Customs Clearance – Meaning, Scope and Documentation
February 12, 2025
Continuous analysis of organizational decision-making process is essential to high quality and transparent decisions; otherwise a business runs with a prejudice: the notion that it is good at making decision, even if in reality it is not. And probably this is why both, decision makers and decision support system analysts try to get a profound […]
In any Supply Chain, Inventory Management and Warehousing form a part of operations intensive function and is one of the key building blocks in the entire chain. Most of the inventory is held at the warehouses as compared to the pipeline, and the efficiency of the warehouse operations will determine the further supply chain efficiency. […]
The US Fed and Tapering of Quantitative Easing (QE) The recent announcement that the United States Federal Reserve was thinking of tapering the Quantitative Easing program or QE immediately spooked the stock markets, which went into free fall. Mind you, this was not the actual tapering off the program but just a line of thought. […]
The credit rating business in America is largely an oligopoly. It is run by three major companies, Equifax, TransUnion, and Experian. Each of these corporations contains a massive amount of data regarding sensitive financial information about millions of people. They need to have systems in place to protect this data and ensure that it does […]
Business Process Improvement Projects have become a way of life with every Business Organization where they initiate these projects to elevate their internal operational efficiencies to achieve higher benchmark and to help them build an edge over competition. BPI projects help not only increase the efficiency of the operations, but benefit by reducing the cost […]
3PL Logistics Service Providers are many in the market. There are players from Multi National background, regional players, local companies and individually managed business organizations.
Warehousing business, on the other hand, can flow through warehouses, consolidation and merging centers, finished goods stocking points, forward locations, raw material warehouses, JIT/VMI operations, Bonded warehouses, in plant warehouses, etc. depending upon the business requirement.
In this section of the article, we proposed to cover pricing mechanism aspects of a small warehouse like a consolidation center or finished goods flow through warehouse that need not be dedicated to the buyer alone and can be a shared facility.
Normally the bigger operations involving inventory management etc. are considered stand alone facilities and costing is worked out for the entire project, and this part of discussion is not covered under the scope of this article.
Normally in the Finished goods supply chain or raw material supply chains, there would be a need for a warehouse facility en route to the plant or the markets. These warehouses can be consolidation centers or merging centers in case of finished goods where different components of the order or finished goods are brought in from various locations, merged and dispatched to the next leg of the network. In case of raw material supplies, there can be a consolidation center at a country level where all shipments from several buyers are consolidated and shipped out as a container load.
Such kinds of warehousing requirements may not call for dedicated facilities. Normally the 3PL service provider who manages the freight will have warehouses that are used as shared or common facilities. In few cases public warehouses are also used by the buyers as the case may be.
General cargo warehouses or shared facilities and public warehouses are warehouses that house cargo of various clients. Depending upon the clients requirements, materials can be stored per day, week or month, etc. Inventory held of each customer may not be very high.
Storage and space options provided by the 3PL in such cases can vary with the client’s nature of the business. In a country consolidation center, where multiple shipments are stored and consolidated, the buyer may contract a fixed space on square foot basis with specified number of locations.
In another case of a merging center, the buyer may not contract fixed space and pay on transaction basis.
Public warehouses normally rent out space in terms of per pallet storage.
Even in Fixed Fee model, there are many variations in pricing models.
Normally in transactional pricing model, the buyer’s requirement will be minimum and does not call for any specific or dedicated investments. The 3PL provider normally uses his general or public facility and recovers his total cost of investment and operations on the volume or transactions.
Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *