Logistics Management forms a very strong backbone of most businesses. It traces several countries and continents and it needs to be a streamlined and sustainable process for businesses to function without hiccups.So, what are the obstacles that hamper sustainability in logistics?
Capacity management, procurement and cost cutting woes are the obstacles that logistics managers face most frequently.
Capacity
Scaling up and down according to the need of the hour/month/season/year is very crucial in logistics. While slack season suffers from under-utilization, peak season demands influx of resources to handle the extra load. Instead of decreasing the capacity of existing fleets, shippers and logistics providers must work to maximize the efficiency of existing systems to match demands.
Transporting goods sees the best brains in logistics optimize space, time, resources, energy and money in an effort to make the logistics supply chain sustainable. The world has woken up to carbon footprints and the idea of minimising harm done to the environment. Maintaining a full fleet and human resources throughout the year is wasteful and overworking existing resources during peak season is impossible. Striking a fine balance is an obstacle every sustainable logistics chain faces!
Procurement
Organizations focus on transparent, formalized measurement and metrics of sustainability across the entire supply chain. Maintaining the relationship between supplier and other units of the supply chain is a huge issue when it comes to procurement. A change in supply can throw the entire chain of events haywire. So, sustainability is key in these business relationships. Partnerships at each level matters to the chain. Since the process starts with procurement, it is most important. Partnerships can go bust for very remote reasons ranging from personal to Governmental interference.
Cost
Like with every other function, sustainable logistics is all about keeping costs minimal. This means there is a constant endeavour to see if there can be more cost cutting and efficient use of funds. More often than not, logistics suffers from budget cuts than do other functions of business units. So,logistics managers have to keep their eyes and ears peeled to see if they can come up with cost cutting practices all the time.
These are the three broad and most frequently mentioned obstacles in sustainable logistics. With good understanding of how sustainability in logistics can impact the business as such, logistics managers can work towards a better, sustainable tomorrow.