What is Smart Logistics?
Since 2020, we have been living in a pandemic. This made a lot more consumers start buying online besides the ones that were already doing so before. This has put an extra burden on companies, especially in what concerns delivery. As you can imagine, you can’t look at logistics the same way you did a few years back. Nowadays, you need to look at smart logistics since it’s a way to gain a competitive advantage. Overall speaking, more and more companies are already using smart logistics solutions that include scalable, flexible, and future-oriented technologies to make operations more efficient, effective, and smarter.
Traditional supply chains aren’t enough anymore. The truth is that companies need to come up with smart solutions logistics to achieve supply chain competitiveness.
What Smart Logistics Involves?
Some logistics operations may include the use of radio-frequency identification. This should allow productivity to improve in the warehouse as well as the product flow. But more than this, it is also important to consider the use of sensors on vehicles or smart meters on routes to get more transparency as well as data that can be analyzed. For example, one of the smart solutions logistics DHL is using smart trucks with sensors. Simply put, they allow the company to know where the cargo is in real-time, besides regulating temperature. Carrefour, a European retailer, is using blockchain to track its iconic chicken product. With this technology, the company tracks and traces stock, cuts labor costs, reduces waste, and keeps supply information in real-time.
Benefits of Using Smart Logistics Solutions:
There are many benefits you can get from using smart logistics no matter the area or niche you operate in.
1: Ensure Production Quality By Anticipating Product Damage:
One of the main goals of a company is to deliver its products to consumers in a fast and efficient way. However, at the same time, companies need to make sure that product damage is avoided.
While there is always a percentage of damaged products, your goal is to make this number a minimum.
Overall speaking, a company needs to ensure that its production processes run smoothly. But more than this, it also needs to prevent defective parts or products from being assembled. However, if a company deals with sensitive products that may break or deteriorate over time or when not kept at a specific temperature, for example, it needs to be extra careful. Smart logistics can certainly help.
2: Production Planning – Detecting Delivery Shortages:
Another major benefit of using smart solutions logistics is related to detecting delivery shortages.
The truth is that many materials take a lot of time to arrive at the production site. Some even need to change transport several times along the way. Generally speaking, there are always some blind spots along this route where you don’t have any information regarding these materials. Although this happens when materials are transported by land, if they are transported by the sea the problems can be even bigger. Just think about storms that can hit ships not to mention port problems that can lead to delays, and is reverse logistics possible in that case.
The worst part of this all is that it may take you a lot of time, even weeks, to discover what’s going on and to fix it. Naturally, this causes disruptions in production. Again, using smart logistics solutions, you can better control your materials and keep track of your current stocks and where the materials you ordered are in real-time. It can understood in more details during the supply chain management courses online, which is offered by AIMS’ institute of supply chain management.
3: Ensure Delivery Reliability:
There’s no question that delivery delays cause a lot of financial damage to a company. This is another reason why you should consider using smart logistics. After all, it will help you answer many questions such as How reliable is my supplier? Is it possible that problems will arise again because he has already exceeded On-time Delivery (OTD) in the past? and Will he actually deliver the agreed quantities within the agreed period?