The logistics of a business is one of the most important parts of any business. Some view it as the blood of an enterprise as logistics transports and stores everything you own, buy and sell. Logistics, however, is often left in the shadows because it’s seen as ‘boring’. Yet, if you think about logistics as the engine of your brand, you will soon realize that logistics is the physical delivery of your goals. Every objective you have is thought of in the boardroom, it’s designed in the office but it’s ultimately going to be delivered by your logistics. Making it leaner and faster will solve so many issues.
Dialogue and employees
At the heart of logistics are the employees. We’re talking about the warehouse managers, delivery team, packaging team, health and safety, legal team to sign off on documentation, and the freight team that works with cargo companies at ports and train stations. Most of the time, the thing that is going to cause a hold up in logistics, is a lack of communication which facilitates misunderstanding.
- Have weekly productivity meetings that don’t last very long but address issues concerning problems that the employees faced last week.
- Listen to workers of all levels, regardless of rank. They could be a junior worker, a manager, or a veteran employee who has been with the business for a long time.
- Make decisions as a team and stick to them. These meetings should also decide on the week’s ambitions and the goals you want to achieve.
Overloading and underloading
One of the areas where inefficiency rears its head is overloading and underloading your vehicles. Taking too much at once can slow down the vehicle, slow down delivery times, make unhappy customers, shorten the vehicle’s lifespan etc. Underloading doesn’t have as much risk but it will mean you lose money each trip with a delivery vehicle that has too much spare room. To avoid this, work with a commercial scale company that can weigh cargo, logistics and transportation items. It’s a good idea to decide on the exact weight of your cargo per vehicle so you can always get the right amount of load that a truck or van can take.
Efficient inventory
Inventory is a make-or-break situation. If you don’t have enough inventory you will lack the ability to fulfil orders and manage operations effectively. If you have too much, you stand the risk of potentially losing it’s value. So using effective inventory management systems (IMS) is absolutely vital to your logistics efforts. The warehouse managers should work closely with your sales teams to have a smooth relationship between orders and inventory. A weekly report of how many products left storage, how many entered and what the average of both is, will help you to plan how much inventory you should keep on any given day.
Logistics is the most overlooked part of any business because it’s not always seen as the ‘fun’ part. However, without it, your business cannot hope to achieve what you want it to achieve; so start paying attention to it.