Cargo Talk

Technology: The key driver for 3PL

Third Party Logistics (3PL) is rapidly gaining impetus as more companies are unable to manage their complex supply chains and are comfortabl­e in outsourcin­g the logistics activities to the 3PL service providers. Vinod Alex, Regional Manager–South India, F

- Vinod Alex

largest rail network in the world, yet its share in goods transporta­tion is much less compared to the share of roadways. In comparison with countries like USA, Russia and China, the cost of transport per ton per kilometer in India is high, almost three times that of China. The railway has the potential to bring down the freight cost to greater extent with favourable commercial characteri­stics, dense and longdistan­ce freight lines and strong flows of bulk products. How does technology make

IT is considered a prerequisi­te for the effective control of complex supply chains. Today companies are often not considered independen­t entities, but parts of multi-company, multi-echelon networks, that is supply chains, delivering goods and services to the final customer.

Companies are under pressure to better manage the supply chain and to improve efficiency • Order tracking coordinati­on

Transactio­n processing stands for the use of IT for increasing the efficiency of repetitive informatio­n exchanges between supply chain partners. In this type of IT use the exchanged informatio­n is typically related to such tasks as order processing, billing, delivery verificati­on, generating and sending dispatch advices, and producing order quotes. and delivery

Supply chain planning and collaborat­ion represents the use of IT for sharing planning-related informatio­n such as demand forecasts and other demand informatio­n, inventory informatio­n, and production capacity informatio­n, with the intention of increasing the effectiven­ess of the supply chain.

Order tracking and delivery coordinati­on refers to the monitoring of individual orders or shipments, which may consist of components or final products, with the aim makes it possible to implement a finely grained and immediate collection of data, which in turn enables more detailed and precise analyses on the ‘Business Intelligen­ce’ (BI) side.

A connection of RFID, IT & BI has powerful business potential that goes well beyond incrementa­l operationa­l improvemen­ts. The combinatio­n for tracking and tracing, and sensor technologi­es additional­ly enables the identifica­tion and localisati­on of root causes for quality issues.

Sensor data such as abrasion, temperatur­e, humidity, or brightness can be measured automatica­lly for each transport unit and stored on the RFID chip. Later this data is made readily available by IT for aligning the flow of goods with the actual demand.

The pursued objectives are reducing storage space at the ‘Global Distributi­on Centres’ (GDC) while curbing the risk of

 ?? Regional Manager–South India Freight Systems ??
Regional Manager–South India Freight Systems
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