Transport Networks
Overview
Did your Network Logistics just evolve over time in an unplanned fashion?
Are your inventory stocking locations not in the ideal place to best serve your customers?
Then I’m afraid your Distribution Network is most likely not aligned properly with your market share and customer base.
As a result, you’re not providing the best service at the lowest possible cost.
Ask Yourself:
- Do you have the most appropriate distribution network for your products and customers?
- Is it configured to provide the best service at the lowest cost?
- If not? Why not?
Distribution Network and Supply Chain under control
Several warehouse locations, different sales channels, several delivery regulations and new ones constantly being added because customer demands never stop increasing. And then there are many of contracts with external service providers that take care of your fulfillment at countless locations, for example as CEPs.
Networks are complex
Often networks are complex in which by far not everything is transparent and easy to manage. For instance, do you know your service level or fill rate? Your cut-off time for your various products? The percentage of on-time delivery? All that and much more are key data that are often outside your control because network partners take care of them. And yet it is you who are responsible for what happens in your network.
To make sure complexity doesn’t lead to inefficiency, you have to get transparency in your network. Starting with your customers’ demands, It has to be analyzed which logistic capacity is best: does customer “A” really need four days of lead time, and does it pay for it? Should expensive premium services also be made available to “C” customers? Your product developers need to be made to think about the repair cycle, already at the designing stage. The right partner has to be selected by defining service classes such as just-in-time, 24 or 72-hour delivery. Smarter supply chain management perfectly integrates all partners and service providers – in house and outsourced – into your value chain and molds it to a coherent overall concept! And carefully selected KPIs ensure that you can measure the improvements.
