Logistics Service Quality Evaluation System

Question: Discuss about the Logistics Service Quality Evaluation System. Answer: Introduction: I have been specializing in supply chain management and logistics. I have been assigned with the task of identifying future challenges, which would be influencing my area of specialization. There are various activities that is acknowledged in the supply chain management and it includes new product development, marketing, customer service and finance. Logistics on the other hand comprised of activities such as distribution, procurement, inventory management and maintenance. Concerning my area of specialization, I have conducted a secondary research on identifying challenges faced in this area. In this regard, I have identified relevant global mega trends and discipline specific challenges required by professionals for embracing and accommodating needs of future. The aim of research is to identify area of diversity, relevant global mega trend and discipline specific challenges faced by supply chain management. The various research questions are: What are the specific challenges faced by supply chain management and logistics? How Supply chain management contributes in achieving maximum level of customer satisfaction? What are the mitigation measures adopted for reducing supply chain risk in organization? Explanation of supply chain management, logistics, and work diversity that took place in this field: The major new development in the global trade in logistics area that are expected to play a significant role. This would be affecting every business of export and imports of goods. Trade compliance firm and customer brokerage in North America have focused on simplifying the movement of goods through international borders. Simplicity to trade processes and access to open market have resulted in business expansion and it has resulted in creating unprecedented opportunity. Supply chain is involved in through the downstream and upstream linkages in the different activities and processes that reduces values in the form of services and goods (Beske and Seuring 2014). Managing the supply chain leads to the coordination of location, production, inventory and transportation in the supply chain for achieving the efficiency and best responsiveness of the markets being served. It has been depicted that for meeting the new demands there is a need on part of logistics provider to adapt to global c hanges and this might call for partnership or service combination between local and global providers. Certain areas such as primary fixed cost and warehouse and economies of scale having come expected with ships is difficult to achieve. I have come to know that supply chain organizations with continuing global growth will have complex and larger supply chain. There are five major trends identified by me that has impacted business globally. Trend is regarded as change in global scale that are verified with global data and it is seen that in light of these trends, business are changing and identifying their strategies. Demographic changes is one of the trend that is affecting the labor force and this will it more difficult for companies for acquiring talent in developed countries. Majority of the companies are changing the way they are attracting and retaining employees (Beske et al. 2014). Many countries have been experiencing challenges in supply chain and there is a need on part of government, logistics service providers and companies. Extended supply chain will have more risks and number of suppliers, markets, factories, global service providers will increase. Implication of this demographic change is that the amount of tax imposed by government and this would lead the companies to revise their business models for increasing in pension costs. It is required by workers to improve their skills or learn new technical skills for staying competitive in job markets (Chen and Shen 2015). Identification of broad trends influencing business and area of specialization: Another trend is the advancement in technology and this new developments helps in creating new industries. Breakthroughs have resulted from advances in nanotechnology, mobile technology, research, development, and mobile technology. Companies tackle such changes by anticipating how they will affect the customer trends. Implication of advancement in technology and use of the technology will be a necessity instead of advantage. Global warming is one of the trend that has hugely influenced supply chain management of organizations. There have been change in the climatic condition due to rise in weather and extreme sea levels. Such change has resulted in making it harder for creating great demand for resources. Scarcity in resources have been driven by growth in population and changes in weather. Due to such changes, there is an increased regulation that is directed towards sustainability and conservatism. Due to climatic change, there is an increased uncertainty about the manifestation and magnitude of the impact on supply chain management. There have been a multiplier effect on supply chain risk. There can be disruption in transport and availability of raw materials, this will result into shocks of global supply chain, and climatic change is regarded as risk multiplier. Supply chain networks run operational and reputational risks attributed change. Pressures of stakeholders are paving the way for decarbonization of supply chain and it is the obvious implication of supply chain management. Drivers of climatic change like environmental treaties are posing great threat for network of supply chain network and business opportunities. There have been emerging gain in market power, west has been the economic powerhouse. Due to increase in export, innovation and population are gaining more influence. As these countries have invested and trade and they are agreeing to grow at more rapid rate. More competition on global scale is due to shift in economic power. This will reduce the influence of western markets and made business seek opportunities placing established market, which is disadvantageous for growth (Melnyk et al. 2014). In order to gain a tax break, western government would notice large companies and they left settle in emerging markets. This would lead to lower taxes in order when moving broad. The relationship of market power to supply chain is not developed fully. Due to gradual increase in the market share of retailers, their position within the global food supply chain remains consolidated. This comprise of expansion into the distribution, production and processing sectors. For instance, Woolworths have been continuing to consolidate their closed supplier and buyer chains and suppliers incurred great costs and weakening their long-term financial viability. Using the appropriate information technology, would lead to supply chain with a competitive advantage. Inventory management, transportation and production are the areas where the usage of such information technology would reduce costs within the supply chain management. Some of the information technologies would reduce within the supply chain that will increase the efficiency. One of the component of supply chain management was in area of transportation. This would lead to greatly benefit from advancement in green technology. Another aspect of technology is packaging that has significantly affected the supply chain management. The state of security measures and practices at the forefront of supply chain management has been changed by cloud technology. Supply chain management providers would be able to adjust to the changing market volatility due to the technological advancement. One common challenge is rapid growth that provides solutions (Markmann et al. 2013). These are revolutiona ry technological that help shippers in streamlining their booking, tracking, freight quoting and reporting. Some of other challenge common to the supply chain in this context are warehouse are poor visibility across carriers, capitalizing in emerging global opportunities and navigating a morass regulations and rules. Technological aspects have bene harnessed by enterprise organizations for meeting the logistics challenges (Ellram and Cooper 2014). Identification of specific challenges faced by supply chain management and logistics: Some of the challenges faced by supply chain management is the cost cutting of transportation followed by improving customer service and business process improvement. I have researched that globalization has been changing the way companies are using their supply chain management for gaining market shares. Greater change in supply chain variability is due to the longer supply chain and disruptions arising from that. Due to multiple earthquakes, many organizations have encountered with supply disruptions (Fawcett et al. 2014). Supply chain visibility by unwillingness of the department to collaborate and inhibited by lack of capabilities. In nutshell, it can be said that leaders of supply chain struggles with globalization, risk management, cost containment, increasing demand of customers and supply chain visibility (Hoekstra et al. 2015). Organizations are forced to embark on new journey with changing market demand and shorter products life cycle. Finding just a lean concept is not the challenge facing supply chain but there needs to be working lean solution. In this regard, I would recommend the organization to have the value stream analysis, having an optimization process and using a service for design. Management of risk is becoming comprehensive with increasing in the complexity of supply chain management. Intelligence will help in developing a sustainable supply chain that would make wise uses of resources and positively influencing the communities in which they are operating. Advanced analytic skills possessed by managers helps in identification of finer segmentation of customers so that the offers are tailored accordingly (Lu et al. 2015). Substantial recommendation responding to future challenges of my specialization area: I have chosen the profession of supply chain managers and this will help me in discovering some of the factors leading to change in the supply chain management. I would be using my profession to solve various challenges faced with by the supply chain department if an organization. I would be responsible for totaling down the number of suppliers and would be responsible for finding suppliers with reliable and consistent service at such price that does not hurt the bottom line of supply chain (Waters and Rinsler 2014). This would help in dealing with the cost containment of supply chain management. I would be responsible for ranking the cost containment as the first priority of business. Some of the things that is quite evident in programs and activities of my profession is the intense focus on cost containment, which is one of the top global challenge facing supply chain. Another greatest management challenge tackled by supply chain managers is the visibility and collaboration that is required to get the information. In this regard, there is no attraction towards programs and activities. I would be citing significant cultural barriers for achieving the level of visibility required by supply chain management. I would be more focused on improving visibility and contribute to making collaborative planning with vendor management inventory and suppliers. Effective risk management has been prevented due to lack of standardized processes, inadequate technologies and insufficient data (Stadtler 2015). As a supplier chain manager, I would be having programs in place for monitoring compliance. As a manager, I would be taking risk management as a further step and would incorporate it into the plan and using the disruptive and monitoring the events. As a supply chain executive, there is an urgent need required for leadership talent. Such acquisition of talent is faced in Asia pacific region. There is a significant change required in executives of supply chain executives that involve rotating of leaders. I would be stimulating various course of action and will be responsible for making smarter supply chain management. In the event of disruptions occurring, I will be responsible for reconfiguring supply chain. Smarter supply chain would be equipped with simulation capabilities and sophisticated modeling (Coyle et al. 2016). Operation of supply chain would come with visibility and I would be responsible for tracking the supply chain of smarter supply chain and rainfall that would help in optimizing irrigation. Shipping methods and delivering routes would be done by monitoring traffic status. As a supply chain manager, prediction of shift in energy, labor and consumer buying, I would be following economic indicators and financial markets. In the todays technological era, managers are well equipped with analytic, modeling and simulation capabilities for making the smarter supply chain (Christopher 2016). For managing the risk and volatility arising with the global supply chain, I would recommend the organization to develop supply chain. This would help in mitigating as much as supply chain risks as possible. It is required on part of company to assess and identify the potential issues, gaining the transparency into the operations of suppliers by making the assessment of financial viability and working through what if scenarios (Zhang 2014). Conclusion: From the above discussion of the several challenges faced by supply chain management, there is a requirement for optimization and integration. Global quality problems and delivery bottlenecks would be identified with the help of increased visibility from interconnected and highly instrumented supply chain. 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