Lean Transportation Management - Using Logistics as a Strategic Differentiator

 

In Lean philosophy, transportation is considered to be waste. This triggers the question of how it is possible that there are so many freight movements around the world. With transportation, a company can reach its existing and potential customers around the world fast and without big investments. It is the linking pin between the supply chain processes and partners, who need to work in tandem to deliver the perfect order. From that point of view, transportation is not a waste but an important service differentiator to be used as part of the transportation strategy to create a strong competitive advantage as world-class service experience is becoming the key decision factor, in addition to world-class product capabilities, for awarding business to a world-class supplier. While governments and authorities have been developing many extensive public transportation strategies for a long time, there is still a significant number of private companies that do not have one or, when they have one, it is related to cost reduction. Many studies tried to define world-class and came up with various maturity grids, but there are no international standards to label a company as such. However, these studies taught us the characteristics of world-class performance: a happy customer confirming the high quality of the products, sold against affordable prices, created by engaged employees in a safe environment, delivered fast and in line with the delivery requirements.