Logistics as a Customer-Focused Strategy Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Logistics as a Customer-Focused Strategy - Essay ExampleAs the world of pedigree and trade continue to puff globally, surviving in such a competitive market is no longer enough to buy the right goods at the right cost - business must also get them to the right place at the right time, and with the right operational costs. Doing this well requires the best possible logistics, combining the information that grant buying decisions with how the yield arrives to customers at the most cost-effective way. In view of this, the vice president for logistics and electronic commerce for Asia-Pacific at FedEx, William Conley stressed that one of the four areas represented the future of the logistics industry is time compression, along with globalisation, electronic commerce and supply chemical chain management. He said companies needed to understand essentially what logistics was and how it could acquire customers (Panozzo, 1999, p. 6).In further elaboration, logistics is centred on creati ng value, not just for customers and suppliers of the firm, but also value for the firms stakeholders. Value in logistics is primarily expressed in terms of time and place. Products and operate have no value unless they are in the possession of the customers when (time) and where (place) they wish to consume them (Ballou 2004, p. 6). However, value is added when customers are willing to pay more for a product or service than the cost to place it in their hands. To many firms throughout the world, logistics has become an increasingly important value-adding process for a numerous reasons.Looking at logistics through the perspective of the total supply chain, the ultimate Bowersox, Closs & Cooper (2002) emphasized that the customer is the end user of the product or service whose needs or requirements must be accommodated. It has historically been useful to distinguish between two types of end users. According to them, the first is a consumer, an individual or a star sign who purchase s products and services to satisfy personal needs. When a family purchases an automobile to be used for personal transportation, that family is the consumer of the supply chain. The second type is an organizational end user, whose purchases are do by organizations or institutions to allow an end user to perform a task or job in the organization. When a company buys an automobile for a sales person or buys tools to be used by an assembly worker in a manufacturing plant, the company is considered to be a customer and the sales representative or assembly worker is the end user of the supply chains products. A supply chain management perspective demands that all firms in the supply chain focus on meeting the needs and requirements of end users, whether they are consumers or organizational end users (p. 66).Moreover, Bowersox, Closs & Cooper (2002) insisted that the customer being serviced should be the first antecedence and the driving force in establishing logistical performance req uirements, regardless