China
Africa
Explore chapters and articles related to this topic
Supply Chain Excellence
Published in James William Martin, Operational Excellence, 2021
Figure 13.1 describes global supply chain activities from a value perspective that emphasizes process integration backward from the voice of the customer. This approach pulls value through a global supply chain and balances customer needs and value expectations against operations. In fact, order fulfillment processes become more sophisticated through IT applications that enhance operational flexibility. Lean methods have also increased supply chain flexibility through process simplification, standardization, and mistake-proofing strategies that significantly reduce lead times. On the demand management side, the acquisition of point-of-sale (POS) data and similar real-time collection of information can minimize the use of forecasting models having notoriously poor accuracy. In parallel, electronic commerce (i.e., e-commerce) increasingly enables the capture of localized customer preferences
Increasing the Fulfillment Level in a Wire and Cable Company
Published in Fernando González Aleu, Jose Arturo Garza-Reyes, Leading Continuous Improvement Projects, 2020
Fernando González Aleu, Jose Arturo Garza-Reyes
Order fulfillment involves aspects such as generating, filling, delivering, and servicing customer orders (Croxton, 2002). Order fulfillment is usually measured using three performance metrics, i.e. orders delivered on time, complete orders delivered, and product quality of delivered order. Although order fulfillment has been studied and documented from different perspectives, such as managing product variety in quotation processes (Cagliano, Kalchschmidt, Romano, & Salvador, 2005), IT-enhanced orders and delivery process of a fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) company (Chung, Ching & Saad, 2007), and supplier selection and managing strategies, and manufacturing flexibility (Oly Ndubisi, 2005), it is interesting to observe that there are still companies having problems achieving satisfactory performance levels on order fulfillment.
Managing Inventory—If You Do Not Have It, You Cannot Sell It
Published in Timothy McLean, On Time, In Full, 2017
For make-to-order supply, the first thing you need to determine is the order fulfillment lead time you need to achieve. Put simply, the correct order fulfillment lead time is the lead time your customer expects. Competitive advantage can be gained by offering a shorter lead time than your competitors—as long as you can sustain this. Problems occur when the customer’s expectation of lead time is shorter than the order fulfillment lead time your business can deliver. Therefore, for make-to-order products, being able to consistently supply products in an order fulfillment lead time that is equal to or less than the customer’s expectation is critical if you are to deliver on time and in full.
Collaborative logistics network: a new business mode in the platform economy
Published in International Journal of Logistics Research and Applications, 2022
Xiaofeng Xu, Yangyang He, Qiang Ji
A CLN requires multiple enterprises to fully coordinate and communicate in circulation channels; this can reduce logistics time and reasonably allocate logistics network resources. Through two important means of business process reorganisation and information sharing, a CLN can achieve a seamless connection of activities before and after logistics, approaching zero inventory and zero information lag infinitely and creating a unique time competitive advantage that is different from the traditional logistics supply chain. Compared with the traditional logistics supply chain, a CLN can open various business data to logistics network node enterprises to varying degrees. Through real-time dynamic information sharing and interactions, the logistics node information processing time, raw material inventory, finished products inventory and sales inventory are reduced to a minimum, thereby effectively realising time compression and improving logistics response speed, including improving order fulfilment speed, inventory turnover speed, ordering speed and product delivery speed (see Figure 3).
Product flows and decision models in Internet fulfillment warehouses
Published in Production Planning & Control, 2018
Sevilay Onal, Jingran Zhang, Sanchoy Das
Order Fulfillment – Defined as the interval between when a customer order arrives at the warehouse at the time it is shipped out. Traditional warehouses operate in a batch mode in that at the start of the day several customer orders are pending, the tactical objective then is to fulfil these orders during the day or week with a minimum amount of resources. In an IFW orders arrive continuously and are transmitted to picking immediately. Immediate or fast fulfillment is the primary objective for an IFW and is usually measured in hours. A survey of online buyers by Meller (2015) found that 65% want next day delivery and 24% wanted same-day delivery, highlighting the importance of fast fulfillment. Hu, Raj Kumar, and Chandra (2014) identified fulfilment as a critical enabler of multichannel retailing. They found that Amazon has emphasised fulfilment speed as a key element of their value proposition. A recent study by Zhang, Onal, and Das (2017) compared the fulfillment time performance of Amazon relative to other online retailers. They found that on average the fulfillment plus shipping time for Amazon orders 1.9 days, compared to 4.8 days for a group of relatively large retailers including Walmart and Home Depot. Order fulfillment is a key factor in attracting customers from brick and mortar retail to online retail. Most traditional retailers have struggled in their online sales, because they are unable to provide the quick fulfillment that customers demand. Many small and medium manufacturers now stock their products in an Amazon IFW, allowing them to leverage the fulfillment advantages of these facilities.
An advanced order batching approach for automated sequential auctions with forecasting and postponement
Published in International Journal of Production Research, 2023
Xiang T. R. Kong, Miaohui Zhu, Yu Liu, Kaida Qin, George Q. Huang
Sequential auction is used for selling multiple perishable products, such as flowers, fish, and wine (Chakraborty 2019). Owing to large auctioning volumes, efficient logistics is vital to fulfilling auction orders quickly (De Koster and Yu 2008). According to Kong et al. (2015), auction and associated logistics are considered in an integrated context, leading to the concept of auction logistics (AL). AL consists of pre-auction logistics, auction trading, and post-auction logistics, operated in an integrated auction market (Kong et al. 2018). Several new material handling activities are added, such as product grading and auction trolley (un)consolidation in addition to the general warehousing functions (Qin, Chen, and Ma 2015). Order fulfillment generally involves generating, filling, delivering, and servicing buyer orders (Song, Xu, and Liu 1999). At the execution level, the order fulfillment process focuses on transactions, while at the strategic level, the management focuses on making critical improvements to the process that influences the total performance enhancement of the firm and its supply chain (Croxton 2003). However, most of today’s auction order fulfillment practices are static, and logistics schedules cannot be changed after the auction starts (The New York Times 2014). Moreover, auction and logistics activities are decoupled. The functional silos will result in a series of inefficiency issues and a waste of resources (Van Heck and Ribbers 1997). It still lacks effective order fulfillment approaches for multiple products sequential auctioning, considering the inter-operability between auction and logistics (Pan, Zhong, and Qu 2019). The way to bundle combined order fulfillment policies in the unknown auction operating environment has not yet led to much attention in the literature (Lam et al. 2015).