Archive for the ‘SCM’ Category:
XL Insurance announces scheme for Ware Housing Industry
In a recent development in US ware house industry, the XL Insurance, XL Capital Ltd’s global insurance operations announced a special package to sort out the liability problem for pollution and cleanliness expenses for US warehouses, storage and distribution facilities.
As service provided by the Greenwich Insurance Company and Indian Harbor Insurance Company the associates of XL Capital Ltd group of companies under environmental insurance policy cover coverage for remediation expense, bodily injury and property damage, and legal defense for pollution conditions resulting at or from the insured warehouse or distribution center. The chances of environment incidents for a warehouse industry are quite low though whenever occurred they badly impact profitability of a company.
The real risk for warehouses is reserved with storage facilities where potential pollution condition can rise from the product stored there suffer an unfortunate event like fire, flood or windstorm. In XL’s new environmental insurance program ware house and distribution center operators have a reasonable option to increase their chances for environmental risk management efforts with the help of environment insurance that can help the company to recover from that fatal incident.
The main pollution hazards as faced by warehouse are spills or leaks at the time of loading or unloading of materials from trucks and railcars, contamination due to the fire at the facility, waste as resulted due to the on-site vehicle or forklift maintenance and storage, regular leakage from material containers as kept in the facility.
Subscribe to the comments for this postAccording To A Report $200B Required To Switch To Hydrogen Fuel
There is vast possibility as according to the analysts of ending the dependence of United States as well as global countries on Petrol and switching to the mode of Hydrogen Powered vehicles, however, a recent report of the National Academics of Science has revealed realization of this hypothesis to be far from being achievable.
In the report entitled as, “Transitions to Alternative Transportation Technologies: A Focus on Hydrogen,” as according to the National Academics of sciences it would took nearly an exaggerated amount of $200 billion as for completely transforming from oil to hydrogen fuel on steps like R&D, vehicle deployment, and needed infrastructure. The share of said amount at $55 billion is put on government for time period spanning between 2008 and 2023 and the private investment is incurred around $145 billion for the same time frame and period of time.
Despite the initial level of research into the development of fuel cell and hydrogen production technology there are certain barricades like cost of vehicles and lack of infrastructure that are first required get solve for a proper distribution of it to a customer. Yet these problems can be overcome with the help of R&D and support of the automotive industry. As further stated in the report hydrogen-powered vehicles will make a positive impact within the warehouses and distribution centers for lift trucks, forklifts, and turret trucks, among other vehicles, yet there a lot of work is yet needed to be done.
Manufacturers Switching to IT to Maximize Their Profits
While in this period of global recession every company is trying to devise new methods to cut costs and remain competitive and survived, IT has emerged as a better way for companies to cut cost, build longer and more complex supply chains to accommodate it to respond faster to changing demand.
A manufacturer enabled with technology can communicate in better way with far flung suppliers can manage shorter product life cycles and collaborate more emphatically with its business partners. ARC Advisory Group a consultant in manufacturing technology predicted the growth of IT budgets in manufacturing sector is inevitable as more and more companies would use IT to support supply chain processes as to run their manufacturing operations in a better way.
But there also problem thrives for hundreds of manufactures globally as regarding containing algorithms for analyzing manufacturing processes. Now companies are paying attention on the example of Japanese company Toyota’s example where it adopted lean thinking by cutting out waste, put emphasized on making small regular improvements and focused more on customer service. They are facing one other problem as the analytical software have become cheaper though business analyst find it very difficult to handle flood of data to interpret pending before them.
Still big investment ERPs are with 40% of manufacturer’s but the interest is now declining towards relatively small projects with a payback of year or two. The new trend of getting software prepared on order bringing many industries to closer to the Information Technology. As manufactures now can get supplies at their facilities as soon as get an order by phone or on internet as they can inform to their supplier instantly.
Moreover, in present period of the competitive edge every company is trying to go ahead of others while using improving over their Supply Chain. All the modern and coming supply chains aims to keep the amount of produce as low as possible in chain while tracking it through all the possible locations and IT can solve their this problem in this regard to a greater extent. To handle these problem technologies like radio frequency identification (RFID), bar codes and voice recognition has evolved as a very appropriate solution to the problem. However, whatever may be the pattern and use of technologies IT would definitely help companies to gain profits.
Dangerous cargo transportation - need uniform consensus
Several issues has been raised after and it is still hot topic in debate in transport sector whether the recent changes in policies regarding the issuance of Container Packing Certificates (CPC) by the Port Klang, Malaysia is in line with international norms and regulation of United Nations regarding the cargo transportation.
There are so many safety issues as related to new norms issued by the Port Klang authorities, some concerned person expressed their opinion that certain security measures have not met the attention which they deserve in turn about of Container Packing Certificates. The core of this discussion is UN recommendation on the cargo transportation of hazardous goods.
At International level the transportation of dangerous good by sea route was viewed with a very serious note by the UN committee of Experts on the Transport of Dangerous Good in Geneva, in December 2000. The recommendations during this meeting introduced International Maritime Dangerous Goods (IMDG) code as a universal guideline for the transportation of dangerous goods by sea as framed from the 1960’s International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (Solas).
Under the law, a number of safety codes were issued regarding the recommendations for individual substances and operations for the flow of the goods and practices like terminology, packing, labeling, stowage, segregation and emergency responses action. Under guideline, the objects put under the category of dangerous goods are explosives, gases, non-flammable, non-toxic gases, flammable solids, organic peroxides, toxic and infectious substances etc.
So, the recommendations of the 2000 summit expected from all the Contracting Governments to ensure best security as according to the ISPS Code. During the 2000 Millennium Summit Secretary General Kofi Annan said,
“We will not enjoy development without security, we will not enjoy security without development, and we will not enjoy either without respect for human dignity. Unless all these causes are advanced, none will succeed.”
Safety at sea is a matter of grave concern for all those who are, related to security of ship. There are instances when a ship had to be scrapped due to the toxic spill from containers and damage was beyond repair.
However LPK, one of the authorities to issue CPC (Container Packaging Certificate) that was earlier in practice of issuing the CPC certificate even by a dispatch clerk neglecting all the security measures of highest importance. Soon after realizing the importance of CPC, LPK started issuing of LPK by properly trained competent and independent surveyors. It organized examination and selected the best candidates to issue CPC and appreciated by other port authorities and soon as the ports, local insurance companies, shipping lines from all over the world began full support to LPK, is suddenly scrapped all new CPC issuing system and all the system went into futile, further issued grave security concern for the cargo security at Port Klang, Malaysia.
Wal-Mart unveils package cost reduction strategies
Are you one involved in packaging of materials in the supply chain network? Are you interested in the know-how for the improvement in bundling of goods by effective utilization of the existing available resources?
Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. has now come up with practical strategies that would kindle the better utilization of easily allowable resources to come up with innovative bundling techniques that would in turn reduce the utility of raw materials, bring in a reduction of wastage transportation costs and would drastically reduce the amount of carbon dioxide gas from penetrating into the atmosphere.
With reference to this move, Wal-Mart has planned to make dashboards available with private providers by November 2006 facilitating them to come up with innovative bundling tactics resulting in long lasting package material. By the wake of next year, ingenious set of tactics and processes would be made available with the global providers who will in turn use and share the pros and cons of the innovative tools brought in.
Click here to know more on the details of the process taken up by Wal-Mart in Material Handling.
Impact of Globalization on Supply Chain
Recently, I had written a post titled “How Globalization Changes Supply Chain Management?” about how supply chain management had been affected by globalization. Today’s post has some relevance to the older one. The business landscape is rapidly becoming more global. The improvements in communications, globalization has a direct impact on the business management and transaction. There is no such area of a business that is unaffected by the trend to a global business environment and the supply chain.
Manufacturing, distribution, sourcing of materials and invoicing have been significantly impacted by the increased integration of a global customer and supplier base. Many companies find that existing processes and technology are not flexible enough for this new business environment.
Increased Competition and Supply Chain
In the past, price, product features and brand recognition were enough to differentiate many products in the marketplace. With the continued commoditization of products, companies now need better ways to distinguish themselves. Product innovation and brand equity no longer allow the manufacturer to command a higher price in the market. In order to continue to compete with that commoditized product, the firm made significant cost improvements with supply chain redesign and technology.
Read my previous post titled “What Is a Supply Chain?” to know what exactly a supply chain is.
UPS Opened $80 Million Logistics Centre in Ontario
Mississagua announced the opening of an 800,000-square-foot logistics campus in Burlington, Ontario for UPS Supply Chain solutions. The second largest UPS logistics facility in North America, the Burlington complex was built at a cost of $80 million. It takes its place in a growing strategic logistics network that includes campuses in Louisville, Mira Loma, Netherlands and Singapore.
The new multi-client campus expands UPS’s supply chain capabilities in Canada and links with UPS Canada’s transportation network of package and freight services. It will provide order fulfillment operations, critical parts deployment and freight receiving and shipment preparation for multiple clients using sophisticated warehouse management, shipping and international technology platforms.
Read my previous post titled “e-Supply Chain Management” to know about e-Supply Chain Management.
Supply Chain Management Tips
Your supply chain can really benefit from having your suppliers give the buying organization a report card. It can expose your company to many improvement opportunities from the supply chain perspective. If your focus in on quality, you must ensure that your supply management department enhances your supplier’s ability to produce quality goods and services.
Read my previous post titled “Supply Chain Management Challenges” to know more about supply chain management challenges.
It is also necessary to know whether quality requirements and work scope are clearly defined or not. Another question that arises is does your supply management department provide contracting terms and conditions that are understandable. In additions, contract should be completed in a timely manner to make the process effective and efficient.
Outsourcing of Supply Chain
When companies analyze and examine their core competencies, they realize that outsourcing parts or all of a supply chain can be advantageous. With marketplace improvements around information systems, cost and quality of global manufacturing and product design capabilities, companies are gaining advantage by outsourcing their supply chain.
There can be significant economic benefits from outsourcing of your supply chain operation. However, the absence of a right system, process or organizational management structure can cause risk to success. In an outsourcing environment, companies need to put more controls and systems in place to compensate for the fact that the supply chain capabilities no longer reside onsite. In an outsourced supply chain environment, the need for information controls and excellence becomes more important.
Read my previous post titled “The Evolution of Supply Chain Management” to get an idea about the evolution of supply chain management.