China Third Party Logistics Analysis

As customers continually demand their shipments delivery to be cheaper and faster, all the logistics service corporations should focus on improving their services and customer responsiveness. The rivalry of existing competition is intense and low buyer switching cost only triggers it.

Due to the large quantity of freight and the long distance that it must travel to arrive to its destination exporters and importers alike have found logistic service providers essential to engage in international trade (Rodriguez, Comtois, Slack, 2013). While some Logistics service providers focus only on the area of transportation others specialize in freight consolidation, distribution management, and warehousing (Robinson, 2014). They have enough market knowledge, information and communication systems to offer supply chain solutions tailored to the specific needs of any company be it small or large (Rodriguez, Comtois, Slack,

Logistics is one of the main functions within a company, and the supply chain is a complex and sometime fragile global endeavor dependent on a network of independent, yet interconnected, moving parts. It requires professional management. Supply chain professionals order the product, build it, move it, ship it, distribute it, and drive the coordination processes with marketing, sales, engineering, manufacturing, finance, and information technology. In short, they make any business effort seem effortless.

The Home Depot’s sophisticated logistical management system is rooted on infrastructure and relationships that were built in the US. Therefore, it can be argued that it can to the most part not easily be transferred to China, meaning it is location-bound. Nevertheless, the knowledge how to set up a well-functioning logistical management system can be a skill that can be transferred to China if the company is able to overcome the stickiness of knowledge.

Recently an opening of the economies of developing nations, especially China, has allowed a huge shift in outsourced production. For the most part the products of the outsourcing are destined for North American consumption, which creates interesting obstacles to the realizations of improvements predicted. Mega Bloks Inc is a Canadian example of this trend, having recently made their own foray into outsourcing to China. An examination of supply chain issues reveals the overall complexity and number of issues which could develop for a company like Mega Bloks. More specifically, for Mega Bloks issues of logistics, regulation, control (in general and specifically of quality) come to the forefront. All of these issues can individually and

In Vietnam logistics is almost new concept and still there is no official authority authority with total responsibility over logistics. Consequently, the Vietnamese government has not yet been able to be in a position to specify any comprehensive

Westminster Company is one of the largest manufacturers of consumer health products, based in US. Their distinctive name and company logo are recognized throughout the world. Westminster was originally founded as a family-owned pharmaceutical supply business in 1923, the company has expanded, by virtue of aggressive new product development, into a global provider of health care consumer products. It consumes three wholly owned subsidiaries, manufacturing grocery product, drugs, and mass merchandise. Intense rivalry in the market, and distresses of having an effective supply chain, made the company evaluate its supply chain and logistics. The primary focus of its research was the key clients of the three companies. To understand logistics the company must first know what logistics is and how it works. Logistics is defined as a business planning framework for the management of material, service, information and capital flows (Logistics World , 2014). Logistics is an important function of the business and without a proper logistics system, all the manufacturing, marketing and other activities would fail, overall resulting with the company failing to reach its full potential. After thoroughly analyzing the case study of, Westminster Company, to improve their current logistic strategy, they would need to implement the following strategies: developing and analyzing a new system to focus on strategic effort to ship their products in a timelier, efficient and in a more accurate

One of the major features of globalization has been the mergence and increased importance of third party logistics providers and support industries for shipping and transport operations. As businesses become more global in their scope and supply chains grow ever wider in scope and more globally integrated, the complexities and considerations of achieving efficient and cost-effective transport and support services grows more difficult, and most manufacturing and distribution companies outsource these services to a variety of different companies specializing in specific aspects of supply chain management and operational assistance. Achieving success as such a specialized company can be easy if the company maintains proper and accurate analyses of capabilities and environments and has appropriate internal controls, however failure to ensure these components and processes are in place can be disastrous, especially when combined with an emphasis on rampant growth.

FedEx and UPS, although competitive and both aggressively targeting the Chinese market, approached the challenge with slightly different goals. These goals, which coincide with the

Supply chain management is increasing in importance because “In today’s hypercompetitive environments in which competition is among supply chain networks rather than individual firms, firms are confronted with the need to effectively manage increasingly extending supply chain activities beyond the boundary of the firm,” (Lee, B.C., et al., 2010, p. 657). As stated previously, the broader the supply chain the more risks the company is open to. The second line of protecting the supply chain is creating strong relationships with the suppliers. The longer a company has a supplier, the stronger the relationship (Bayraktar, 2010), but to get to that point there needs to be similar: corporate and national cultures, vision, technology rate change, and quality information to share (Lee, B.C., et al., 2010). When all of these characteristics align, there is trust and open communication. Since supply chain management can be considered information sharing (Lee, B.C., et al., 2010), trust and open communication are necessary for information sharing to take place. Without trust and open communication, there is a very weak supply chain and even more vulnerability to risks. Trust and open communication are extremely important in global supply chains. Extra effort from the operations manager is needed when languages and time zones complicate communication.

The Fast Moving Consumer Goods industry ( FMCG ) is one of the most top industries served by the third party logistics. The FMCG firms utilize the services that are provided by 3PL. The impact of Third Party Logistics on FMCG firms are on customer satisfaction, logistics system performance, the impact of 3PL also reduce the capital investment in facilities, reduction in investment in information technology, reduction in man power cost. The third party logistics also impact on the improvement of specific logistics function parameters, and improvement in inventory turnover rates. The 3PL has a positive and negative impact on FMCG

A PEST analysis is an acronym for Political, Economical, Social and Technological. A company uses this analysis to view how these 4 areas affect the company. The first area Political, takes a look government policies or regulation and how they could or are affecting the company. The second area is Economic, this looks at factors that include inflation rate, interest rates, foreign exchange rates, and economic factors include inflation rate, interest rates, foreign exchange rates, economic growth patterns. The third area is Social-Cultural Environment in which a firm would examine the social environment of the market, and assess factors like cultural trends, demographics, as well as population analytics. The fourth area is Technology, innovations in technology that may affect the operations of the industry and the market favorably or unfavorably. This refers to automation, research and development and the amount of technological awareness that a market possesses.

It is known to us, “in each industry, the customer is god, is operator's food and clothing parents.” This tells us that customers are important to organizations. With the current intense competition in logistics nowadays, most companies can provide high quality goods, even are willing to cut down prices if reasonable. However, how can suppliers gain a competitive advantage when high quality is expected and price must be maintained at a level to generate a reasonable return? In our views, it is no doubt that how various supplier service activities are valued by customers, more specifically, that is, the ability of logistics

Following the paradigm shift on the role of logistics management in the recent decades, there has been a wide recognition of this as a very important aspect a business strategy in general. However due to the numerous factors promoting complexity of logistics management companies have adopted the idea of outsourcing their logistic activities to Third Party Logistics (3PL) providers. Hence, 3PLs have taken a critical role towards supply chains of heir customers.

ZHANG Chaoying, WEI Xiao Beijing Institute of Petrochemical Technology, P.R.China, 102600 zhangchaoying@bipt.edu.cn Abstract:Hong Kong SASA International Holdings Limited is the largest and leading cosmetics retailing and beauty care service group in Asia. Its sale prices are much lower than those of exclusive stores and counters because it adopts the strategy of bulk purchase throught the world and marketing many brands comprehensively. This thesis, through field research, systematic analysis and hierarchy analysis,will analyze SASA’s secrets of success and challeges confronted today according to its supply chain and logistics system. Two conclusions have been drawn from