Parcel - November 2008 - (Page 10) 2008 SURVEY RESULTS PARCEL MANAGERS MAKE MOVES TO OFFSET ECONOMIC FORCES Part 2: Results of the PARCEL Annual Best Practices Survey I By Marll Thiede Going… Going… Green! Last year, it seemed that this would be the Year of Green. But as the economy took center stage, attention to Green took a back seat. In 2007, three percent of companies planned to implement green packaging initiatives — and they succeeded. This year however, only an additional one percent of companies plan to move ahead with implementation. The economy has certainly stunted what should have been a continuous trend to move to green. When asked what green initiatives your company did that made the biggest impact in the logistics process, most managers talked about greener packaging and recycling. Interestingly, some managers talked about some unique initiatives that not only reduced dependence on natural resources but cut costs at the same time: reducing container weight, moving more by ground than air, alternate fuel, moving to consolidators for last-mile delivery by the USPS because it’s going to those addresses everyday anyway (eliminating two trucks going to the same address) and being more efficient in warehousing to reduce delivery distances. Manufacturers are the most likely to have enacted green initiatives, with retailers being the least likely. Intriguingly, retailers are more likely to feel that their logistics processes contribute to global warming while manufacturers are least likely to think so. More Stats Yet this Year Because of the volatile economy and fuel costs, we decided to survey you three times this year. Normally, we co-conduct a spring survey with Morgan Stanley, and they conduct another n Part 1 of the “Results of the PARCEL Annual Best Practices Survey” (refer to our October 2008 issue), we unveiled how shippers are retooling their transportation plans to deal with the issues at hand: high fuel surcharges, demand to reduce transportation costs and fluctuation in carriers and their service offerings. In this issue, we delve into the operations side of the parcel process. It is no surprise that the #1 challenge, across the board for all managers, is to reduce costs throughout the process. The 443 PARCEL readers that took our mid-year survey also noted accuracy as their second biggest challenge and budgeting as their third. They found worker safety and theft/product tampering as least challenging. This year’s survey respondents included more very large volume shippers (14% shipping more than four million parcels a year) with company revenues more than $1 billion (22% of survey respondents). This affected the results of year-over-year analysis. For instance, when asked what functions managers were responsible for, this year more managers were responsible for fewer functional areas, which coincides with the bigger the organization, the more managers for the various parts of the process. However, the fact that those who manage any part of the process participate in the survey shows the needed cross-departmental synergy that is necessary to have the most cost-efficient parcel process from order entry through the warehouse into packing and shipping out to the dock and finally customer delivery. We always add what we consider to be a hot industry issue to each year’s survey. This year, the hot issue we added was… Green! Biggest Challenges 1 2 3 4 5 Reducing Costs Accuracy Budget Issues On-time Deliveries Packaging or Product Damage Re- Business Type Manufacturing Retail Wholesale/ Distribution 3PL Other #1 Challenge Reducing Costs Reducing Costs Reducing Costs Reducing Costs Reducing Costs #2 Challenge On-time Deliveries Accuracy Accuracy Carrier Relationships Accuracy >> It is no surprise that managers find reducing costs as their #1 challenge. 10 November 2008 >> No matter what the industry, reducing costs is the #1 challenge, but the next biggest challenge varies. www.PARCELindustry.com http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/rbpublishing/parcel_200810/index.php?startid=10 http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/rbpublishing/parcel_200810/index.php?startid=10 http://www.PARCELindustry.com
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