4PL Glossary

You'll find brief explanations of the technical terms used in logistics in this gray box and most others.

Value Added Services
Logistics services going beyond the basic services and creating additional value / benefit.

Packaging
Outer wrapping of consumer durables designed to protect the consumer durable and to make it suitable for shipping. Packaging also has a marketing function.

Warehouse, Warehousing
The locality where the entire bandwidth of activities of a warehouse site is realized: acceptance, transhipment, putting goods in and out of storage, preparing, commissioning, value added services and logistics information processing.

Commodity management system
Defines that part of ERP systems which mirrors the goods management part of the value added chain. An integrated CMS reflects the flow of goods from purchase to resale for each article, both in terms of value and of unit quantity. 

Showing the way.

Aiming for the WHAT, not the HOW. When it came to matters of supply chain and logistics, we often thought hard about the HOW – about the way we did things and how we used and applied them. Today, we should be more concerned with the WHAT – which opportunities to take, which supply chain and logistics matter to rethink and which hybrid network structures to use for balancing out the drawbacks and advantages of our organizational structure.

Target-driven leadership. The essential element is easily explained: at the point in time when a business has squeezed out the last five percent from the HOW of its available power, an innovative rival will have found a new WHAT and will be set to overrun the market with his new idea.
In other words: the new era needs executives who are capable of distinguishing between WHAT and HOW and who are ready

to make Supply Chain Management and/or Logistics a matter of top level managerial decision
to kickstart overdue reforms in spite of all lower-level hindrances and obstacles
to bring new dynamism into the business

Answers to important questions. Anyone who wants to reposition powers and resources in order to establish new supply chain and logistics structures should first ask and answer the following questions:

First how well suited is my present corporate organization to install supply chain management and/or logistics as a cross-sectional function?
Second how do I design and lay out the organizational span of control?
 Third how high should the degree of decentralization be in the supply chain and/or the logistics organization?

Determining the beneficial effects. You determine in which direction things should be moving. Follow this up with a contact meeting with us to join forces in creating important leverage effects. For example:

Generating efficient supply chain structures
Creating transparency within the logistics networks
Cutting back on internal and external interfaces
Forming 4PL channels with cross-sectional functions
Enhancing the efficiency of cross-corporate production control and capacity planning
Cutting back the order throughput times
Steadying the flow of goods
Supporting the dynamism of logistics networks through secondary actions
Minimizing the logistics costs along the entire supply chain

Incidentally: Cost reductions and profit improvements are important indicators for the benefits you can achieve for your business with 4PL Implants (see above “4PL Power”). Use the 4PL Power for your performance. Contact us today. We are here to help.

4PL - Excellent Logistics Solutions.

For more information on the benefits of the 4PL business models, contact HQ of 4PL Central Station Group in Basel, Switzerland. Click “Contact” above and send us your enquiry.

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