Post-COVID 19: Changes in Logistics Sector
Summary
The Covid-19 pandemic has led to changes in the logistics industry, including increased supply chain visibility, adoption of multimodal logistics, digitalization, contactless delivery, and a focus on sustainability. These changes have enabled better management of inventory and faster trade, while also ensuring safe and secure delivery of goods.
Since late 2019, the Covid-19 pandemic has caused various changes in the global economy for the past two years. Most of the country’s economy has been affected due to the pandemic situation. We all know how important the movement of goods is for survival. Without trade across countries, people can’t survive or lead a normal life.
During this pandemic, there was a shortage of goods across countries as demands had increased, which led to numerous changes in the logistics industry. In this blog will see in detail about the changes in logistics after the pandemic.
1.Supply Chain Visibility
Supply Chain Visibility (SCV) is a significant aspect of the logistics industry. It helps the companies have a clear eye on the movement of the stocks and help the management have clarity on the availability of the goods to avoid shortages and manage the inventory efficiently.
Supply chain visibility helps strengthen the process of the supply chain. All the stakeholders and the customers have to track the movement of their products from their manufacturers to the destination.
The supply chain involves multiple dealers and distributors in the process, who also outsource products during periods of high demands. Especially in pandemic situations, most of the dealers had to outsource the products. In such cases, the transparency of the products through Supply Chain Visibility (SCV) software was tracked for better reliability on trade.
Supply Chain Visibility reduces the risk of losing the products, avoids theft, and increases the reliability amongst the companies for better trade. The supply chain ensures the products reach in time as the suppliers cannot delay unwantedly as the movement of the product is transparent to both the producers and the consumers with the help of telematics appliances in the fleets.
2.Adoption of Multimodal Logistics to Handle Global Demands
There have been many differences between the functioning of logistics before the Covid-19 pandemic and during the pandemic as the supply and demands of the product raised dramatically along with restrictions on health safety as there are multiple parties involved in the trade across the globe.
Logistics industries had to transverse their process into multimodal logistics to handle the high supply and demand situation in this global pandemic.
Now, what is multimodal logistics?
Multimodal logistics is the movement of goods from producers to their customers through multiple modes of transportation. There are several modes of transportation like airways, seaways, railways, road transportation, etc. This happens in general, but the difference in multimodal logistics is that a single operator or a dealer carries out the entire transportation stream from its source to destination.
This idea of multimodal logistics ensures the companies have clear data on the availability of goods in the inventory and movement of goods from the manufacturer to consumer through a single operator. Since a single operator is involved in this multimodal logistics, transparency of data ensures better trade to avoid delays in delivery in a cheaper way.
Instead of dealing with multiple operators in the logistics, it is easy for the producers to sign the project with a professional company with its own transport network to handle the entire transportation process. This would increase the reliability, reduce the documentation, approvals, billings, and reduce the cost of transportation for producers as a single dealer is involved.
Since multimodal logistics is a faster and cheaper way of trade, this was a better way to adapt for most producers during the pandemic situation to meet the highly increased supply and demand levels. This also encouraged many producers to shift to multimodal logistics for a cost-effective and faster trade.
3.Digitalisation
Digitalisation is the process of adverse changes from manual operations to electronic operations with devices like computers, laptops, smartphones, and other applications in almost every industry to ensure convenient and faster processing. Similarly, the logistics industry is also in the rise of adapting all the functions through digitalisation for better execution.
Digitalisation is a boon for logistics as it boosts up the transparency level in each and every process involved for better supply chain management. The accuracy and faster operations make it more reliable for the companies to manage the documentation and billing processes efficiently through digitalization that ensures the free flow of the trade.
With the increase in telematics services in logistics, digitalization has enriched its services by providing various benefits for the companies for better fleet management. For example, GPS tracking systems for the route, location tracking, fuel monitoring, etc. All these sophisticated services would not be possible without digital transformation.
4.Contactless Delivery
Other than the concerns of raising supply and demands during the pandemic, one of the significant concerns in logistics is the contactless movement or delivery of the goods. As much as the goods are important for survival, it is also important for the companies and the supply chain operators to adhere to the protocols of safe and secured delivery of goods through contactless delivery.
Contactless delivery ensures safer trade amongst the supply chain and the consumers especially. The goods reach the consumers after multiple modes of transportation. Hence contactless delivery is a must to avoid the spread of infections. Companies must have proper sanitizing facilities in the containers, warehouses wherever the stocks are stored.
People during this pandemic had opted to be contactless in almost every aspect of life like work from home, online orders, etc. This condition has given a huge rise in the demands of goods on online platforms as it is very much contactless as people do not have to go to shops directly waiting in the queue along with other customers that are risky for people to be in contact with the virus.
Hence the online delivery options are easy for them to opt for as the products arrive at their doorstep with just a swipe on their mobile phones. Again, digitalisation has helped humanity to a great extent in meeting their basic needs through contactless deliveries.
5.Sustainability
Amidst the covid-19 pandemic, the logistics industry must also manage to balance their business and concern for a healthy environment keeping their emission levels of harmful gases under control.
What is sustainability?
It’s about what we leave back for the upcoming generations? Being sustainable is being responsible for future generations. The quality of our ecosystem must be retained by reducing the emission levels and switching to sustainable transportation methods like electric motors to sustain the available resources.
There are several ways that logistics can be more sustainable like, providing subsidies for the companies that use electric vehicles. Fleets must be updated with lower emission levels. Old trucks must be avoided that had higher emission levels compared to the recent emission standards.
6.Stocks and Inventory
Inventory management is one of the most significant factors of supply chain management. It regulates the incoming goods, stored stocks in the warehouses, and supplies goods to the customers.
The dealers must ensure that the stocks from manufacturers are stored properly and sold again in time. As the demand and supply of goods after the pandemic have increased, inventory management is a key factor in the smooth regulation of the supply chain.
The management must have constant supervision of the available stocks to be sold. Stocks in the inventory is an important component of the supply chain as it helps the companies to meet the sudden increase in the demand.
There was a shortage of demands during the pandemic, and huge amounts of stocks were stored in the warehouses. Even some were sent back to the manufacturers due to lower demands resulting in reverse logistics in the supply chain.
Post pandemic has turned the situation another way with huge demand for goods. In such cases, the stored stocks in the warehouses were of great help to meet the rising needs. Such control over the stocking of goods in the warehouses and selling it based on the customer demands is the basis of inventory management of a supply chain in logistics.
Sushanthi
Sushanthi is a Content Writer who wishes to be the voice of brands to project their innovative ideas and stories through her writing skills.