Literature Review
Discuss about the Operations Management Of Logistics And Supply Chain.
The report will highlight the important feature of an intermodal and management strategies to resolve the operational issues occurring within the company. The concept of the intermodal will better explain by taking an example of the organization and the organization chosen for this research report is Freight & Trade Alliance. Freight & Trade Alliance is the chief representative organization for the worldwide supply chain segment that brings together all the importers, customs dealers, and freight forwarders as well as logistics service providers in Australia. This report will cover what are basic problems faced with the current logistic network and how they can b resolved. At the end of the report, some recommendations are made so that the company can resolve the issues in a better way.
Talking about the company background, the company has a partnership with Australian Peak Shippers Association (APSA). Both of them together form a powerful support association assuring that the members are at the front position of all rising supply chain problem through the approachable operational maintenance, specialized development guidance, manufacturing updates, profit-making services and business events. The vision of Freight & Trade Alliance is basically to set up a worldwide standard of success in Australian boundary linked up with safety, conformity and logistics actions. The general operation of the company is to boost up the productivity and production sustainability for the Australian importers, exporters as well as buy and sell service contributors (Anderson, 2017).
The literature review is recognized as the most explicit way to define the analysis portion in an outstanding manner by making use of various articles and journals. There are number of articles and journals which are particular for the global risk in context to the business perspectives. Some of the frequent and most admired articles and journals are specified below with appropriate explanation.
According to the journal propounded by Stephen, a review was circulated among the Australian ports as well as key container manual laborer. There are some major risks that are involved in this business and leads to failure of business and create issues in the presented business phase. While running an organization on the international level, there are numerous issues involved in business which the organization has to face. There are some common issues such as safety of container, conformity and risk management are the main issue for the container transport logistics manufacturing chain. The outlined structure and better conversation between regulators and industry are suggested for the implementation of risk management on the international level. This will concurrently reduce the risk of transportation. The journal also helps in accenting the key production failure perspective. These company failure perspectives are recognized as the deterministic approach. The journal is also successful in delivering the basic aspects related to the management factors in which the political as well as economical facet are also acknowledged (Informa Australia , 2015).
Features of an Intermodal Company
The next article is mainly focusing on the intermodal services in 21st century and designed by two well-known authors named as the Jean Debrie and Elisabeth Gouvernal. They both are well versed as well as specific about their promulgate approach. In this article, a large variety of services are classified, the cooperative relation is also defined in an appropriate and friendly manner. The services are framed as cooperation between various actors, also including the port authorities, shipping lines, port terminal operators, ands well as logistics providers. The article displays the role of various actors and cooperation forms which are essential to build up intermodal services. The article is completely successful in signifying the appropriate development related to the industry in a proper way. The frequent visible developments recognized in the industry are named as keep away from the international barriers and enhancement in the worldwide contribution in an appropriate style (Debrie & Gouvernal, 2006).
By managing all these articles and journals in an appropriate manner, it can become easier to frame the intermodal and management strategies related to the international business in the 21st century.
Intermodal generally makes use of two basic modes of freight, like truck as well as rail, to transfer the merchandise from transporter to consignee. The process of intermodal generally starts with the container which is being moved by the truck to the rail, then again come back to the truck to complete the entire process. There are nearly 25 million containers that are moved by means of intermodal shipping every year.
Some of the features of an intermodal company are given below:
- Such companies have a capability to complete all the transportation activities with honesty, and ensure agreement with all constitutional powers.
- Intermodal companies uphold the privacy of associates’ commercially receptive information.
- Freight & Trade Alliancetries to closely engage with the members to offer applicable and appropriate information to hold up operational as well as longer term strategic requirements.
- The companies constantly analyze and develop the services to meet up the requirement of the respective members.
The services offer an extensive collection of intermodal benefits together with improved safety as well as reduced carbon production and also general cost.
- Cheap expenditure:The domestic intermodal services can provide the customers considerable savings as compared to the road trucking overhaul. In various tracks, direct investments are in intemperance of about 30%. The total savings can sometimes reach greater than the given high fuel supplement percentages which are applied to the base line haul freight prices (Cope Bestway, 2018).
- Reduction in the cost of fuel: Transport intermodal by means of rail or air road is over two time’s additional fuel proficient than by the means of truck. Railroads or air road can easily shift a heap of freight more than 400 miles and it requires only one gallon of the fuel. Therefore, it helps to cut the cost of fuel which can be used in trucks in excess.
- Enhanced protection and safety measures:The services of rail or air road can be considerably safer than the service of road trucking. Railroads generally record about 1/4 the figure of accidents for each ton-mile as compared to trucks. Furthermore, the railroads or air roads have wonderful track verification in safely transporting the hazardous materials to the respective destination carefully, without any release. Railroads and trucks carry almost equal hazmat ton-miles. The trucks can be dangerous to travel with hazardous materials. In terms of safety, the transportation by means of rails is considerably much more secure than trucks.
- Less highway blocking:A single intermodal train takes nearly 300 long-haul trucks off of the busy highways (Vakulenko, et al., 2015).
- Speed of Delivery: This feature helps to quickly deliver the products on time and without any time delays it move out from the location of shipper to the location of buyer. Time delays might lead to loss in business.
Freight & Trade Alliance has implemented various strategies to reduce the logistics costs as well as cost of supply chain so that the company can achieve great profit. Some of the strategies are discussed below which can resolve any operational issue.
- Secure delivery: A secure delivery strategy comprises ofgoods that are loaded in accordant to the company stipulation in the space which is not even shared with any other seller goods. For transferring a comparatively tiny freight, the best method to decrease the logistics costs is by merging the shipments. This comprises of a grouping of various tiny shipments from various suppliers that share the similar destination into joined shipment. Moreover, the logistics suppliers continually import a reduced amount from the full load to securely deliver the goods (Li, 2014).
- Insurance of shipment:Logistics scheduling as well as cost saving strategies does not mean that company don’t cover your freight appropriately. The insurance will help to fully cover up all the values of the products to put off distasteful revelations.
- Making use of single integrated platform:There are various supply chain operations which are integrated into a single platform, easily reached to all the involved parties and this is the main strategy which plays a major role in delivery of goods at right destination. With this strategy, one can avoid the replication of actions across various operations. The replicated efforts always consume lot of time, spoil the efficiency, as well as depart the room for error.
- Visibility of supply chain: Preserving the visibility of the supply chain can perk up the development as well as expenditure can be controlled through with the help of better management to put up the stock safely. With this strategic plan, the company makes the supply chain visible and places the goods in a better way. It is basically a correct way to counter worries in the supply and require procedure, and uphold appropriate service intensity (Guerard & Simon, 2012).
- Appropriate planning:To complete any task in business, planning is the first step and the business man must know a couple of strategies to sum up an appropriate planning. Planning of time for various operations like manufacture schedule, routes of shipping and transportation time must be planned because last minute decision might lead to delays as well as missed deadlines, which reflects a bad image of the company. Smart planning is always required to deliver the goods on time.
- Interaction with members:Communication is a very important part within business. To resolve the issue regarding communication, the company has started the option of online media as well as face to face activities which helps to deliver an update on the key operational issues and tries to get a feedback so that new policies can be developed (Berg, 2015).
- Managing operational outcomes:The Company is affianced with the concept of trade as well as mainstream media which helps to reach number of people by means of message and helps to improve the operational outcomes.
There are various challenges regarding logistics network which are present across the world in numerous areas that ranges from transportation as well as legislation to weather trend and also demographical problems. Barriers that face the logistics progression and task might result in the further loss of many resources, most importantly loss of money as well as time. Australia basically presents a distinctive logistics environment, and as an effect, exclusive logistics issues.
Management Strategies to Resolve Any Issue
Problem with the current logistic network in NSW are given below with their solutions:
- Traffic Congestion:Large cities such as Sydney and Melbourne in Australia, experience a lot of traffic congestion each and every day. In the time of morning as well as afternoon, there is a large number of traffic on the roads of Australia which leading to road blocks. Freeways as well as motorways have been building up in numerous directions but those roads are also overcrowded. The solution which the company can use to overcome the congestion is to construct the separate motorways road. In Australia there are numerous companies that have built up under the contract with the NSW government (Berman, 2014).
- Road Changes:When you are travelling on road vehicles such as truck, then road changes in path are very common and this is the major issue as it takes a lot of time to reach the destination because of high traffic especially on highway. The best solution for this is to choose the path which does not have obstacles or time delays such as rail rods or air rods. Road changes might create a lot of confusion as well as increase the time of travelling.
- Climate change:Effectiveness of operating by keeping the surroundings in mind has become a challenging conception for the logistics providers. Basically the green logistics has turn out to be the subject of conversation from past few years and this subject is quite important for all the companies that are operating both locally as well as internationally. Climate changes can create a lot of obstacles during the time of shipment (NSW Government, 2018).
- Transport Regulations:Set of laws which direct the progress of goods can change the present logistics operations. If unique transportation is essential, then it might be obligatory to have an additional authorize or even specially customized mediums. Such modification of vehicles can increase the costing as well as take a lot of time.
NSW Government builds as well as operates numerous parts of the transportation for freight shipping, assembles the fees of the user as well as general tax revenues to invest in the public amenities. But apart from this involvement in the transportation business, happens if NSW government is involved in the resolution of the problem that they can take major steps to sort issues such as costing, and in operational management programs. NSW government can be very helpful in generating new concepts and ideas which can help the system to develop in a better way in the guidance of government (Stewart, 2011).
It is recommended that the confidential port vendors and terminal workers must present a justification for the efficiency and presentation of their lease resources. The freight transportation business has been altered by the new technology, market changes, as well as organizational changes. The concept of research is required to describe, calculate, and estimate the international freight system presentation (Association, 2016). Innovative federal ideas that are affecting the freight must incorporate with the formal program appraisal. The international government must maintain the programs related to existing data which can easily collect the data of all the freight activities and make sure that such programs must be compatible with the supplies of local as well as regional transportation development.
References
Anderson, D., 2017. Intermodal Rails’ Contribution to Port Traffic, Available at: https://www.maritime-executive.com/editorials/intermodal-rails-contribution-to-port-traffic [Accessed 17 May 2018].
Association, A., 2016. Federal Inquiry into Freight & Supply Chain Priorities, Available at: https://infrastructure.gov.au/transport/freight/freight-supply-chain-submissions/APSA_and_FTA.pdf [Accessed 21 May 2018].
Berg, V., 2015. Strategies and new business models in intermodal hinterland transport, Available at: https://pure.tue.nl/ws/files/13118317/20160615_Berg_van_den.pdf [Accessed 20 May 2018].
Berman, J., 2014. Intermodal Service Issues Persist But Conditions Are Slowly Improving, Say Carriers and Analysts, Available at: https://www.supplychain247.com/article/intermodal_service_issues_persist_but_conditions_are_slowly_improving/wsi [Accessed 17 May 2018].
Cope Bestway, 2018. Bestway Express: Intermodal Trucking Division, Available at: https://www.bestwaycompanies.com/bestway-express.html [Accessed 19 May 2018].
Debrie, J. & Gouvernal, E., 2006. Intermodal Rail in Western Europe: Actors and Services in a New Regulatory Environment. 37(3), pp. 444-459, Available at: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1468-2257.2006.00331.x [Accessed 19 May 2018].
Guerard, L. & Simon, A., 2012. Freight Forwarders- Thinking Outside the Box, Available at: https://www.atkearney.com/documents/10192/361023/Freight-Forwarders-Thinking-Outside-the-Box.pdf/fc0e4629-4595-43b5-8300-3999d2207c02 [Accessed 21 May 2018].
Informa Australia , 2015. What are some of the biggest challenges facing intermodal in Australia today?, Available at: https://www.informa.com.au/insight/what-are-some-of-the-biggest-challenges-facing-intermodal-in-australia-today/ [Accessed 19 May 2018].
Li, X., 2014. Operations Management of Logistics and Supply Chain: Issues and Directions, Available at: https://www.hindawi.com/journals/ddns/2014/701938/ [Accessed 20 May 2018].
NSW Government, 2018. Find out about our freight network across NSW: Logistics network. [Online]
Available at: https://www.transport.nsw.gov.au/operations/logistics-network [Accessed 21 May 2018].
Stewart, N., 2011. Australian logistics challenges and solutions to overcome them, Available at: https://www.theseus.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/35105/Stewart_Neil.pdf?sequence=1 [Accessed 21 May 2018].
Vakulenko, Y., Truc, Q. & Mehrmand, A., 2015. Information Integration in Intermodal Freight Transportation, Available at: https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:819393/FULLTEXT01.pdf [Accessed 20 May 2018].
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