The products created by an organisation are passed to its customers, giving the cycle shown
in Figure 1.3. This shows customers generating demands, with operations using resources to
make products that satisfy them. Logistics moves materials around this cycle.
The operations are usually divided into a number of related parts, in the way that a
hospital has an emergency room, surgical ward, purchasing department, heart unit, operating
theatre and so on. So logistics also moves materials through the different parts of an organisation,
collecting from internal suppliers and delivering to internal customers (as shown in
Figure 1.4). This leads to our basic definition.