Impact of design of the car on logistics operations
Discuss about the Managing Packaging Design for Sustainable Development.
The Jaguar Land Rover is a British multinational automotive company. It is headquartered in Whitley, Coventry, United Kingdom (Jaguarlandrover.com, 2018). The report is based on the reading of the case study of global supply chain and logistics. The purpose of the report is to understand the logistics operations of the company and its supply chain, packaging feature of the company. The report will further highlight the impact of the designs of the car on the logistics operations. The advantages and as well the challenges faced by the local assembly operations is also briefly pointed out, the issues of Jaguar Land Rover’s supply chain with increase in export volumes and the modes of transport used by Jaguar Land Rover. The advantages and disadvantages of the multimodal transport and the important role of LSPs in the automotive industry are also explained in the report below. It will highlight the benefits of returnable packaging challenges related to packaging solutions of the company. The report will show the concept of sustainability and its relevance in the business decisions.
The company had a gradual increase in its sales and demand in the market. In addition to it, the company also handles to expand its manufacturing operations across the world. The company underwent various acquisitions after the bankruptcy and bailout from the governments.
However, the company had maintained its supply chain relations with the suppliers and its logistics operations to continuously maintain its position in the market as a competitor. The company had been seeing profits continuously increasing the heights of the success. In 2007 the company earned 24,339 million British pounds which shows the revenue figure (Statista, A. 2018).
The logistics operations can be affected straight by the design of the car. The design of the car allows the shipment process to be framed accordingly. For example, when the parts of the car are shipped in the form of disassembled parts then the responsibility to carry the parts of the car are different for the logistics (Mangan, Lalwani and Lalwani 2016). On the other hand, if the car is completely assembled and is carried forward to ship it has to be taken more carefully as the design is entirely amended.
There are enormous numbers of benefits of local assembly operations. The advantages of the local assembly operations are that they are divided in two groups with specific functions which make them accurate and efficient. Each employee is involved in performing a simple and specific task which increases the efficiency. It allows the manufacturers to carry out the assembling process easily and quickly. The maintenance and replacement of the broken parts are also simple with interchangeable and standardized key parts. In addition, it also lowers the expenses of the company (Rushton, Croucher and Baker 2014).
Advantages and challenges of local assembly operations
The significant challenge for the company began with the regulation that affects ensuring product safety to manage disposal and reclamation procedures. It becomes another challenge for the company to ensure and validate that there is visibility into global supply chains. Keeping a deep track of the specifications and performing maintenance on the schedules to operate low cost while ensuring high product quality and safety of the workers as well.
The supply chain itself receives various difficulties while operating in the process of collection and shipment. On top of that the increase in export volumes adds about opportunities as well as difficulties in the operations (Hugos 2018). The first challenge becomes maintaining the effective data integrity of the bills of the vehicles. It could affect the supplier system and communication links among the sourcing and increase in the cost efficient of the operation. The leading legal requirements that often impose the weight restrictions of the vehicles are also considered as the hurdles of the supply chain. It also introduces product complexity problems that are often related to type of good as that is being exported. There are various restrictions similar to weight restrictions imposed on the vehicles, types of the goods and its nature that reflects the restriction accordingly. for example, dangerous goods like chemical based or delicate handlings that need special care while in the transportation of the same. it brings the responsibility to the people that are handling the goods.
Jaguar land rover uses road, rail, sea and air transport to ensure the vehicle production and other related activities are smooth and effective.
Road: Jaguar uses road transport in case of such emergency where the replacements of the parts of the product or quick delivery of the parts are required.
Rail: Jaguar mainly relies upon rail transport for its collection of engines in an efficient way and quickly in safe manner. However, it lacks flexibility in the use of this mode of transport as it brings the drawback of the same, in case of an emergency delivery of the parts of the good or additional volumes of the parts it often delays.
Sea: The water ways are mostly preferred by the Jaguar land rover to ensure all the undertakings of the international shipments throughout the world. The company has its key ports as Southampton and Portbury and southern Europe. the Port of Immingham is used significantly fir the shipment purpose.
Issues of Jaguar Land Rover’s supply chain with increase in export volumes
Air: Though it is used by the Jaguar land rover in exceptional cases where it is required of special moves of the finished vehicles. It is of high cost but time efficient mode of transport. To complete the order of the VIP customers or for the launch of the events, such ways are necessary.
Multimodal transport is commonly known as a transport operation where the transport of product is carried out by various modes of transport such as railway, airway, waterway or roadway that also under single operator.
Advantages of multimodal transport are:
It reduces the time required at the time of trans-shipment where the operators coordinate interchange of the carriage smoothly and cooperates with proper communication links. As it reduces the distance of the market from the typing-up of the capital, it increases faster transportation. It turns around to be cost saving and establishing a single agency control of goods (Zhang, Johnson and Wang 2016).
It designs the movement of goods from one area to another at a reasonable price and at a designated time which stands out to be challenging to business. Along with its additional logistic service provider advantages there can be various disadvantages that are served by multimodal transport such as incoterms-related issues which means the international commercial terms that relates with the commercial laws while in the procurement or commercial transactions. The terms of supply, packaging needs can also bring into disadvantages of multimodal transport. The different types of components, import regulations and product complexity are also its disadvantages.
The logistics service providers (LSPs) contribute an important role in the process of collecting the specific parts till the distribution of the finished vehicles. The logistics provide the opportunity to the company to grab down the international growth and increase its functionality and influence in the market (Stadtler 2015). It also helps to design the outsourcing strategy and implement the logistics operation to enhance the global growth of the company.
LSPs must be experts in the field they are operating as it further increase the competitive advantage of the LSPs to attract the companies and hence provides with the same advantage to the company to distribute and collect its product parts. It carries out all the middle functions that needs to be performed by the inbound and outbound logistics including the common service, transport management, stock handling and line feeding to coordinate overall logistics operations (Alkhatib, Darlington and Nguyen 2015).
Modes of transport used by Jaguar Land Rover
LSPs are the essential component that benefits the company in each of the stage of its production and distributing the products on time to its customers. It is also used at times of emergency shipment in case where the issues relate to quality and stock losses.
Returnable packaging is in the form of manufactured and specifically designed with durable materials for multiple trips and extended life. The benefits of returnable packaging are that it is reusable and durable. it is essential feature that considers and promotes reduce, reuse and recycle criteria. Shipping solutions is also much leaning because of its lightweight feature. In addition, it retains strength with providing superior product protection (Zhang et al. 2015).
It safely transports the products from the first party to the end user from one place to another or simply across the world. Though it takes time for the packaging of the product but it ensure the quality of the product. It also sums up to the savings of money and time. as it is uses reusable containers it generates long term savings and contribution towards environment. It is easily replaceable with the cardboards in expendable packaging. It also reduces overall shipping cost which is contributed by the features of light weight and eliminating of single-use shipping containers.
The packaging solution used by Jaguar Land Rover’s is the expendable packaging that ensures safe and protection of the goods. This may include packaging of the goods effectively but will bring about challenges while in the time of the packaging of the specific parts. It will require high skilled labor to engage in the packaging process because packaging each parts with specific note has to be done carefully such it prevents break or damage of the goods (Kim and Shin 2017). Along with the need of high skilled labor it also consumes time and money with an increased indicator as each time the product will be packaged.
The sustainability is concerned with the three important pillars such as the environmental, social and economic concerns that affect the decisions in all the aspects. The overall objective of the sustainable development is to bring the outcome of the long term stability of the economy and environment. It ensures to keep a balance and frame and re-examine the policies accordingly to amend the environmental protection, social responsibility and fair economic practice. The company must ensure that the level of sustainability is tracked and set as objective that needs to be achieved (Swisher and Campbell 2017). It adds in the positive way to the goodwill of the company along with brand awareness.
Advantages and disadvantages of multimodal transport
The company is recommended to add sustainable packaging into its supply chain system such that the purpose to fill the environment with positive impact. In such case the company practices expendable packaging solution but it is suggested to practice returnable packaging as it is reusable and cost reducing (Hellström, Olsson and Nilsson 2017).
It is also recommended to the company to maintain it relation with its suppliers and logistics to maintain the on time delivery facility to its customers. This can also lead to gain competitive advantage for the company. It can use various modes of logistics service providers to engage such solutions (Yang et al. 2016).
Conclusion
From the above discourse it can be understood that the jaguar Land Rover is an automobile company that is based on a global basis. It involves its global supply chain and logistics into its process ensuring the importance of the product being delivered on time with quality assured and effectively packaged. The company uses all the possible modes of transport such as air, water, and rail and land ways to distribute the finished products to its customers. The company also uses expendable packaging solution for its packaging of the goods which in turn brings to certain difficulties such as increased cost and high skilled knowledge with regard of the packaging of the specific parts. The other way of packaging is by using returnable packaging that reduces the cost of the company as it is reusable matter. However, it is recommended to the company to use expendable as well the returnable way of packaging to ensure that they contribute towards the sustainable development. Sustainable development ensures the protection of the economic, environmental and social aspects that affect the decisions of the company.
References
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Hellström, D., Olsson, A. and Nilsson, F., 2017. Information and communication. Managing Packaging Design for Sustainable Development: A Compass for Strategic Directions, pp.181-203.
Hugos, M.H., 2018. Essentials of supply chain management. John Wiley & Sons.
Jaguarlandrover.com. 2018. [online] Available at: https://www.jaguarlandrover.com/ [Accessed 20 Apr. 2018].
Kim, J.K. and Shin, H.W., 2017. A Dynamic Simulation Model for the Total Packaging System Cost Analysis in an International Supply Chain.
Mangan, J., Lalwani, C. and Lalwani, C.L., 2016. Global logistics and supply chain management. John Wiley & Sons.
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Stadtler, H., 2015. Supply chain management: An overview. In Supply chain management and advanced planning (pp. 3-28). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.
Statista, A. 2018. Jaguar Land Rover sales revenue 2017 | Statistic. [online] Statista. Available at: https://www.statista.com/statistics/386886/jaguar-land-rover-global-revenue/ [Accessed 20 Apr. 2018].
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Yang, Q., Zhao, X., Yeung, H.Y.J. and Liu, Y., 2016. Improving logistics outsourcing performance through transactional and relational mechanisms under transaction uncertainties: Evidence from China. International Journal of Production Economics, 175, pp.12-23.
Zhang, F., Johnson, D.M. and Wang, J., 2016. Integrating multimodal transport into forest-delivered biofuel supply chain design. Renewable Energy, 93, pp.58-67.
Zhang, Q., Segerstedt, A., Tsao, Y.C. and Liu, B., 2015. Returnable packaging management in automotive parts logistics: Dedicated mode and shared mode. International Journal of Production Economics, 168, pp.234-244.