Currently, when many enterprises offer products of comparable quality, at similar prices, and promote them in a similar way, what is able to distinguish their offer from the competition’s offer in a clear and lasting way is excellently organized customer service. Its level depends on a series of decisions made by logisticians in the sphere of demand forecasting, purchasing, production, transport, warehousing, and above all, time. Managers of manufacturing enterprises realize that the activity in which time savings can be most noticeable to customers is warehouse and transport market service. The consequence is that logistics is most often the area of an organization’s operation that is “outsourced,” thanks to which it can conduct its core activity for which it was established. On the other hand, responsibility for the proper functioning of logistics processes has shifted to operators specializing in transport and warehouse services for manufacturing plants.
At the beginning of the nineties, a number of enterprises “got rid of” primarily their transport departments. In many cases, this consisted of creating transport companies based on existing potential. Such was also the beginning of the operations of Trans-Południe (T-P), a company that was established in 1993 as a civil partnership, which included individual carriers providing transport services for TC Dębica SA, and subsequently the Goodyear Group. Over time, T-P’s client group was joined by, among others, Huta Szkła Owens Illinois Polska S.A. and the Can-Pack Group. The decisions made at Trans-Południe are consistent with the concept of sales consulted individually with the client. This allows for the adjustment of the service offer to the special needs of the served shippers, and instead of offering a uniform, “standardized” service, customer needs are determined through consultations and analyses to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of their operations.
The operating conditions in the dynamically developing logistics services market in Poland in the nineties prompted Trans-Południe to expand the range of services provided to include warehousing, which, along with the spread of the Just-in-Time philosophy, partnership, and the logistics supply chain, began to play a strategic role in achieving such logistics goals as shorter order fulfillment cycles, lower inventory levels, lower costs, and above all, a better level of customer service.
The article comes from the magazine “Logistyka” 5/2004.