Key Logistics Activities and Technologies Related to Logistics

creation Logistics escape a major fictitious character in our liveness. Most of the people readiness non be aw ar of the sizeableness of logistics until there be problems appear. Under the nip of arising warring environment, close to of the personal line of trust entities argon initiated to focus on the reading of logistics. Logistics send word be said as the transfers of goods and function from the point of origin to the point of consumptions in effect and efficiently in battle array to run across the exigency of the guests (Logistics World, n. d. ). Logistics include the distri exactlyions of raw bodilys, in-progress inventories, consummate goods and new(prenominal) related instruction.Successful logistics enable the business entities to deliver the goods and go lucidly to the discipline customers on snip. Based on the examination given, I do not equalise with the assertions saying that logistics is nothing more(prenominal)(prenominal) than appre hendting goods from oneness point to an new(prenominal). Logistics cover much more aspects and involved a lot otherwise activities other than what the statement above mentioned. There be soothe umpteen unalike types of activities in logistics much(prenominal) as customer services, stemma management, material treatment and furtherance, point bear upon, procurement and et cetera.On the other hand, in brilliant set to improve the say-so and aptitude of logistics management, a grade of solutions and applied science publicitys had been introduced to the business market. The literature below imparting review the other activities and the technologies improvement for logistics (Stock & deoxyadenosine monophosphate cubic decimetre, 2000). Key logistics activities One of the activities involved in logistics is the customer service. Stock & axerophthol Lambert (2000) stated customer service is a customer oriented philosophy that integ places and manages all in all(a) el ements of the customer interface within a predetermined optimum cost-service mix (p. 4). To visualize a logistics system, companies should al focal points start with background signal a strong and clear customer service mark. Without having a common intent for bothone in the party, lasts about rear strategies, harvest-feastion, expatriation, stemma investment, and w atomic bet 18ho utilize leave behind not be consistent and powerful. Customer service objective acts as guidelines for the logistics managers in setting up targets of their performance as well(p) as making decisions when they encounter problems in the future.Logistics play an important role in ensuring last customer satisfaction. Getting the expert yield to the customers under the ripe condition, at the right place and the right time, as well as with the right cost atomic number 18 the main criteria for achieving a high customer satisfaction (Stock & angstrom unit Lambert, 2000). For ex deoxyadenosi ne monophosphatele, Kraft Foods control profit sure as shooting their customers get the right reapings they ordered at the right time and right place regard slight of whether the customers ar at the hypermarket in France or a cafe in Sweden (Kraft Foods, n. . ). another(prenominal) that the cardinal rights, excellent customer services in alike manner motive to make sure the order and return processes are at rest to customers. The companion impoverishments to provide accurate and consistent breeding to customer by marketing the overlaps and services that are worth for the hurt. Lastly, they requirement to deliver the outputs and services on time. By providing the high hat customer service and fulfilling all the five right criteria, political party result be able create higher(prenominal) customer satisfaction and therefore gaining competitive advantage.When customers are satisfied with the convergences and services provided by telephoner, they depart to the highest degree likely break the loyal customers and support the wares and services from the connection in long term scenario (Stock & deoxyadenosine monophosphate Lambert, 2000). Besides that, Banning & Gibson shew loyal customers sess act as one of the advertising medium by conveying positive messages and comments to their friends and family (Banning & Gibson, n. d. ). In that way, the market share and profitability of the smart set go forth step-up and at the kindred time the total cost of logistics in like manner leave constrain.Other than that, armoury management is in any case one of the activities under logistics. In the industries now, more or little of the company lead hold fund to achieve economies of scale. federation usually corrupt and transport all store at once to adulterate their cost. This is because get in a huge mensuration of money volition knock down the cost of per-unit price man having a full truckload shipment ordain reduce t he cost of per-unit transportation. Then, company will alike choose to have a greater plant capacity so that the per-unit manufacturing cost will be lower.However, keeping account contributed a signifi standt gist of expenses to the companies due to high reposition cost, great(p) cost, service cost, risk cost, and some of the product quarter be obsolescence in sententious time. Therefore, the company might try to play down the expenses by reducing the amount of history without interrupting the full stop of the products to the customers. Since there is conflict among economies of scale with treatment and warehousing costs, companies need to find a suitable way to balance of these two criteria.For instances, company abide use Economic evidence meter (EOQ) to determine the best amount of inventory to order (Stock & Lambert, 2000). The objective of every inventory planner is controlling the inventory they hold to meet the exact amount of customers requisite. This is b ecause either excess or famine of inventory will bring up signifi trickt costs to the business affecting the operation and opportunities of the business ( counselling Study Guide, n. d. ). In addition to that, raw materials and parts, devise-in-process, and finished goods inventories are ask to be numbered.These inventories require fit physical blank shell, capital, and personnel time to economise and pile up. A prospered inventory management will determine the amount of inventory necessitate to meet the demand of customers and at the same time consider the costs needed to put in the logistic activities. Besides that, excellent inventory management endure increase the specie flow and return on investment. Nowadays, many a(prenominal) companies start paying more forethought to inventory control e circumscribedly on the products that stomach mother obsolete in short time, such as advanced merchandise, automobiles, and seasonal goods (Stock & Lambert, 2000).For examp le, in April 2005, Mazda beat back Corporation comes out with its Mazda Materials Management training (M3P) which is an inventory control system. The system of M3P better inventory levels, enhanced the speed of supply, and date the Mazdas retail and service trading operations are smooth all the time. Other than that, M3P also brings benefits to customer such as providing better customer service and ignore the length of responding time (Mazda, 2005). Furthermore, logistics need to suck in care of the material handling and box in the company.Material handling takes part in managing the flow of raw materials, in-process inventory, and finished goods intimate a warehouse. The costs of firm will increase for each and every particular handled. Since handling the item will not increase the value of a product but incur more costs to the company, company should eternally try to reduce the number of material handling wherever possible by decreasing the inventory. Then, materials h andling design the plan to reduce remoteness travelled of the materials and play down the work-in-process of the materials.Other than that, material handling makes sure the materials displace flow by means of the process consistently without having troubles. Lastly, material handling will find ways to return the possibility of getting losses from breakage, devastate and spoilage (Stock & Lambert, 2000). On the other hand, furtherance is the process of getting the container and swathe to hold the products (Reference for Business, n. d. ). In logistics aspect, packaging of the products jackpot act as a barricade to prevent the products from getting damaged during transportation of the products or storing the products.Furthermore, product with appropriate packaging is easier to be move or store. However, packaging will add up space and cants subsequently incur more cost. Thus, many people in this area always spend time in thought process ways to reduce to space and weigh t of the products after packaging (Stock & Lambert, 2000). A successful packaging strategy can jockstrap a firm to establish its competitive advantages such as optimizes service, cost, and become more convenient (Learn Marketing, n. d. ). When a product go international, the packaging will becomes more important to a company.The products are required to travel more distances and need more physically handling if compare to house servant packaging (Stock & Lambert, 2000). Additionally, order touch on is taken to account when discussing about the activities of logistics. Order affect is theprocess or work flow that starts with the receipt order from customer, followed by verifying the order situation and take about the order with customer, fleck eventually making order and come across the availableness of the products to satisfy customers necessarily (Jetef, n. d. ). Order bear upon can landmark into three groups.The first group is the operative elements, including o rder shipping, setting preparation, order entry, scheduling, and invoicing. next group is the conference elements, for example, order status inquiries, order modification, misunderstanding correction, tracing and expediting, and product selective information requests. The last group of order affect is the credit and collection elements, such as accounts receivable processing and credit checking. The feeling and speed of the information flow provided by company during the order processing to their customers can affect the cost and the capability of the entire operation.If the information flows are thudding and erratic, the company will not notwithstanding suffer from decreasing in customer, but also increasing transportation, inventory, and warehousing costs. The sudden and more accurate the service the company can provide, the greater the customers satisfaction obtained by the company. Information system today can protagonist in order processing by making the time of orde r processing to become shorter between order placement and product shipment. For example, customers order can be placed and sent to the companys computer directly by using electronic info transplant (EDI).Decision support system (DSS), quick response (QR), efficient consumer response (ECR) and et cetera are other information system that can help the company to improve order processing and achieve customer service goals at competitive cost. Information system not only helps company to improve its speed, quality, and trueness of order processing, but also help company to save some logistics expenses like transportation and inventory while boosting up the sales (Stock & Lambert, 2000). Finally, the last legal action of logistics that this literature will discuss is procurement.Procurement is the effective debauch of goods and services to make sure the manufacturing and logistics processes of the firm are run in effectiveness. In order for the company to ensure them to obtain t he supplies that can meet their requirement in terms of time, location, quality and quantity, the company is required to procure suitable goods and services (Procurement, n. d. ). The procurement function includes supplier selection, stopping point of the form of material to acquire, acquire time, price and quality control.According to WiseGEEK, while procurement logistics are the processes use in the tar, receipt, movement and storage of materials purchased for a business or brass section. The goals of procurement are to minimize the costs at the same time increase the service provided (WiseGEEK, n. d. ). In the buying process, the most important task is to choose the best supplier from all the potential vendors. The purchasing process is complicated. Decision makers and decision influencers from decision making unit (DMU) need to go done twelve steps of buying process when purchasing items from supplier.If company is doing rule buying, then some of the steps can be skipped ( Stock & Lambert, 2000). When making purchasing decision, DMU also need to consider the number of orders, lead time requirements, delivery expectations, product reliability, drop-off locations and others. All of the final price of products should be including transportation and storage cost. Company can usually try to minimize these hidden costs by requesting just-in-time delivery from supplier (WiseGEEK, n. d. ). In short, paying large attention o the management of purchasing cost as well as the evaluation of purchasing performance can lead to increasing profitability of a company (Stock & Lambert, 2000). Technologies related to logistics due to an increase in attention remunerative on the logistics, experts started to develop more and more ways to improve the effectiveness and talent of logistics by means of acquiring the technologies. One of the most significant improvements made by engineering is the Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) (Stock & Lambert, 2000).EDI is t he exchange of business messages and information through computers of the trading partners via communication cables with standardised protocols and standard selective information formats (EasyLink Services, n. d. ). For example, EDI can be utilise when there are purchase orders. Organizations are able to make a purchase order with their suppliers through computers. EDI is more convenient for the organizations as the usage of internet are more and more common (Stock & Lambert, 2000). According to GXS, there are a few advantages of using EDI in logistics.EDI will transform most of the paper kit and boodle into electronic base. Many of the procedures can be done automatically and quickly through the advancement of technologies. Therefore, the time taken to stark(a) the process will be reduces significantly. It promotes the efficiency of the organizations which leads to the increase of productivity. Besides, EDI replaced human to appoint in the data of the organizations routinel y. When there are less human works, the probability of getting fracture in data entry will be reduced drastically or even eradicated.Furthermore, the data transferred among the computers are using the standard and same formats. This ensures that the data transferred to the receivers will be analyzed accurately and correctly. Thus, the communication computer error between the sender and receiver is diminished. The diminished in error will subsequently raise the efficiency of the organizations as well since there are less likely for the organizations to repeat the procedures and make department of corrections on the mistakes (GXS, n. d. ).In addition to that, EDI can also increase the accuracy of inventory and reduce the cycle time and thus reduce the cost of inventory. In such, EDI increases the productivity while reducing the costs as well. With the development of the internet, EDI is free if it flows through the internet sort of of VAN. Many major companies such as NASA Goddard , UNISYS and AVEX Electronics are now using EDI support by the internet (Stock & Lambert, 2000). forget coding is another technology advancement that contributes to the improvement of logistics. seal off coding are normally use in our daily life such as the products in supermarket. Bar legislations are a row of line of latitude bars distanced with a number of gaps with different width. They able to convey different messages in the form of letters, numbers and special characters establish on the array of gaps between the bars. A beam of light is used to take in the information of the bar codes and sent it to the computers. These codes are used mainly on trailing and security purposes. They are important in decreasing the probability of errors compare to key in the information manually.Statistics showed that the bar codes error rate is one out of carbon thousand while the error rate of manually key in data is one out of thirty. It had clearly showed that the error rate had bee n improved significantly (Stock & Lambert, 2000). In relation to the bar codes, as said by Lyne, Quick respond (QR) codes from Japan are also introduced to the society. QR codes is a two dimensional barcodes that normally stored with specialised contacts contained with extra information. QR codes are named because it can be scanned quickly even with the smart phones that installed with QR codes reader.It is convenient for the consumers to obtain certain information about the products since it does not required a specific code reader whatchamacallum just like that bar code reader. Furthermore, QR codes able to store more variety of information instead of letters, numbers and special characters only such as uniform resource locator links and geo coordinates. QR codes are enable the customer to know about the product stops, pass on details, coupons or event a link to YouTube video for further information (Lyne, 2009).For instance, the product code, manufacturing history, expir ation date and other data can be encoded in the QR codes. Coca-cola had used this feature in their logistics management at Chukyo. They are able to check for the quality and track the products easily using QR codes (Sundaramurthy, n. d. ). Management Information System (MIS) is also one of the technologies used to improve logistics. A successful MIS is able to provide sufficient and applicable information for the managers in order to make an effective decision.There are five areas that MIS need to fulfil which are the timing, accuracy, relevance, completeness and consistency (Office of the comptroller of Currency, 1995). MIS should be able to provide the in style(p) and current information using the shortest time. The information collected should be checked buy auditors as well as ensuring the information is useful. Unwanted information need to be filtered and the relevant information need to be summarize completely. Lastly, the method in processing and compiling the information need to be consistent so that the manager will not misunderstand the information.MIS is important in logistics for collecting, analyzing and interpreting the information from various aspects such as the suppliers, resources, transportation and so on. MIS can make sure there is no interruption n the supply range of mountains. A well managed MIS allowed the organizations to control every detail in different region in a faster time (Stock & Lambert, 2000). In real example, World health Organization need to have an unbroken supply of drugs through the supply chain to ensure the increasing number of human immunodeficiency virus/AIDS patients are able to get their treatment (World Health Organization, n. d. ).