KERRY Logistics Visit 3rd March, 2014
Kerry Logistics -- Premier Hong
Kong based logistics provider with strong focus on China.
Kerry Logistics -- Premier Hong Kong based logistics provider with strong focus on China.
Core business
encompasses integrated logistics, international freight forwarding and supply
chain solutions and extends from handling merchandise and non-merchandise, to
POSM and more.
The visit
divided in three parts: presentation, Q&A session and warehouse visit
Presentation
The staff’s presentation illustrated the whole
operation of Kerry Logistics from integrated logistics to international freight
forwarding and its supply chain solutions.
In the presentation, some video clips were included
to demonstrate how impressive its value-added activities which are its major assets to differentiate
from its major competitors and traditional logistics only providing storage and distribution services.
The value-added activities are various according to
client’s needs and requirements. For examples, Garment-On-Hanger provides the
clothes at hanger to cater the garment companies which sell the high quality
and expensive clothes. Parts of electronic appliances like chargers were replaced at
distribution centre in accordance with the countries’ requirement to boost the customers’
flexibility of forecasting market demand.
Q&A session
After the presentation, we
raised several questions in the Q&A session as follows:
1.
It
seems that Kerry Logistics has put more focus at Thailand (e.g. headquarter of
KART, Kerry Siam Seaport) when compared with other Southeast Asian countries.
What are the major factors of putting the focus at Thailand? Does the recent
anti-Thaksin movement affect the company business?
Historically,
many companies are located in Thailand,
so many projects are developed there. As for seaports, as Thailand is close to
sea and has seaports. Also, Thailand is located at the place connecting the
north part and south part of Asia and relatively political stable and well
developed.
2. Kerry Logistics often make use of intermodal
transportation. How do Kerry Logistics effectively communicate and corporate
with different transportation modes’ partners in order to deliver the goods to
the destination efficiently and take advantage of intermodal transportation?
It
is about freight forwarding. Rail and sea transport are standardized, so people
in different areas know how to communicate with each other. The mode of
transportation is confirmed before launching the products.
3. Last year, Kerry Logistics has secured a
major contract with ASOS to support the online fashion and beast retailer’s
push into the China market. It reveals that foreign companies always choose
Kerry as their partners to explore market in China. What are the key factors
that make Kerry attractive to your business partners?
Foreign
retailers who want to enter China market must look for the logistics partner.
Running business in China successfully depends on the handling the relations
among people and regulations like taxation what foreign retailers do not
possess such information, thereby outsourcing third party logistics. In case,
Kerry Logistics is more competitive to gain the contract since it is more
financially stable and high distribution capabilities with an extensive network
over China while other logistics companies develop branches only along coastal
areas.
4. As we know, “KerrierVISION” is the own IT
system of Kerry Logistics. It provides many services to meet individual needs
of customer. What kinds of services or technologies that you differentiate from
your competitors?
All
systems starting in “K” are developed by Kerry Logistics to understand its
customers well and differentiate its competitors. Kerry logistics has spent a
lot of resources developing its technology and systems as well as huge
IT supporting team
5. Kerry has many in-house customized systems,
such as KerrierVISION, KBOS. Could you tell us more about the benefits toward
the company after implementing these systems?
Without
these systems, there is no difference between traditional logistics like “雞記”. Information technology developed by Kerry Logistics enables
Kerry Logistics to work closely with customers. Information technology is core
of Kerry logistics to deal with numerous transactions in global world timely.
6. What are the major competitive advantages of
Kerry logistics to differentiate itself from other logistics companies like
FedEx, DHL Express and UPS to maintain its competitiveness in Asia?
Together
with strong network in trucks, more customized information technology helps
Kerry Logistics differentiate from the competitors.
Warehouse visit
The highlight of the visit is visiting the
warehouse how a warehouse operates with adopting the concept of vendor managed
inventory.
Vendor managed inventory is important concept in
running business in Hong Kong thanks to the space constraints limiting
inventory stored at retail stores. The distribution centre is solely for Disney
to provide the on time delivery of inventory to Disneyland.
Quality check is involved in different stages. The
most important stage of quality check is in receiving area since most
inventories are destroyed in inbound logistics in part from its suppliers to
its warehouse. To avoid the food deteriorating, Kerry Logistics provides an
area with strict temperature control.
Return to vendor (RTV) area are to store the inventories which are not meet the
standard set by its customers and will be returned to vendors whereas return
to warehouse (RTW) area are to store the inventories
which are not meet the standard set by its
customers and will be disposed.
During the visit, some value-added activities were observed such as the staffs
were relabeling price tag manually. Some extra covers putting on
the packed goods are used to
avoid leaves and raindrops on the time of
delivering to Disneyland.
Besides, techniques
and machines are made use of to fasten the picking time. With the aid
of technology, a broad
is installed in the warehouse to check the progress of the work
so that both
customer and company can get the real time information.
Reflection on the visit
Visiting
the Kerry Logistics enabled us to possess a first - hand information of a
logistics company using information technology to enhance its supply chain
performance which is related to supply chain concepts that were discussed in
class.
