What Is Logistics?
Logistics is a broad term that encompasses the processes of planning and executing the efficient flow of goods and services between a company’s point of origin and its point of consumption.
Many companies use logistics to ensure that their products reach their customers in the best possible condition. Logistics can also help you to make better decisions about inventory management, warehousing space, and customer satisfaction.
Table of Contents
Supply Chain Management
Supply Chain Management is the process of coordinating business activities that lead to the production, distribution and delivery of goods. It includes procurement of raw materials from vendors, manufacturing, packaging and transporting the finished product to customers.
Supply planning is an important part of logistics, as it considers how much material to procure and when to do so in order to meet the company’s financial and service goals. It also considers market demand and pricing.
Inventory management is also essential, as it ensures that goods are available in the right quantity at the right time to satisfy customer demand. It helps reduce production costs and prevents shortages of materials.
It also makes sure that all of the necessary documents are in place to record the movement of goods throughout their journey to the consumer. This includes transportation, storage and warehousing, and it’s also crucial to ensure that customer returns are handled properly.
Inventory Management
Inventory management is a practice that ensures your company has enough stock to meet demand. This helps keep your company on track and limits the risk of stock-outs, inaccurate records, and restricted cash flow.
Managing inventory is especially challenging for companies with complex supply chains and manufacturing processes. To manage these risks, firms have developed a variety of methods for inventory management including just-in-time (JIT) manufacturing and materials requirement planning (MRP).
The most common methods used to analyze inventory include economic order quantity (EOQ), days sales of inventory (DSI), and just-in-time production.
A good inventory management system keeps track of 集運 all stocked items and monitors their weight, dimensions, and amounts. It also provides insights into which products sell and in what volume. This knowledge allows you to negotiate better terms with vendors and suppliers, which ultimately results in higher profits for your business.
Transportation Management
Transportation Management is an important logistics function that helps companies plan, execute and optimize outbound shipments. It includes functions like load forecasting, identifying vendor and routing solutions, managing multiple carriers and tracking shipments.
As businesses and consumers demand faster delivery times, distribution companies, e-commerce organizations and other businesses that ship freight are finding that their freight shipping processes have become more complex than ever. The challenge is to streamline processes and find ways to optimize spend while delivering on customer expectations.
Today, many supply chain technology vendors offer a broad range of solutions to help businesses manage their transportation operations. Whether they are part of a larger enterprise resource planning system or standalone platforms, these transportation management systems (TMS) are designed to digitally support all transportation processes from order fulfillment to shipment execution.
Warehousing Management
Warehousing management involves overseeing and managing warehouse operations, including receiving, inventory storage, and shipping. It also includes training warehouse staff and ensuring safety protocols are in place.
The physical flow of goods through the warehouse is critical for efficient fulfillment, so the system has to be able to track inventory in real time. It can do this by allowing warehouse workers to use radio frequency (RF) with and without scanning verification, lot zoning, wave picking, “put” to order, put-wall systems, or other technologies to make it easier to fulfill orders quickly and accurately.
Warehouse management also makes it easier to manage labor costs, response times, productivity gaps and trends – helping companies operate leaner, more effective warehouses. This can save money and increase efficiency for customers while minimizing operational and logistics costs.
