Which comes first, the chicken or the egg? The logistics come before the science, if you want to do it right.

So, do you do the design first, and then figure out the logistics, or do you figure out the logistics and then inject them into the product development process as a design attribute?

Now, I’m a little bit biased, because I’m a logistician, but I’m also a card carrying member of the engineering brotherhood.  This means that I’m often characterized as a bit of a heretic by the high priests of my tribe, but as a member of the tribe by definition I do have more than a little expertise on the engineering side of things.

So, to answer my own question and enrage the high priests:  Logistics comes first if you really want to succeed.

There is a DoD design on the loose that has gotten some play in the press, and they really got it right from both a logistics and a technical standpoint.  The official name of the system is the “Field Deployable Hydrolysis System” and it’s the chemical engineering marvel the US is using to destroy Syria’s chemical weapons stockpiles.

Here’s a description of the system from DoD documents:

"The Field Deployable Hydrolysis System (FDHS) is a transportable, high throughput neutralization system designed to convert chemical warfare materiel into compounds not usable as weapons. The FDHS furthers the Department of Defense mission of chemical agent disposal operations and can be used to neutralize bulk amounts of known chemical warfare agents and their precursors. Neutralization is facilitated through chemical reactions involving reagents that are mixed and heated to optimize throughput with a destruction efficiency of 99.9 percent."

Now, nobody can write prose like a DoD bureaucrat, so let me call your attention to one really important word:  transportable.  There is some serious uber-geek stuff going on here, with some really smart scientists, but the first word in the description of their masterpiece is “transportable.”

Trying to describe what this device looks like would be difficult, so click here to see a photo.

What strikes me, right away, is that they took the transportable requirement seriously.  This massive piece of equipment is two modules built within the frames of two standard 20 foot intermodal shipping containers.  Ship the containers to where they need to be, stand one of them on end, bolt the frames together, connect the systems, and you are in business.

When you do it right, like they did with the FDHS, logistics comes first.

Now where’s that chicken . . .