The customer creates value by purchasing a product – this obvious truth has gradually led to changes in traditional management, based on production scale and high-efficiency technology. We are witnessing how the constantly emerging new challenges of economic cooperation require different dimensions of management – shortened lead times for business processes and their global reach, rapid response and high dynamics of change in supply chains that keep pace with market needs, greater flexibility and reliability of operations, and higher quality and level of customer service. Operational specialists unanimously see the solution in innovative technological and organizational solutions that enable integrated planning of operations based on shared and continuously updated data collected in data warehouses. Dynamic product and production planning, production schedules balanced within a network of partners, vendor-managed inventory adapted to production or sales plans, monitoring products in transit to the customer, electronic transactions and document exchange – these are just some of the needs for mass data processing for the purpose of rapid market and customer needs analysis.
e-Logistics, by utilizing the Internet and electronic tools for cooperation and data flow between partners in supply chains and networks, creates the potential for the coordination and integration of logistics processes.
An example of the dynamically growing needs for cooperation between supply chain partners can be the Baltic Sea region, where a significant increase in the transport of fuels, seafood, mineral raw materials, and wood products is currently being observed (and projected for the year 2030). This is due to the steady growth in trade turnover and economic growth of many countries in this region, as well as imports and exports to Asian countries (Figure 1). One of the main goals of developing intermodal supply chains is international (cross-border) cooperation and communication and information links between individual partners, ports, logistics centers, and logistics service regions. Many tools and project works, as well as intermodal delivery planning, are oriented towards supporting decisions on choosing the most effective route for transport (of people or goods) from the starting point to the destination point of the route. In the face of the changing situation in local and global supply and sales markets, enterprises have begun to massively use web-based tools that enable the execution of electronic transactions with partners in supply chains. The increase in the share of e-commerce in total trade (globally and in Poland) creates a need for online access to logistics services among suppliers and recipients. It also naturally creates a need for virtual service offerings by companies in the TSL (Transport, Shipping, Logistics) sector.
The article comes from the magazine “Logistyka” 5/2007.