Blog – Page 5 – From Culture to Business

I enjoy reading the article Can You Have a Lean-Green-Global Supply Chain by Mollenkopf, Tate and Ecklund. It explains the possible conflict and synergy between lean and green supply chain. At least it gives me a very clear definition of “sustainability”, which I often misused as well.

Like the authors say, “green” or “sustainability” are buzz words for today’s business environment. To be green means to avoid negative impact to the environment, including air, land and water, and sometime even creating positive impact. But when “green” encounters “efficiency”, companies often choose “efficiency” over “green”. In the end, executives need to be responsible to the stockholders for company bottom line. Going “green” becomes something nice to have as part of a company’s social commitment. I had personal experience that a famous warehouse club resists to optimize truck in order to keep their dock loading efficiency. But actually, many components in supply chain can provide companies with “green” opportunities and at the same time help companies achieve cost and efficiency objectives. Below are some of my thoughts:

Use “green” material for product design and packaging. Companies can choose to use green materials which can be recycled and reused, which will not impact the environment negatively. Using recycled pallets is a good example in packaging. It’s more challenging to substitute direct materials of the products. However with the green initiatives from governments, there is more and more R&D invested in developing “green” materials. That is true that green substitutes can be more expensive today. However, working with suppliers closely in product development and increasing the economic scale of the material can optimally reduce the material cost and achieve “green” prospective.
Reduce unnecessary movements in operation and logistics. It’s back to Lean concept to reduce waste of movements. In a factory or warehouse, layout improvement can eliminate unnecessary travel of the workers and forklift trucks, and improve efficiency. Postponing inventory deployment can ship the products to the right locations to meet customers demand, thus avoiding possible stock transfer movements among different regions. For unavoidable small batch or LTL orders from the customers, the efficiency can be achieved through LTL consolidations. All of those reduced movements will not only save significant transportation cost, but also resulting CO2 omission reduction and contribute to a greener environment.
Improve reverse logistics. Reverse logistics hasn’t been paid too much attention by many companies. But how to reuse, return or dispose of the defective products will have a huge impact on both “green” and logistics costs savings. Companies need to re-examine their reverse chain for more value creation. For examples, instead of shipping the consumers returned products directly to the overseas or local suppliers for inspection and repair, the company can source local service providers to sort the returned products, resell the nondirective ones and then send the defective ones to repair, locally if possible. There is additional service fee incurred, but the savings from unnecessary shipping is tremendous. Just thinking about it, most of returned products from the consumers are actually not defective products. When disposal or scrape is avoidable for end-of-life products, the company should be socially responsible to make sure the wastes are properly handled by the recycling service provider. The goal is to create zero landfill. And keep in mind, any hazardous disposal will damage the company’s reputation and cost more for damage recovery.

Going green is not just a slogan. Going green in supply chain can help a company achieve cost savings or cost avoidance. Executives need to commit to support green initiatives and engage their employees to identify any green opportunities inside and outside the company. As the article says, companies embracing green, lean and global supply chain strategies may in fact continue to gain momentum and find themselves poised on the leading edge of competitiveness.

I’m reading the article “Corporations Review Transport Operations as Pressure Grows to Reduce Expenses” by Daniel P. Bearth. The article discussed the pressure that executives are facing today to reduce transportation costs. There are a few fundamental ways that companies in any industry can do to reduce their transportation costs.

1. Truck Load Optimization. It sounds like a non-brainer to optimize the empty truck space to reduce the average cost per unit. TL optimization not only reduces the overall transportation costs per unit but also removes the trucks required over the road, which contribute to CO2 omission reduction. So, when the transportation cost savings weight more than inventory holding cost, ordering at a full truck load will be the proper action to take.

2. Milk-run. When LTL order is necessary to reduce inventory holding cost or due to warehouse space limitation, milk-run will be the best option to reduce transportation cost. Milk-run is to consolidate multiple LTL orders in one truck and stop to deliver for multiple customers. It’s the best solution to resolve the LTL challenge. It also provides customer satisfaction at the same time because it gives customers flexibility to order small batches. The challenge of executing milk-run is to plan the delivery route. Unless it’s a repetitive route at the same schedule, it can involve a lot of manual planning and coordination between logistics personnel, carriers and the customers in order to optimize the truck space. But the savings from LTL consolidation can be significant.

3. Fleet utilization. Improving fleet utilization is another way to save transportation costs. Fleet, no matter private or public, is more cost efficient to serve within a distance of average 150 miles. For distances greater than 150 miles, line haul will have a lower cost per mile. So, by utilizing fleets for transportation movements within that distance will lower the fleet fix cost significantly. On the other hand, the fleet planning is necessary to make sure a correct fleet capacity. Unused fleet capacity or idle trucks are wastes to transportation.

4. Stock transfer reduction. The cheapest way for transportation is not to move it. When companies have a lot of internal stock transfer movements within their supply chain network, it’s time to review their regional supply and demand planning. For traditional FDC/RDC distribution network, the regional deployment should be postponed to the last minute to meet just in time requirement. During this economic downturn, there are many excess inventories existing in the supply chain network. Transportation can be avoided by an effort of selling the inventory locally, instead of moving them to a different location for storage.

5. Backhaul for reverse logistics. The last but not the least, the transportation costs saving opportunity can be identified through evaluating reverse logistics network. Companies should collaborate and partner with their carriers, suppliers or customers for any backhaul opportunities. The carrier’s cost can be reduced because of equipment utilization from this close looped network. This cost savings benefits should be shared among supply chain partners.

As a conclusion, above are five ways to reduce transportation costs – nothing out of the box but basic logistics management theories. But as always, getting back to fundamentals is often the best solution to tackle supply chain challenges.

Category: Blog

When “Green” encounters “Efficiency”- What supply chain executives can do to achieve both

Five Ways to Reduce Transportation Costs