How Order Fulfillment Works In American Business
Order fulfillment is the process of fulfilling an order, and can include everything from delivery to distribution. It’s an act that major companies rely on third party logistics services in order to save money, time, and increase their business efficiency
Several types of order fulfillment exist. The first is ETO, or engineer-to-order. This type of order fulfillment describes the process of designing a product by customer specifications, and then shipping it off to the customer who put in the order. An example would be with a specialized jet plane. With enough money, one can have a jet plane engineered to order according to specific guidelines.
There are several forms of Digital Copy in wide use today on the Internet. Buying music online is a perfect example of digital copy, which is just the process of accepting payment and delivering goods over the Internet. Firewall programs, video games, and software packages can all be obtained through the Internet thanks to digital copy logistics in place.
You can imagine the tough time that some retailers have in guessing what their supply and demand will be. This is a classic tale of made-to-stock logistics. In this operation, a retail store will try to forecast a demand for the product and buy it in advance. Whether or not the product actually sells is the defining moment. A proper forecast will avoid buying too much or too little inventory. New DVD releases are an example of MTS services that are used quite frequently.
Order fulfillment can also include returns of a product. Returns on a product are governed by the rules set by the business who sold the product. It’s best to have a rock-solid plan on what you will accept and to cover any loopholes. Perishable items and things such as underwear are examples of items you wouldn’t want to accept. A logistics company will be able to find the best possible way of handling the returns, shipment, and replacement if necessary.
Order processing is sometimes referenced as broad type of order fulfillment as well. Order processing doesn’t just cover finding products in a warehouse and shipping them out; it also includes stocking the warehouse and knowing where inventory is at all times. It also includes the ability to forecast need of further inventory in the future, so as to always be ready for future orders at the drop of a hat.
In Conclusion
Order fulfillment is a service that is best expedited through the use of a third party logistics company. These services are found in every major city, and even in some smaller locations where business is conducted. Review several companies and take them up on a free consultation to see what they can do.
The road to outsourced logistics is full of surprises
Selecting a 3PL can bring some unexpected challenges and benefits.
By David Hannon
There’s no recipe for hiring a third-party logistics provider and outsourcing portions of your supply chain. Every company is different and has its own priorities and practices when it comes to logistics. And plan as you might, some things can only be learned by experiencing them.
With that in mind, Purchasing recently spoke with two longtime 3PL users about their experiences to find out what sorts of surprises they have seen and what advice they’d give to those considering outsourcing to a 3PL.
Surprise #1: Relationships carry value
When food and beverage maker Ocean Spray first outsourced some transportation operations about 12 years ago, the company relinquished its direct contact with carriers. At the time, the idea of not having to negotiate contracts and manage relationships with carriers seemed like a big time saver, but as it turns out, those relationships can in fact provide shippers with a lot of value.
“When you’re using new carriers all the time that you don’t have history with, you’re missing out on some value,” says Doug Ward, inbound transportation manager at Ocean Spray in Middleboro, Mass., of the company’s prior outsourcing model. “And if you use a lot of brokers it gets even further disconnected between the shipper, the 3PL, the broker and the carrier. When you do need that leverage with the carrier you don’t have it” because the carrier may not view the end shipper as its direct customer in many ways.
So about six years ago, Ocean Spray overhauled its logistics strategy, bringing in TMC, a division of Eden Prairie, Minn.-based 3PL CH Robinson, for the tactical work, while Ocean Spray maintains the carrier relationships and negotiations. And it’s making a difference.
Today, Ocean Spray has a much closer relationship with its carriers and has seen increased negotiating leverage in good times and bad. “Even though it’s a shippers’ market right now, we understand the pendulum will shift and the rates will change,” Ward says. “So we’re still focusing on developing relationships with our core carriers and planning for the long-term.”
For Ocean Spray, one of the biggest benefits of keeping direct carrier contact has been its ability to gain control over inbound raw materials shipments. “Those types of synergies—coordinating inbound and outbound shipments with carriers—would have been much more difficult to achieve without direct carrier relationships,” says Ward.
As important as the relationships with carriers are, so too is the relationship with the 3PL, says Ward. In its original outsourcing deal, Ocean Spray did not have any 3PL employees at its facilities, they were all located at the 3PL’s offices. But that model switched when TMC was engaged.
“We have an onsite team of seven people from TMC,” says Ward. “They handle much of the tactical, day-to-day execution of shipments which lets us focus on the strategic part of the business and establish better carrier relationships.
“It’s a solid relationship and I view them as an extension of our company’s supply chain group. The knowledge of their staff is higher than we expected. A 3PL is not just a call center and a TMS. It’s knowledge and experience of the people.”
Surprise #2: Sometimes fast delivery is too fast
When your business is making airport security screening devices, no one wants your equipment to be out of service very long. Not your company, not the airport and certainly not the travelers. So getting spare parts to the site of a downed piece of equipment as quickly as possible is a top priority for New York-based L-3 Communications, which makes such devices. But it was a surprise to Bob Wright, director of global logistics at L-3’s Security & Detection Systems division, to learn that there is such a thing as “too fast” when it comes to delivery of parts.
When L-3 first outsourced its service parts delivery to New York-based 3PL Choice Logistics, it was seeing a higher-than-anticipated number of late deliveries. “When we really tracked it, 87% of the late deliveries were because the tech wasn’t there when the 3PL showed up with the part,” says Wright. “We wanted it fast but we wanted it delivered in a time window when we know our technicians will be there to meet the delivery.”
So Wright found himself in an unexpected position—he had to tell his 3PL to slow down and be sure to deliver it when the technician was there. “I would have never anticipated that—this was a big culture change for all of us,” Wright says.
Fast forward six months and today, only 2% of late deliveries are because the 3PL and technician didn’t synch up, a huge improvement.
Surprise #3: Pushback and skepticism could exceed expectations
The term “outsourcing” brings out a variety of feelings and reactions from internal stakeholders. While some people see outsourcing as a chance to improve operations, let’s face it—a lot of employees fear it means their job is being eliminated. And in some of the most extreme cases, employees could intentionally sabotage the 3PL’s work. But more often, it’s proud employees that assume an outside provider cannot perform a task as well as they can.
Along those lines, both Wright and Ward say they underestimated just how much pushback and skepticism they would encounter in their logistics outsourcing implementations. “Yes, people didn’t trust me when I said we knew what we were doing,” Wright says. “There was a healthy amount of skepticism. I didn’t plan for so much pushback on this.”
Wright says that because L-3’s outsourcing model involved moving spare parts inventory off-site to be managed by Choice, employees expressed real concerns about how the inventory replicate itself. The issue came to a head in late 2009, when L-3 won a government contract for full-body scanners at airports that would mean its production needed to increase rapidly.
“Around that time, our spare parts planner for that product line came to me in a panic,” says Wright. “She didn’t know where to put the parts to support all these new products in the field. So I just reminded her all he needed to focus on was making sure the mins at the field stocking locations were right and the 3PL would do the rest.”
Surprise #4: IT has a big role in successful outsourcing
While many logistics professionals may think of a 3PL implementation as a functional project, there is a big IT component that should not be underestimated. Both Ocean Spray and L-3 say their experiences proved that there can’t be enough pre-planning with IT before flipping the outsourcing switch.
“I worked on getting the IT people on-board early,” says Ward. “Getting their compliance is a huge help later on when you move to implementation. It makes the transition a lot more seamless.”
Wright concurs, saying one of the unexpected challenges of outsourcing was the reporting requirements. Because L-3 is under certain restrictions as a government contractor, it cannot do any EDI. So it had to work very closely with Choice in developing the right reports that could be put into L-3’s system.
“I didn’t expect that stage to take so much work,” Wright says. “We thought we knew what we wanted [for reports] but you get various reports with pieces of what you need, but there’s not the exact report you need. Our 3PL had to develop some consolidated reporting for us.”
Rand McNally Commercial Transportation launches Dock2Dock solution
SKOKIE, Ill. — Rand McNally’s new IntelliRoute Dock2Dock solution is the first in the commercial transportation industry to provide truck-attributed dock-to-dock navigation on city and inter-neighborhood streets, according to a Rand McNally news release.
Rand McNally’s proprietary commercial transportation navigation and digital mapping technology has been enhanced with datasets from NAVTEQ, a leader in premium-quality digital map data.
The solution equips carriers and shippers with GPS-accurate, truck-specific routing that allows Class 8 and longer combination vehicles (LCVs) to route from the origin’s dock to the destination’s dock.
In light of rising fuel costs, IntelliRoute Dock2Dock software provides precise routing technology to minimize “out-of-route” miles and maximize fuel efficiency, leading to increased productivity and profit, the release stated.
“IntelliRoute Dock2Dock navigation fills a critical need for carriers to route and deliver efficiently from the first to the last mile,” said Donna Koppensteiner, vice president of the enterprise division for Rand McNally. “With soaring fuel prices, every mile counts. IntelliRoute Dock2Dock cuts time and cost by helping prevent delays, hefty fines or accidents that can occur when drivers aren’t aware of truck routing restrictions to and from highways. Our customers also anticipate increased on-time deliveries and potential additional deliveries because drivers will spend less time navigating and backtracking on local streets.”
For the past 25 years, Rand McNally Commercial Transportation has been the industry leader and innovator in developing truck routing, mileage and navigation solutions. Rand McNally’s team of GIS professionals has augmented and enhanced its proprietary transportation data with NAVTEQ Transport data to create the most reliable, comprehensive and complete address-to-address mapping and routes. The IntelliRoute Dock2Dock routing solution will include more than 6.5 million miles of U.S. truck-attributed roads, with more than 23 million links that contain unique truck attributes.
“By incorporating NAVTEQ map data and NAVTEQ Transport truck attributes into IntelliRoute Dock2Dock software, customers will enjoy a level of routing accuracy and quality that they can’t find anywhere else,” said Roy Kolstad, vice president and general manager of Enterprise Americas, NAVTEQ. “NAVTEQ supplies IntelliRoute Dock2Dock with more than 6 million miles of roadway in the U.S. The complete identification of truck attributes for height and weight restrictions also serve to route more complex truck combinations.”
The new product will be available as an online download for existing IntelliRoute customers beginning in October 2008. The IntelliRoute Dock2Dock solution easily integrates with other logistics packages using an application program interface (API). Companies interested in the product should call Rand McNally’s Commercial Transportation division at (800) 234-4069.
For more than 70 years, Rand McNally has provided innovative print and digital mapping, routing and mileage solutions to the commercial trucking industry. Shippers and carriers rely on the company’s suite of software solutions, IntelliRoute and MileMaker, for Household Goods (HHG) rating and routing, as well as practical routing and mapping. Truck drivers across the country depend on the best-selling Motor Carriers’ Road Atlas line.
Rand McNally provides thousands of mapping, routing and trip-planning tools to the consumer, business, education and commercial transportation markets. For more information, click here.
NAVTEQ is a leading provider of comprehensive digital map information for automotive navigation systems, mobile navigation devices, Internet-based mapping applications, and government and business solutions. NAVTEQ creates the digital maps and map content that power navigation and location-based services solutions around the world. The Chicago-based company was founded in 1985 and has more than 3,800 employees located in 194 offices and in 42 countries.
New Amazon patent: sending video of orders being boxed
We’re all familiar with unboxing videos that people post to the web, capturing the moments when they get a first look at a new device. Well, it turns out Amazon.com is interested in the reverse process, taking videos of products as they’re being boxed and packaged in the warehouse.
The online retail giant received a U.S. patent today for a method of sending images and video clips to customers of their order being packaged for shipment — to reassure them that everything is correct. That kind of feature would put a new multi-media spin on the standard e-mail order notification.
The Amazon patent, No. 7,689,465, was granted today and refers to a “System and method for visual verification of order processing.” It was originally filed in March 2005 and lists as inventors Jonathan Shakes, Francois Rouaix, and Donald Kaufman.
Here’s a description:
One or more images of items for an order being processed at processing station of an order fulfillment center may be captured and associated with the order. Alternatively, a short video clip may be captured of the order being packaged. An electronic notification that the order has been processed may be sent to a customer associated with the order. The electronic notification may include a reference to one or more of the captured images or video clips. The customer may use a reference included in the notification to view the captured images. The customer may view captured images to verify that the order has been correctly processed. The captured images may include images of the items being packaged for shipment and may show the shipping address on the package allowing the customer to verify that indeed it is his package in the images.
Amazon warehouse workers: get ready for your closeup.
Some images from the patent of how the system may work:
3PL Revenue Drops 6.7 Percent
Have we Bottomed out?
Revenue for third-party logistics providers dropped by 6.7 percent during 2009 compared with 2008, according to a survey by Armstrong & Associates.
Among respondents to the survey, 53 percent said their revenue was down and 37 percent said revenue was up, primarily because of new business.
Respondents said that the economic recovery would be relatively slow. For 2010, they expected total revenue to be down 4.6 percent. Richard Armstrong, chairman of Armstrong & Associates, said, “Recent upticks in transportation volume and consumer spending indicated that we have bottomed out. The question now is whether the recovery will be V or L shaped. Company results are very mixed, but 3PLs as a group should bounce back quickly. Non-asset based players are particularly resilient.” Armstrong & Associates estimates 2009 revenue for 3PLs in the U.S. at $128 billion.
Although revenue in every area of activity declined during 2009, the extent of the decline varied widely from sector to sector. 3PL revenue in International Transportation Management suffered the most during the quarter, dropping 14.6 percent because of the steep decline in international trade and container movements. Revenue in Dedicated Contract Carriage was down 11.9 percent. Revenue in Domestic Transportation Management dropped 10.9 percent, reflecting the drop in North American truck traffic. Revenue in the Value-Added Warehousing and Distribution (VAWD) sector dropped the least, by only 4.3 percent.
Revenue of automotive 3PLs dropped by 37.5 percent, compared with declines of 7.3 percent in consumer goods, 8.1 percent in retailing, 7 percent in industrials, 6.7 percent in high-tech, 2.3 percent in healthcare, and only 0.1 percent in food and groceries.
Supply Chain Guru Predictions for 2010
For the third straight year, SCDigest Editor Dan Gilmore asked a number of Supply Chain pundits to make predictions for what is going to happen in supply chain and logistics management in 2010. Gilmore summarized the highlights of those predictions in his First Thoughts column, which can be found here: Supply Chain Guru predictions for 2010.
Dr. Chris Caplice
Executive Director
MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics
The most obvious prediction for 2010 is that the level of uncertainty in the financial markets, commodity prices, consumer demand, and virtually every other facet of the economy that supply chain managers are concerned with will only increase. Greater uncertainty makes all aspects of a supply chain manager’s job more difficult. It increases the need for more flexible and sophisticated forecasting methods, contractual arrangements, operational models, sourcing strategies, etc. But the biggest challenge that firms and supply chain managers will face in 2010 is talent management – ensuring that they recruit and retain the right people who possess the right skills.
On the surface, the idea that employee retention during a recession is a challenge sounds ridiculous. No one voluntarily quits in an economic downturn, right? Most companies are dramatically reducing their headcount – some more strategically than others. So, why with all these other challenges that supply chain managers face should they spend precious bandwidth on talent management?
The short answer is that job satisfaction tends to decline during recessions and the set of skills needed in supply chain management functions is quickly changing. Not paying attention to professional development during a downturn will lead to defections of the best people in your organization during the recovery.
Job satisfaction drops during a recession for a couple reasons. If there are layoffs, the remaining employees tend to suffer from survivors guilt. While they are glad to still have a job, they have the added stress of seeing their peers and co-workers let go. Additionally, as we all know, the amount of work does not decrease after a layoff, so the remaining employees have to do more with less. This is usually reflected in increased productivity of firms (higher output with less input, i.e., employees) coming out of recessions.
With a tighter organizational chart there are usually less short-term upward opportunities for promotion. While all of these factors will not necessarily lead to people voluntarily leaving during the recession, you can rest assured that there is a lot of dusting off of resumes and getting reacquainting calls to headhunters.
While most firms are good at getting rid of the really bad performers, they have a worse track record for growing and retaining the top tier. This can lead to an organization with a lot of middle-ground or B-players – not the best team for future success. When the individual and sparse “green shoots” in the economy coalesce into a forest, you can expect a massive top-talent flight from companies (or business units) that have not nurtured their star performers. This talent flight might be a good early indicator for the recovery!
This is especially difficult for supply chain management functions because the required skills have quickly and dramatically changed. The growing uncertainty in all areas coupled with increased level of supply chain sophistication now requires a higher level of analytical expertise. The broadening of supply chains in most firms from an internal-function to a cross-firm focus has raised the importance of soft leadership skills, as well. The ability to influence people and organizations that do not directly report to you (e.g., suppliers and customers) is one of the critical keys to success in supply chains today.
The source of future innovation lies at the boundaries and intersection of firms within a supply chain. The ability to coordinate, influence, and shape these far flung relations will determine how successful supply chains will be in the future. This is a big change over the older set of hierarchical leadership skills that were required within a more “silo-ed” operation.
In 2010, then, I predict that the economy will improve, demand will rise, and companies will face increased costs (and scarcer supply) of most commodities and inputs to their operations. But the biggest input scarcity they will face will be their top supply chain talent.
Art Mesher
CEO
Descartes Systems Group
2010 will be the first year in what I am calling the “new era of selective specialization.”
Last decade we saw the proliferation of microprocessors, handheld GPS technologies and network presence.
Using Darwin’s law we mapped these and defined what we saw in the last half the decade – the beginning of “the internet of things” or as I described it in 2004, “resources in motion.”
As I forecast in 1997, The Y2K decade also birthed the beginnings of the software as a service (Saas) model.
So now things can be scanned and read while in motion, and supply chain software systems are now seen as continuous versus being a one time lifetime purchase. So using Darwin’s law again and the same tools I have employed since I began charting supply chain theory in 1991, I have mapped the convergences and identified the congruence of the trends – the Ven diagram intersection of these trends.
This next spawned the convergence of business process outsourcing (BPO) models, consulting services, SaaS models and freight networks. We will enter a new era where new supply chains companies and flows will be born and engineered as these new SaaS-based BPO companies intermediate highly specialized collaborations within and between supply chains.
There are very cool, highly specialized companies emerging as we speak in reverse logistic, health care, food logistics. The SAPs, Accentures and UPSs of the world will begin to discover that the world of the “commanding generalist” has come under attack by the “subordinating specialist.”
Darwin said we can’t see evolution at once because it happens in too small and insignificant steps. So 2010 will be the year that it is all the same … While it’s all changing.
Gopikrishnan G.R.
Delivery Manager and Head, Supply Chain Management, Enterprise Solutions
Infosys Technologies
As the lead for a practice primarily involved in technology-enabling global supply chains, my big bet for the IT dimension of supply chain management (SCM) this year would be improved customer experience, both for internal end-users and external end-customers. Supply Chains have gained prominence after the downturn, with managers broadly focusing on two aspects:
(1) Improving efficiencies in the back-end supply chain to reduce costs
(2) Enhancing end-customer experience by augmenting the front-end supply chain.
At the back-end, SCM continues to be plagued with cross-functional integration challenges. Within Supply Chains, this inhibits leveraging cross-functional workflows to drive broader business objectives. The roadblocks are in organization structures and lack of shared KPIs, which is why Supply Chain Event Management (SCEM), in spite of huge potential never lived up to its hype, beyond confining to alerts and monitors of individual applications.
While such cross-integration challenges remain, organizations will face continued pressure to harmonize supply chain operations within a function (e.g., procurement consolidation or enterprise-level transportation management) and squeeze out further efficiency improvements from existing deployments (e.g., spend analytics driving sourcing improvements or extending a warehouse management solution to support multiple warehouses/fulfillment models).
Among customer-facing applications, I believe that e-commerce will continue to get priority, with businesses emphasizing improved search engine optimization, search and browse features, catalog management and hassle-free order taking. We are finally reaching an era of “true multi-channel commerce” in retail Supply Chain Chains. The three or four disparate channels retailers had nurtured in isolation are now sharing customer information, product information and importantly inventory information and fulfillment rules. Also going forward, multi-channel operations will encapsulate multi-channel integration programs. I am also eagerly watching the accelerating trend of platform or SaaS-based offerings moving from the typical back-office functions of finance, procurement, HR and so on to more core functions like Order Capture, Order Management and Transportation Management.
I also anticipate continued asset consolidation of capital investments deployed across the supply chain. Green Asset Management is certainly going to bestow brand equity vis-à-vis Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) themes; equally importantly, there will be a business case for ensuring productivity enhancements within core supply chain functions and lowering Selling, General, and Administrative (SG&A) costs. Mobile, Fleet, IT, Operational Assets, Plants, Real Estate, etc. will all be up for consolidation with work order management integrating with upstream functions of procurement and inventory management.
The usual supply chain suspects would continue to get focus – inventory visibility, supply-demand matching and supplier collaboration, to name three. To tackle global inventory visibility, organizations are going to gun for better views into supplier, in-transit and on-hand inventories to improve fulfillment percentages and reduce holding costs. In the coming year, replenishment planning will aim to provide improved supply-demand matching by looking at broader supply picture and embracing better forecasting techniques. Supplier collaboration would prosper beyond three and four-way matching or PO portals to include improved order updates upstream in the supply chains (date changes, partial deliveries, substitutions etc done systemically). It will also provide near-real time updates until the goods reach their destination, be it a buyer distribution center or a 3PL warehouse or the end-customer.
Beyond these function-level investments, I expect to see increased tailoring of supply chains this year due to mergers and divestitures, global forays of corporations and most importantly, the shifting balance-of-power among various supply chain eco-system constituents . This would undeniably put stress on IT applications for seamless alignment with businesses needing to reconfigure themselves on a continuous basis to changing partner dynamics. New supplier-contract-item combinations on the buy-side and complex fulfillment options moving towards “buy-anywhere, return-anywhere, fulfill-from-anywhere” philosophy on the sell-side are two typical examples that would trigger rip & rewire initiatives in the supply chains and consequently, their underlying IT.
Better times beckon in 2010 – the year of recovery. Keeping these supply chain trends in view will help position companies capitalize on resurgent opportunities, cut costs, satisfy customers and drive revenue.
Is a Fulfillment Company right for your business?
The business owner remains in control of the company but the fulfillment team are in charge of the shipping service. Drop shippers differ by owning both the goods and the storage area. Their service allows you to promote and sell their products while taking a commission for each sale that is made. Fulfillment companies are sometimes referred to as third party logistics providers. The term refers to those that offer their clients the complete distribution package most notably for large scale manufacturing operations.
Services can include but are not limited to; product storage, secure online e-commerce packages, payment processing and also packaging and shipment. As featured with many other turnkey solutions you can expect this type of company to offer your business with the full range of services. Extra services such as gift wrapping and packing promotional items along with ordered products is also a service that many high profile firms will offer to their clients.
There are certain companies which will claim to offer both e-commerce website packages as well as backend fulfillment facilities to customers. Be aware that these two areas of expertise are highly specialized, teams of web designers may employ the use of outside vendors to take care of the shipping requirements so be sure to check how the team you choose to work with operates.
The cost of implementing a fulfillment company in to your existing business will depend largely on the exact services your business requires. The amount of customers your business attracts will also play a big part in the final costs. A large proportion of companies will offer their services with a
price dependent on volume of sales. A set fee per item is also usually discussed, which will be charged a rate of per item or per pallet each month. A stock check will be taken each month to asses the floor space currently being used by the client. A small fee will also be incurred for the handling costs of the goods which will be performed by the floor staff. Shipping and packaging costs charged by the courier will simply be passed on to the client and added to the bill.
Copyright © 2010 Dan Marsh
Why Some Merchants are Saying Yes to SaaS
When determining your total e-commerce spending, you have to identify all online expenses, such as IT costs, personnel for marketing and merchandising, content and outside services, among other things. The costs add up quickly, which is why Software as a Service (SaaS) is a growing trend in where multichannel merchants are putting their e-commerce dollars.
SaaS—outsourcing the development and hosting of Websites—can be a cost-effective way of gaining new site functionality, reducing operating costs with less reliance on internal IT and accessibility to continuous upgrades. In our experience, SaaS costs range from 1% to 4% of sales.
One $90 million merchant we interviewed about its e-commerce spending could no longer keep up with the IT requirements for its Website. Worse yet, the high-profile brand’s site was hit with a distributed denial of service attack.
(DDSA attacks are typically done via an onslaught of external communications requests so the targeted Website can’t respond to legitimate traffic—or it responds so slowly it’s rendered effectively unavailable.)
The merchant’s site was shut down for a week as a result of the DDSA. After recovering, the company quickly outsourced to an SaaS provider with which it could share the necessary hardware and IT infrastructure and grow its site functionality.
Other merchants are turning to SaaS to be ready for the July 1 deadline for complying with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI-DSS). One company we interviewed believes SaaS will give it added financial savings through sharing compliance costs with other firms.
This could be a considerable benefit of SaaS. Industry studies show that compliance with PCI-DSS may range from $20,000 to $70,000 for companies with fewer than 1 million transactions.
written by:
Curt Barry (cbarry@fcbco.com) president of F. Curtis Barry & Co., a multichannel operations and fulfillment consultancy.
The Fun Theory: How can it be applied to supply chain and logistics?
This week I came across The Fun Theory, an initiative and website launched by Volkswagen “dedicated to the thought that something as simple as fun is the easiest way to change people’s behavior for the better.” The video below is one of the examples. At a metro station in Stockholm, most people would ride up the escalator instead of taking the stairs. But when the stairs were transformed into piano keys that play notes when you step on them, 66 percent more people took the stairs instead of the escalator.
How can The Fun Theory be applied to supply chain and logistics? I’ll be giving this question some thought in the days ahead. If you have some creative (and fun!) ideas, post a comment and let us know. In the meantime, have a great weekend!
Will the new Rail Safety Legislation lengthen transit times from warehouse to consumer?
Comprehensive Rail Transit Safety Legislation.
Secretary LaHood called on Congress to pass the Obama Administration’s Public Transportation Safety Program Act of 2009, a new comprehensive bill to ensure a high and standard level of safety across all rail transit systems. The bill would authorize the Secretary to establish and enforce federal safety standards for rail transit systems – effectively breaking through the 1965 prohibition.
No clear picture has been drawn up to indicate how the new safety legislation will be implemented, so there is no way to predict how this will effect transit times for products traveling across the us. Any new system that is implemented will cause at least two things to happen:
1. rail transportation costs will increase to offset the cost of new equipment and training employees on said equipment.
2. time from warehouse to consumer will slow down until the new implementation takes full effect.
What do you think will be the outcome of the new legislation?
CDC Fulfillment 