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Logistics is the part of supply chain management that deals with the efficient forward and reverse flow of goods, services, and related information from the point of origin to the point of consumption according to the needs of customers. Logistics management is a component that holds the supply chain together. The resources managed in logistics may include tangible goods such as materials, equipment, and supplies, as well as food and other consumable items.
Package delivery or parcel delivery is the delivery of shipping containers, parcels, or high value mail as single shipments. The service is provided by most postal systems, express mail, private courier companies, and less than truckload shipping carriers. Package delivery is different in each country, and how packages are delivered is closely connected with the cost for delivering to that country as well as population. In 2019, China, The United States, and Japan were the leaders in package delivery while Latvia, Macau, and Iceland were the bottom three. The population of the bottom three barely totals 2 million while the population of the top three tops totals more than 2 billion. Package delivery is an every day occurrence in the USA while many other countries do not have this luxury.
In transportation, freight refers to goods conveyed by land, water or air, while cargo refers specifically to freight when conveyed via water or air. In economics, freight refers to goods transported at a freight rate for commercial gain. The term cargo is also used in case of goods in the cold-chain, because the perishable inventory is always in transit towards a final end-use, even when it is held in cold storage or other similar climate-controlled facilities, including warehouses.
Logistics automation is the application of computer software or automated machinery to improve the efficiency of logistics operations. Typically this refers to operations within a warehouse or distribution center, with broader tasks undertaken by supply chain engineering systems and enterprise resource planning systems.
A warehouse is a building for storing goods. Warehouses are used by manufacturers, importers, exporters, wholesalers, transport businesses, customs, etc. They are usually large plain buildings in industrial parks on the outskirts of cities, towns, or villages.
Packaging is the science, art and technology of enclosing or protecting products for distribution, storage, sale, and use. Packaging also refers to the process of designing, evaluating, and producing packages. Packaging can be described as a coordinated system of preparing goods for transport, warehousing, logistics, sale, and end use. Packaging contains, protects, preserves, transports, informs, and sells. In many countries it is fully integrated into government, business, institutional, industrial, and for personal use.
A pallet is a flat transport structure, which supports goods in a stable fashion while being lifted by a forklift, a pallet jack, a front loader, a jacking device, or an erect crane. Many pallets can handle a load of 1,000 kg (2,200 lb). While most pallets are wooden, pallets can also be made of plastic, metal, paper, and recycled materials.
Amtrak Express is Amtrak's freight and shipping service. It handles small package express service, heavy freight shipments and city-to-city freight shipping by private and commercial customers. Boxes up to 36" x 36" x 36", suitcases, and boxed bicycles are acceptable, but numerous classes of fragile, valuable and hazardous items are not permitted. Large pallet shipments of up to 500 pounds (227 kg) are accepted at certain major stations. Quoted transit times range from 2 to 7 days depending on distance and service frequency.
A distribution center for a set of products is a warehouse or other specialized building, often with refrigeration or air conditioning, which is stocked with products (goods) to be redistributed to retailers, to wholesalers, or directly to consumers. A distribution center is a principal part, the order processing element, of the entire order fulfillment process. Distribution centers are usually thought of as being demand driven. A distribution center can also be called a warehouse, a DC, a fulfillment center, a cross-dock facility, a bulk break center, and a package handling center. The name by which the distribution center is known is commonly based on the purpose of the operation. For example, a "retail distribution center" normally distributes goods to retail stores, an "order fulfillment center" commonly distributes goods directly to consumers, and a cross-dock facility stores little or no product but distributes goods to other destinations.
Truckload shipping is the movement of large amounts of homogeneous cargo, generally the amount necessary to fill an entire semi-trailer or intermodal container. A truckload carrier is a trucking company that generally contracts an entire trailer-load to a single customer. This is as opposed to a less-than truckload (LTL) company that generally mixes freight from several customers in each trailer. One advantage Full Truckload (FTL) carriers have over Less than Truckload carriers is that the freight is never handled en route, whereas an LTL shipment will typically be transported on several different trailers. Truckload shipments are typically run on 48' or 53'dry van trailers which will hold 24 or 26 pallets respectively.
Less-than-truckload shipping or less than load (LTL) is the transportation of an amount of freight sized between individual parcels and full truckloads. Parcel carriers handle small packages and freight that can be broken down into units less than approximately 150 pounds (68 kg). Full truckload carriers move entire semi-trailers. Semi-trailers are typically between 26 and 53 feet and require a substantial amount of freight to make such transportation economical. The term LTL can refer to the freight itself, or to the carrier that transports the such freight.
An automated guided vehicle (AGV), different from an autonomous mobile robot (AMR), is a portable robot that follows along marked long lines or wires on the floor, or uses radio waves, vision cameras, magnets, or lasers for navigation. They are most often used in industrial applications to transport heavy materials around a large industrial building, such as a factory or warehouse. Application of the automatic guided vehicle broadened during the late 20th century.
Dimensional weight, also known as volumetric weight, is a pricing technique for commercial freight transport, which uses an estimated weight that is calculated from the length, width and height of a package.
Dimensioning is the process of measuring either the area or the volume that an object occupies. It is the method of calculating capacity for the storage, handling, transporting and invoicing of goods. Vehicles and storage units have both volume and weight capacity limits and can easily become full in terms of volume before they reach their capacity in weight. By dimensioning for capacity needs, companies and warehouses can make optimal use of space in order to minimize costs in order to maximize profits.
A checkweigher is an automatic or manual machine for checking the weight of packaged commodities. It is normally found at the offgoing end of a production process and is used to ensure that the weight of a pack of the commodity is within specified limits. Any packs that are outside the tolerance are taken out of line automatically.
A Transportation Management System (TMS) is a subset of supply chain management concerning transportation operations, which may be part of an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system.
Order processing is the process or work-flow associated with the picking, packing, and delivery of the packed items to a shipping carrier and is a key element of order fulfillment. Order processing operations or facilities are commonly called “distribution centers” or “DC 's”. There are wide variances in the level of automation associating to the “pick-pack-and-ship” process, ranging from completely manual and paper-driven to highly automated and completely mechanized; computer systems overseeing this process are generally referred to as Warehouse Management Systems or “WMS”.
A shipping container is a container with strength suitable to withstand shipment, storage, and handling. Shipping containers range from large reusable steel boxes used for intermodal shipments to the ubiquitous corrugated boxes. In the context of international shipping trade, "container" or "shipping container" is virtually synonymous with "intermodal freight container", a container designed to be moved from one mode of transport to another without unloading and reloading.
Corrugated box design is the process of matching design factors for corrugated fiberboard or corrugated plastic boxes with the functional physical, processing and end-use requirements. Packaging engineers work to meet the performance requirements of a box while controlling total costs throughout the system. Corrugated boxes are shipping containers used for transport packaging and have important functional and economic considerations.
Package testing or packaging testing involves the measurement of a characteristic or property involved with packaging. This includes packaging materials, packaging components, primary packages, shipping containers, and unit loads, as well as the associated processes.
References
- ↑ reserved, BeeVision all rights. "Dimensioner Technologies". www.beevision.ai. Retrieved 2020-03-30.
- 1 2 "Dimensioning Takes Shape". Material Handling and Logistics (MHL News). 2007-06-18. Retrieved 2018-05-04.
- "AI-powered retail with automated dimensioning" (PDF). vmeasure.ai.