“consignor” and the receiver “consignee.” A “notify party” is the company to be contacted by the carrier once the goods arrive at the destination.
This can be a signal for the receiver’s customs broker to start the clearance process. The transportation lead-time is defined as the time between the pickup of a shipment from one place until the delivery at another place.
Other words used for lead-time are Turn Around Time (TAT), Transit Time (TT), and transportation time. Many words are randomly used for companies handling transportation, while their exact scope of work can differ significantly. The terms can be grouped as:
• A company managing goods flows on behalf of a customer by picking, packing, and shipping them by using their own, asset- or non-asset-based, network or subcontracted parties: Logistics Service Providers (LSPs), service providers, Lead Logistics Providers (LLPs), xParty Logistics (xPL), where “x” can be a “1,” “2,” “3,” “4,” or “5.” The xPL structure will be described later in this book.
• An asset- or non-asset-based company moving cargo from one loca- tion to another: carriers, freight carriers, freight companies, trucking carriers, suppliers, transporters, transport companies, transportation companies, transport providers, transportation providers.
• A non-asset-based company, which arranges transport of goods on behalf of either the shipper or receiver: freight forwarders, forwarders.
or Central Distribution Center (CDC). The non-urgent orders are delivered from a RDC or CDC. Delivery locations can be customer sites, PUDOs, HFPUs, other DCs (also called rebalancing), or scrap locations.
• Local Distribution Center (LDC): a national storage location where products are stored and from where customer orders are delivered on the next or same business day when the distance allows this. A LDC is replenished from a RDC or a CDC. The intention is to deliver only locally required products from this location. The non-urgent deliveries come from a RDC or CDC. Delivery locations can be customer sites, PUDOs, HFPUs, other DCs, or scrap locations.
• RDC: a regional storage location where products are stored, from where customer orders are delivered next or same business day if the distance allows this. LDCs and FSLs are replenished from this loca- tion. It receives purchased products from the goods suppliers and rebalancing flows from the other DCs. In addition, unused returns can be sent back to this location. Delivery destinations can be cus- tomer sites, PUDOs, HFPUs, (repair) vendor premises, other DCs, FSLs, or scrap locations.
• CDC: a global storage location where all products are stored and delivered within one or more days and from where RDCs are replenished. Both CDCs and RDCs can receive goods that require repacking as the suppliers are normally sending bulk packages.
If the shipper is shipping single pieces, the bulky packages need to be repacked into single-piece packages. Even if the supplier delivers single-piece packages, these might require repacking as they might not be strong enough to prevent damage in the transportation network.
• Repair Center (RC): a location where returned goods can be repaired and sent back to a DC or scrapped.
• Scrap Center (SC): a location where waste that has no economic value is scrapped. The raw material can be recovered by recycling.
• Factory warehouse: this is a storage location on the factory site. This is possible when the factory has the space and capabilities to store its Supplier Owned Inventory (SOI), other raw material, and/or finished products. It can be owned by the factory but also outsourced to a third-party service provider.
• Cross-dock location: the incoming shipments are brought directly from the receiving to the shipping lanes for forwarding to the next
destination. The time these goods can stay in this location is limited to a few hours. The goods are not put in stock.
• Merge center: a consolidation center where products from multiple vendors are grouped and sent as one shipment to a customer. This delivery structure is often used in make-to-order concepts.
• Market warehouse: a national storage location where the inventory can be owned and the warehouse managed by the local organi zation.
The local customer orders are delivered on the next or same business day when the distance allows this. A market warehouse can be replenished from a RDC, CDC, or product supplier. The intention is to serve local market needs as they can require specific products.
• Factory: a production site with buildings and machinery where people operate these machines and make products.
• (Repair) vendor site: a location that repairs goods. It can be the loca- tion where the goods are produced, but it can be also a warehouse or an office.
• Return warehouse: a location where used and unused returns from the markets and engineers are received, inspected, stored, and sent to a repair vendor, DC, or scrap location.
• Returns consolidation location: a central returns collection point where individual market returns are consolidated into bigger shipments and sent to a RC or a DC.
Flow types can be described as:
• Upstream: an inbound goods flow from a product supplier to a storage location
• Mainstream: a goods flow from an internal to another internal storage location
• Downstream: an outbound goods flow from a storage location to a customer
• Returns: a goods flow from a customer to a return storage location
• Repairs: a goods flow from a return storage location to a repair supplier
• Scrap: a goods flow of no economic or only its raw material value from any location to a scrap location, which can be a disposal company