What is the development prospect of logistics industry?

Logistics management science is a new discipline that has emerged abroad in the last decade or two, and it is a new important branch of management science. With the improvement of production technology and management technology, the competition among enterprises is becoming increasingly fierce. People gradually find that the competition among enterprises to reduce production costs seems to have come to an end, and product quality is just a stepping stone for an enterprise to enter the market and participate in the competition. At this time, the focus of competition began to shift from the production field to the non-production field, and turned to the scattered and isolated fields that were ignored as auxiliary links, such as transportation, warehousing, packaging, loading and unloading, distribution and processing. People began to study how to reduce logistics costs, improve service quality and create the third profit source in these areas. Since then, logistics management has been separated from the traditional production and sales activities of enterprises and has become an independent research field and subject scope. The birth of logistics management science makes the logistics system hidden in economic activities appear. It reveals the internal relations of all links in logistics activities, and its development and perfection is the magic weapon for modern enterprises to win in market competition. In western countries, there are several direct technical, economic and policy reasons for the continuous development and improvement of modern logistics management science: (1) Because products tend to be produced in multiple varieties and small batches, the diversity and small batches of products determine the complexity of distribution; (2) The adoption of JIT, rapid response, continuous replenishment and other technologies in manufacturing and marketing industries has introduced logistics services with time as the basic condition, requiring people to strictly control and coordinate inventory, transportation, production and sales, so as to minimize inventory and change the logistics strategy that traditionally relies on safe inventory; (3) The development of computer technology and information technology has strongly promoted the development of modern logistics. Logistics management is highly dependent on the analysis and processing of a large amount of data and information. The development and commercialization of computer technology and network technology provide the logistics system with the support and processing functions of analyzing problems, handling affairs, evaluating and making decisions. The wide application of information technology such as bar code technology, EDI and satellite communication technology in logistics operation has greatly improved the level of logistics service and the transparency of logistics process; (4) Deregulation policies widely adopted by developed countries in the field of transportation make the competition in the transportation market unprecedentedly fierce, and logistics innovations centered on customer service emerge one after another. In addition to the above reasons, great changes have taken place in the external market environment of enterprises since the 1990s, such as the surge in customer service, timeliness becoming the focus of management, and the trend of economic globalization forcing enterprises to pay more and more attention to logistics management. Due to the increasingly fierce market competition, people find that there is very limited space to gain competitive advantage by reducing costs in the production process. Therefore, enterprises began to focus on the logistics field before and after production, and began to implement whole-process quality management in this field. It can be said that from a global perspective, among the many strategic problems faced by industrial and commercial enterprises today, one of the most challenging areas is logistics management. The content of logistics management includes three aspects: the management of various elements of logistics activities, including transportation and storage; The management of logistics system elements, that is, the management of six elements such as people, money, goods, equipment, methods and information; The management of specific functions in logistics activities mainly includes logistics plan management, quality management, technical management and economic management. The purpose of implementing logistics management is to achieve the established customer service level with the lowest possible total cost, that is, to seek the dynamic balance between service advantage and cost advantage, thus creating the strategic advantage of enterprises in the competition. According to this goal, the basic problem to be solved in logistics management is simply to provide customers with the right products at the right time and place with the right quantity and price. Logistics management emphasizes solving problems with systematic methods. Modern logistics is generally considered to be composed of transportation, storage, packaging, loading and unloading, distribution processing, distribution and information. Each link has its own functions, benefits and concepts. The systematic method is to make use of modern management science and technology to make each link enjoy the whole information, organize and manage each link as an integrated system, and make the system provide competitive customer service at the lowest possible total cost. According to the system method, the benefit of the system is not only the sum of the benefits of its local links. Systematic method is to analyze and evaluate all the influencing factors for a certain problem. Starting from this idea, the logistics system does not simply pursue the lowest cost of each link, because there is a tendency of mutual influence and restriction between the interests of each link of logistics, and there is an alternating and fragile relationship. For example, overemphasizing the saving of packaging materials may lead to the increase of transportation and loading and unloading costs because of its easy breakage. Therefore, the systematic method emphasizes the analysis of total cost and avoids the analysis of suboptimal effect and cost balance, so as to achieve the lowest total cost and meet the established customer service level. The development of logistics management has experienced three levels: distribution management, logistics management and supply chain management. Logistics management originated from the storage and transportation mode and technology developed by the Institute of Military Transportation Materials and Equipment in World War II. After the war, these technologies were widely used in industry, which greatly improved the operational efficiency of enterprises and won more customers for enterprises. At that time, logistics management was mainly aimed at the distribution part of the enterprise, that is, how to quickly and efficiently deliver the products to customers through the distribution center after the finished products were produced, and keep the lowest inventory as much as possible. The American Logistics Management Association was then called the Logistics Management Association, and the Canadian Supply Chain and Logistics Management Association was called the Canadian Logistics Management Association. At this initial stage, logistics management only passively caters to the needs of customers after producing a given number of finished products, transports products to the places designated by customers, optimizes the utilization of resources in the transportation field, and reasonably sets up the inventory of each distribution center. Accurately speaking, logistics management did not really appear at this stage, only transportation management, warehousing management and inventory management. At that time, the position of logistics manager did not exist, only transportation manager or warehouse manager. Logistics management in the modern sense appeared in the 1980s. It is found that it is very effective to observe, analyze and solve the problems in enterprise management by using cross-functional process management. By analyzing the whole circulation process of materials from raw materials to factories, flowing through various stations on the production line, producing finished products, then transporting them to distribution centers and finally delivering them to customers, enterprises can eliminate many local optimization behaviors that seem to be efficient, but actually reduce the overall efficiency. Because every functional department wants to use its own production capacity as much as possible, leaving no surplus, once the demand increases, it will become a bottleneck everywhere, leading to the interruption of the whole process. For another example, the Ministry of Transport, as an independent functional department, always tries its best to reduce its transportation costs. However, if an order that must be accelerated by sea instead of air is delivered, it will save freight, but it will lose customers and lead to overall failure. Therefore, the traditional vertical function management is no longer suitable for modern large-scale industrial production, while the horizontal logistics management can comprehensively manage different functions in each process to achieve the overall optimal coordination. At this stage, the scope of logistics management extends to demand forecasting, procurement, production planning, inventory management, distribution and customer service except transportation, so as to systematically manage the operation of enterprises and maximize the overall benefits. The book Goal written by Godrat is popular in the global manufacturing industry, and its essence is to manage production from the perspective of production process. Accordingly, the American Logistics Management Association was renamed as the American Logistics Management Association in the mid-1980s, and the Canadian Logistics Management Association was renamed as the Canadian Logistics Management Association in 1992. A typical manufacturing enterprise, its demand forecasting, raw material procurement and transportation links are usually called incoming logistics, the circulation link of raw materials between processes in the factory is called production logistics, and the distribution and customer service links are called outgoing logistics. The key of logistics management is to systematically manage the whole process from raw materials, work-in-process to finished products, so as to ensure the smooth procurement, transportation, processing, transportation and delivery of materials to customers under the condition of minimum inventory. For enterprise shareholders with efficient logistics management, this means doing the biggest business with the least funds and generating the biggest return on investment. In the 1990s, with the process of global integration, the division of labor among enterprises became more and more detailed. Major manufacturers have outsourced the production of parts and components, and transferred low-tech and labor-intensive parts to countries with the cheapest labor. Take GM, Ford and Daimler-Chrysler in the United States as examples. Thousands of parts of a car may be produced in more than a dozen different countries and hundreds of different suppliers. This production mode puts forward a new task for logistics management: how to ensure that all parts can be supplied to the assembly plant on time, with good quality and quantity, and at the lowest cost, and deliver the finished cars to every dealer under the premise of maintaining the lowest inventory. This is far beyond the management scope of an enterprise. It requires establishing close partnership with suppliers and distributors at all levels, sharing information, cooperating accurately, integrating key business processes in cross-enterprise supply chain, and ensuring the smoothness of the whole process. Only by implementing effective supply chain management can we maximize the synergy between enterprises in the same supply chain. Market competition has changed from competition among enterprises to competition among supply chains. In this context, the Canadian Logistics Management Association was renamed the Canadian Supply Chain and Logistics Management Association in 2000 to reflect the changes and development of the industry. American Logistics Management Association tries to expand the extension of the concept of logistics management to express the concept of supply chain management. Finally, due to many objections, it has to modify the concept of logistics management and admit that logistics management is a part of supply chain management.