What is Aggregate Planning? – Importance and its Strategies
Introduction An organization can finalize its business plans on the recommendation of demand forecast. Once business plans are ready, an organization can do backward working from the final sales unit to raw materials required. Thus annual and quarterly plans are broken down into labor, raw material, working capital, etc. requirements over a medium-range period (6 […]
Six Sigma Control Phase: How Statistical Process Control Works?
Control is all around us. We control the household appliances, the time schedules we follow and such mundane tasks of our everyday lives. We are intuitively aware of these principles. However putting these principles down explicitly helps us develop a formal understanding which we can then use in creating a control plan for our process. […]
Contract Logistics Cost Model
Warehousing Costing methods vary with the business models. While some warehouses using common shared facilities may be worked up based on transaction costs, dedicated and stand alone facilities would be on a different costing model. In this section, we shall go through the cost elements of a warehouse project briefly. Warehouse Cost elements are primarily […]
The Impact of GDPR on Business
The Internet has drastically changed in the past few years. Consumers have now become very aware of their privacy issues. Many consumers want to be in control of the data that they create and share online. Till now, the contracts used to be drawn by social media companies. Hence, they were heavily skewed to be […]
Behavioural Models for Project Managers
There are several models of behaviour that the project manager can draw upon in his or her work. These include Maslow’s need hierarchy theory, Herzberg’s Hygiene theory and McGregor’s theory X and theory Y as applied to project management. All these behavioural models point to the ability of the project manager to motivate the people […]
Supply Chains ride on Logistics Networks and IT Applications/Internet. In this topic a brief introduction to each of the Logistics Function/Industry is attempted.
The foundation of logistics function is based mainly on Transportation by Road, Rail, and Air & Sea.
Maritime trade has existed since times immemorial. History is replete with the major maritime routes that connected continents across the globe and enabled trade between them. Harbors and waterways have flourished in strategic locations in all countries attracting trade and commerce.
Global trade is dependant 80% on sea route than air route, simply for the fact that air route is far more expensive and is used only in case of light weight cargo, perishable cargo, and priority shipments or in other conditions where shipping would not be possible.
Shipping trade is characterized by shipping companies who own vessels and specialize in the transportation of certain types of cargo like General Cargo, Containerized cargo, bulk commodities carriers, oil tankers, gas tankers, OD cargo carriers, etc. Normally the so called mother vessels ply on the main shipping route across the continents traveling through Pacific or Atlantic oceans and calling on countries from point to point.
Mother vessels are bigger vessels with higher cargo carrying capacity. Some of the main routes normally traversed by mother vessels are the Far East to Europe and Mediterranean, Europe to America East Coast and the Gulf of Mexico, Far East Australia to South Africa, Intra Asia, Asia to the Middle East, and Europe to South Africa, etc. The schedules in detail are announced in advance for each of the vessels. The feeder vessels carry cargo from individual ports in nearby countries which discharge the cargo at the port of calling to be transshipped on to the main vessel.
Thus for example, a cargo originating in India bound for South Africa may follow the route where cargo reaches one of the ports in Ceylon or Dubai even Singapore in some cases and travels right up to Europe where in is further transshipped on another vessel bound to South Africa. Like wise the global shipping trade lanes have certain gateways and lanes which they operate and in turn are fed and supported by feeder lanes and vessels.
Shipping liner announces schedules of the vessels a few months in advance. Freight forwarding agents book space on the vessels either based on estimates or based on their pipeline orders. Depending upon the volume that the forwarder is able to give and patronize shipping lines, they get to bargain and negotiate for better rates. In general cargo, the shipments are made in FCL Containers.
FCL stands for Full Container Load. FCLs come in two sizes called 20 feet and 40 feet containers which refers to the length of the container. Each container has fixed dimension and weight carrying capacity. FCL Containers are provided by shipping lines to the freight forwarders who stuff the cargo and get the cargo sealed after customs inspection which is then picked up and loaded on the ship at the port.
Some of the major international shipping lines dominated world shipping trade is P&A, Nedlloyd, Maersk, Hapag Lloyd, American President Lines, Evergreen, NYK, HanJin, Cosco, CSCL etc.
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