 9: When Things Go Wrong

• Typical disruptions: late supplier, stock-out, breakdown, road closure
• Keeping a simple list of backup suppliers and routes
• Five everyday measures: on-time delivery, stock accuracy, order accuracy, cycle time, cost per order
• Reading a red, amber and green dashboard
• Exercise: build a what-if checklist for one critical item

Day 10: Putting It All Together

• Team case: a customer order that arrived late and incomplete
• Tracing the failure back through each desk
• Agreeing fixes that respect cost, stock and transport limits
• Presenting the team's recovery plan
• Personal plan: three things to apply in the first month back

Practical Exercises

These suggested activities use the course's simple forms and sheets on examples from the participant's own workplace.

• Suggested activity: walk one order through the order-to-delivery document checklist and mark any missing paperwork.
• Suggested activity: fill in the reorder point and safety stock sheet for three items, then reconcile a cycle count on the stock form.
• Suggested activity: slot fast movers on the store layout grid and plan a delivery run on the route sheet.
• Suggested activity: time a task with the process timing sheet to find the bottleneck.

FAQs

Do I need any logistics background?

No. The course starts from zero and uses everyday examples. Basic arithmetic and spreadsheet use are enough.

How long is each day and how many hours in total?

Each day runs about four to five hours, giving roughly 40 to 50 hours over the ten days.

Is logistics the same as operations?

Not quite. Logistics moves and stores goods; operations turns materials and effort into products or services. In practice the two share information daily, which is why this course covers both.

Conclusion

Participants finish with a clear picture of how goods travel through an organisation, from the supplier's loading bay to the customer's signature, the basic calculations and forms each desk uses to keep stock and deliveries on track, and a short personal plan for applying these logistics and operations fundamentals in their own team.