Demand Management, Order Management, And Customer Service And Transportation Management (Essay Sample)

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Contemporary logistics Pearson eleventh edition is a book by Paul R. Murphy and A. Michael Knemeyer. It was originally published in two thousand and fourteen by the Prentice Hall publishers with an ISBN of 9780132953467. It has a number of chapters such as demand management; order management, custom service among others. The chapter focuses on one of the four features of order cycle which are order picking, development of customer service, the freight classification of products, bill of lading, shipment and the challenges faced by the transport managers.
Pick to light is one of the most famous warehouse orders picking technology in the market. It is a system adapted to a number of warehousing technologies. Pick to light is an order fulfillment technological system responsible for directing light which aids the pickers ensures ultimate efficiency and increased speed. The workers follow the light from pick to pick without calculating any optional path to follow resulting in reduced errors and increase in picking rates. Order picking is a replacement of the paper picking, unlike the use of papers in paper picking, pick to light as a system uses computers to give the light direction of the pick location. The computers are also used to identify the items and specify the amount to be picked (Murphy & Knemeyer, 2003). The ability to eliminate the use of paper works is one of the most important improvements of a pick to light system. By so doing, they minimize the time was taken and the manual labor of workers figuring out items to be picked in line one after the other and making them circulate in the entire warehouse for an order, hence improved productivity and accuracy. Besides, in a pick to the light system, the orders are easily downloaded from personal computers and later on optimized to minimize the cost of labor related to paperwork. Other than the two ways, it also increases the speed and productivity of picking as well as to shorten the distance of travel.
Despite an organization's potentiality, there are instances of it not meeting the actual expectation of the customers in terms of performance. Failure has risen in terms of service delivery and is greatly increasing in the recent years hence need for service recovery. Service recovery refers to a state of bringing back a customer to a state of perfection after a product has ceased to exist to its expectations. That notwithstanding, if an organization does so well in a particular product, high levels of customers service is not required. The reason being any person in need of the commodity is allowed to go for it under any customer service standard. Besides, when there is a new commodity in the market, the industries try so hard to meet the potential buyers by ensuring a constant supply of the goods. The companies struggle to protect the companies from going out of stock.
The four major factors used in determining the freight of a product are density, storability, handling, and liability. Density refers to the weight of a good in relation to its size. A majority of the shippers are informed of the weight, physical dimension and the value of the products to be shipped. Unfortunately, they forget to consider density as a factor in finding the freight class. Density is calculated as the total mass divided by the volume of the products. The values used must be accurate measures when that is assumed the products that are density based will incur losses if the density is not well calculated. It is the most important aspect in relation to the categorization of the commodities. Storability refers to the ease of a commodity to be packed in stacks. A good percentage of freights stores appropriately in trucks, boats, trains although there are some items whose transportations are regulated by the government. There are also items that cannot be transported together, such as hazardous materials (Murphy & Knemeyer, 2003). To avoid the impossibilities of a freight pairing with the other, the goods must not have excessive weight and length and must have a load-bearing surface. There is a limit to the amount which should be carried. If there are technicalities in handling a product, one is required to be paying an additional amount to cater for the extra space it occupied.
Handling requirement can either be difficult or an ease. The ease or the difficulty felt can be illustrated in terms of the challenges experienced in terms of weight, size, length and properties of the product among others. An example of an easily handled product is mechanical equipment; this is because they pose no threat to the workers. On the other hand, some freight poses a threat because of their weight, size and hazardous properties. Lastly, the liability of freight refers to its probability to incur loss or damage. It usually indicates the value of the products and its ability to the parish.
The bill of lading is one of the most important documents in the transportation of commodities by sea. The basic function of bill lading is to be a delivery receipt. There are three types of bills of lading; the nominate, bearer and order bill of lading. Shortly, a nominated bill of landing refers to the delivery of ...