Wal-Mart is the largest commercial retail enterprise in the world. In the process of logistics operation, reducing the cost as much as possible is its business philosophy.
Wal-Mart sometimes transports goods by air, sometimes by sea, and some goods are transported by truck and road. In China, Wal-Mart 100% uses road transportation, so how to reduce the cost of truck transportation is an important issue facing Wal-Mart's logistics management. To this end, they mainly take the following measures:
(1) Wal-Mart uses trucks as big as possible. The container is about 16 meters, which is longer or higher than container trucks. Wal-Mart fills the trucks with products from the bottom to the top, which is very helpful to save costs.
(2) Wal-Mart's vehicles are owned by it, and its drivers are its employees. Wal-Mart's fleet has about 5,000 non-driver employees and more than 3,700 drivers. The motorcade can transport 7000 ~ 8000 kilometers a week.
Wal-Mart knows that truck transportation is dangerous and traffic accidents may occur. Therefore, for the transport fleet, ensuring safety is the most important link to save costs. Wal-Mart's slogan is "safety first, courtesy first", not "speed first". During transportation, truck drivers obey the traffic rules very much. Wal-Mart conducts regular surveys of the transport fleets on the expressway. The trucks are marked with company numbers. If drivers are found to be driving illegally, investigators can report them according to the number on the truck for punishment. Wal-Mart believes that no truck accident means saving the company's expenses and minimizing the logistics cost. Due to attaching great importance to safe driving, the transport fleet has created an accident record of 3 million kilometers.
(3) Wal-Mart uses the global positioning system to locate vehicles, so at any time, the dispatching center can know where these vehicles are, how far they are from the store and how long it will take to get to the store. This estimate can be accurate to the hour. Wal-Mart knows where the trucks are and where the products are. It can improve the efficiency of the whole logistics system and help reduce the cost.
(4) The logistics department of Wal-Mart chain stores works 24 hours a day, and can unload goods in time, no matter day or night. In addition, Wal-Mart's transportation fleet also uses night transportation, so that the goods are collected in the afternoon, transported in different places at night, and delivered to the door the next morning, ensuring that the whole transportation process can be completed within 15 ~ 18 hours, which is an important measure for Wal-Mart to gain an advantage in speed.
(5) After the products are transported to the shopping mall by Wal-Mart trucks, the shopping mall can be completely unloaded, and there is no need to check each product one by one, which can save a lot of time and energy, speed up the circulation process of Wal-Mart logistics, and thus reduce costs. There is a very important premise here, that is, Wal-Mart's logistics system can ensure that the products obtained by the mall are exactly the same as the invoices.
(6) The transportation cost of Wal-Mart is lower than that of the supplier itself. Therefore, manufacturers also use Wal-Mart trucks to deliver goods, so that the products can be directly transported from the factory to the shopping mall, which greatly saves the storage cost and transshipment cost in the product circulation process.
Wal-Mart's centralized distribution center organically combines the above measures to make the most economical and reasonable arrangements, so that Wal-Mart's transportation fleet can operate efficiently at the lowest cost.
1.2 case review
There are many factors that affect the rationalization of transportation. On the whole. First, enterprises should transport as close as possible to avoid further development; Second, the logistics department should minimize intermediate links such as loading and unloading, handling and transshipment, and organize direct and direct transportation as far as possible, so that the goods do not enter the transit warehouse, but go directly from the place of origin to the place of sale or customer, reducing transportation links; Third, according to the characteristics of different goods, choose the best transportation route by rail, water or car, actively improve the loading mode of vehicles and boats, improve the technical loading capacity, transport more goods with the least capacity, and improve the transportation production efficiency; Fourthly, reducing the waiting time of customers as much as possible, making logistics work meet customers' needs, has become an important factor to win customers' satisfaction. Therefore, it is necessary to speed up the transportation of goods and shorten the waiting period as much as possible, so that a large number of goods do not stay in the transportation process and stay for a long time; Fifth, actively save transportation costs and improve transportation efficiency.
In daily work decision-making, the cost, speed and consistency of transportation are the three most likely factors that affect the rationalization of transportation. Because the lowest transportation cost is not equal to the lowest transportation cost, and the lowest total transportation cost is not equal to reasonable transportation. The rationalization of transportation is related to the rationalization of other logistics links. Therefore, first of all, we should stand at the height of the integration of the whole logistics system, consider the overall situation, then optimize each specific link of transportation, and finally realize rationalization.
In this case, Wal-Mart's logistics and transportation solutions, as far as (1), (4) and (5) are concerned, use large-size and large-capacity loading vehicles to unload goods all day. The purpose is to improve the transportation efficiency, shorten the transportation time, reduce the transportation cost, make the transportation time shortest and the transportation cost most economical, and make the transportation cost of Wal-Mart lower than the supplier's own transportation cost. Therefore, manufacturers also use Wal-Mart trucks to deliver goods, so that the products can be directly transported from the factory to the shopping mall, which greatly saves the storage cost and transshipment cost in the product circulation process.
Wal-Mart not only strives to save transportation time and cost, but also helps to take safety measures and apply advanced logistics information technology, which is closely integrated with the work of distribution centers. Therefore, through the rationalization of logistics transportation, we can reduce transportation links, reduce transportation costs and shorten transportation time, and effectively reduce transportation costs in the whole logistics system.