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Opportunities Ahead
Published in Ranadhir Mukhopadhyay, Victor J. Loveson, Sridhar D. Iyer, P.K. Sudarsan, Blue Economy of the Indian Ocean, 2020
Ranadhir Mukhopadhyay, Victor J. Loveson, Sridhar D. Iyer, P.K. Sudarsan
The World Bank prepared a Logistics Performance Index (LPI) with 155 countries in 2012 to connect the trade logistics with the global economy (World Bank, 2012). The LPI has been calculated based on the following six parameters: (a) customs (efficiency of the clearance process, speed, simplicity, and predictability of formalities by border control agencies); (b) infrastructure (quality of trade- and transport-related infrastructure—ports, railroads, roads, information technology); (c) shipments (ease of arranging competitively priced shipments); (d) logistics (competence and quality of logistics services—transport operators and customs brokers); (e) tracking and tracing (ability to track and trace consignments); and (f) timeliness (frequency with which shipments reach the consignee within the scheduled or expected delivery time). The LPIs of some of the IOR countries are listed in Table 6.7.
Logistics Optimization
Published in Ravi Ramakrishnan, Loveleen Gaur, Internet of Things, 2019
Ravi Ramakrishnan, Loveleen Gaur
Logistical systems form a key link between industrial production and market circulation on the one hand while also helping with people logistics involving transportation such as air, water, land, and rail on the other. Logistics management circulates around three aspects: the flow of material and people, the flow of information, and, most importantly, the time taken to service a supply request. While requirements are for a point-to-point pick and delivery, this involves multimodes of logistics and often different service providers to coordinate to minimize costs, time, and ensure fastest possible delivery often involving geoboundaries and multiple currencies. Of late, reverse logistics (Hawks, 2006), which deals with reuse of products and its constituents, including remanufacturing and refurbishing (Anderson, 2005), has gained traction due to the focus on green operations, where the resource goes back by at-least one or multiple steps in the supply chain. Logistical focus has been the right product at the right time and place at the right price in the right condition, to the right customer (Mallik, 2010) and with the IoT, digital connected objects are becoming the focus point. Intelligent products need to have a unique identity, be capable of two-way communication, that is, both send and receive instructions and if possible act on it, store data about itself, is autonomous and capable of decision, and can broadcast information about itself to nearby connecting objects as a service (Wong, 2002). Production logistics can be either inbound relating to purchases and from suppliers to manufacturing lines, or outbound storage and movement from production line to end user. Logistics may take either of two forms, one that is material focused and the other that is resource focused. Logistical nodes may either be factories and assembly lines, depots or warehouses of storage, distribution centers, transit or drop points, and retail stores or point of sales and complexity increases with the number of drop points (zero as in direct supplier to customer deliveries or one level with a central warehouse or multilevel with many warehouses). Even within manufacturing facilities and warehouses, merchandising stock in a storage location is also a function of logistics and sometimes this function gets outsourced involving third-party logistics. Traditionally, automation of logistics involves using computer software and hardware to improve efficiency of the function using RFID or barcode technology. At the country level, the World Bank has designed a Logistics Performance Index (LPI) (World Bank, 2017), to enable companies identify and benchmark the efficiency of their trade logistics. The six dimensions of these are clearance by border control, quality of logistics infrastructure, shipment pricing competitiveness, quality of logistical services, consignments track and trace, and finally timeliness of shipments.
The diffusion and the international context of logistics performance
Published in International Journal of Logistics Research and Applications, 2019
Supply chains are the backbone of international trade and commerce. Supply chain logistics encompass freight transport, warehousing, border clearance, payment systems, and many other functions outsourced by producers and merchants to dedicated logistics service providers. Logistics performance is key to national economic competitiveness, and its importance for economic growth, diversification, and poverty reduction is widely recognised (Arvis et al. 2014). Based on a worldwide survey of global freight forwarders and express carriers, the World Bank developed the logistics performance index (LPI) that measures the performance along the logistics supply chain within a country. LPIs provide a comprehensive and timely account of the world’s logistics performance covering 160 countries biannually. Evaluated under six dimensions on a five-point scale, logistics performance embraces efficiency of the customs clearance process, quality of trade- and transport-related infrastructure, ease of arranging competitively priced shipments, quality of logistics services, ability to track and trace consignments, and frequency with which shipments reach the consignee within the scheduled time. The overall LPI is aggregated as the weighted average of the six dimensional scores. It also includes quantitative information on import/export, lead time, supply chain costs, customs clearance, and percentage of shipments subjected to physical inspection (Arvis et al. 2012). LPI provides an overall metric of a country’s supply chain efficiency (Ojala and Çelebi 2015) and helps policymakers visualise how their country is performing in comparison to its peers in terms of moving goods between countries, connecting with global supply chains (Arvis et al. 2016).
Crucial factors influencing international logistics operations for African landlocked countries – A case study of Burkina Faso
Published in Maritime Policy & Management, 2019
Ching-Chiao Yang, Yu-Kuo Chang
The aforementioned studies and reports have identified several logistics operations challenges and barriers in landlocked countries. In general, the factors influencing logistics operations in landlocked countries may be classified according to internal and external factors. A notable performance system used to measure a nation’s logistics performance is the logistics performance index (LPI) proposed by the World Bank, which includes six dimensions, namely, customs, infrastructure, international shipments, logistics competence, tracking and tracing, and timeliness (World Bank 2018).
The propellants of the Logistics Performance Index: an empirical panel investigation of the European region
Published in International Journal of Logistics Research and Applications, 2023
Serdar Alnıpak, Erkan Isikli, Sudi Apak
The Logistics Performance Index (LPI), introduced in 2007 to measure the logistics performance of countries as its name suggests, has become a strikingly useful and dependable benchmarking tool (The World Bank 2020; Edirisinghe 2013). The LPI and its indicators are calculated by the information gathered from a worldwide survey of companies responsible for transporting freight and facilitating trade at a global level (i.e. multinational freight forwarders and major express carriers) and these are based on the experience and knowledge of professionals (Arvis et al. 2007). The LPI uses scores in six basic segments to determine the overall logistics performance of countries and its measurement depends on the general review of expert managers who rate the logistics performance of the countries they work with and trade together (Dare, Aubyn, and Boumgard 2019). The six segments used in the scoring of the LPI are explained as follows: The efficiency of customs and border management clearance: used to measure to what extent specific procedures are efficient and effective in terms of speed, simplicity and predictability.The quality of trade- and transport-related infrastructure: indicates the quality of infrastructure including transportation and information technology infrastructure.The ease of arranging competitively priced international shipments: measures to what extent a country can make international shipments at a reasonable price.The competence and quality of logistics services: a scale used to measure the quality and adequacy of local logistics activities.The ability to track and trace consignments: measures how efficiently shipments are tracked and located.The frequency with which shipments reach consignees within the scheduled or expected delivery time: indicates the on-time delivery times and is an important scale of logistics due to its direct effect on competition (Arvis et al. 2014, 2018; Karaduman et al. 2020).