Multiple-method analysis of logistics costs

One of unique characteristics of Thai jasmine rice is its aroma, which can easily reduce in various conditions during post-harvesting activities, especially in rice milling stage. This study aims to investigate logistics cost analysis of the rice mill of Kasetwisai Agricultural Cooperative, Ltd. by using activity based costing (ABC) method and to define key activities for the improvement of the rice aroma loss reduction. The results show that the activity that has the highest logistics cost is warehousing at 26.52%, followed by material handling at 24.27%, transportation at 12.33% and packaging at 10.84% of the total logistics cost, respectively. The total logistics cost per unit of the rice mill is about 4.52 baht/kg. Findings from an in-depth interview revealed that warehousing and transportation can be major activities influencing aroma loss in jasmine rice. To reduce the aroma loss in a cost effective way, the Kasetwisai Agricultural Cooperative, Ltd. should focus on storage time and temperature in warehousing and transportation systems. In addition, the collaboration of the rice miller with supply chain partners should be encouraged to cut the logistics cost and to improve the quality of rice. Keywords: Activity Based Costing; Aromatic Rice; Jasmine Rice; Logistics Cost; Value Chain

This research tries to shed light on precise values of logistics costs that so far undisclosed. The values are important for every project planners to evaluate, control and monitoring, and especially imperative for procurement activities. Tender, bidding, and defining the scope of contracts and value can be well organized without time-consuming. This research uses methodology previously developed by Subiyanto (2020a) and discussed only a few particular and directly related to the logistics. The model had been decomposed by utilizing path analysis and the data had been regressed to define variables as the most inflator for logistics. The findings are total logistics costs in Indonesia generally at around 14.6% to total costs of investment. It consists following of insurance cost 0.11%, costs for customs clearance 6.52%, foreign logistics costs 6.62%, domestic manufacture 0.47%, and domestic logistics costs 0.89%. This research is not discussing logistics costs relating to human resources, human travelling, and internal logistics conducted by vendors or contractors as the scope included counted within their procurement contract. These results are important as guidance for project planners, controllers, and other parties to prepare costs more precisely. Negotiating to the banks will be easier as the more precise amount of budgets had been estimated. Due to the important values that have been identified, there will help transparency and governance conducting the projects. Procurement processes involving societies are more objective and better. This is a novelty finding as previous researchers have not decided yet.

Development of an effective logistics infrastructure for companies contributes to ensuring their effective work, directly affects financial performance and requires the establishment of a management and accounting system for logistics costs. Classifying and registering logistics costs becomes more important in this regard. At this stage of Ukrainian accounting practice, there are challenges for logistics costs accounting such as their identification and registration. Methodological basis of study among different logistics concepts (concept of general logistics costs, concept of reengineering business processes in logistics, concept of an integrated logistics strategy, concept of supply chain management) was total logistics costs concept or the concept of full value as well as process-oriented approach. In the work, the generalization and formalization of existing approaches to the logistics costs accounting was made. Feasibility of using a process-oriented approach among other approaches (absorption costing, direct costing target costing, kaizen costing, etc.) were substantiated. The algorithm of identification and registration of logistics costs for Ukrainian enterprises was proposed. It is based on such inclusion in the relevant economic process (supply, production, sales and administration of logistics processes) and the use of a new consolidated account 29 “Logistics costs”. This authors’ approach to solving the problem of identification and registration of logistics costs for accounting purposes allows to optimize and increase the informativeness of accounting logistics costs reflection in Ukrainian accounting practice.

The Facility layout of flexible manufacturing workshop is designed under process principle, which is suitable for medium and small batch production．However, large WIP is produced under this facility layout model, and the material transport is relatively disorderly, the production cost is caused very high. Aiming on the problem, the facility layout with variety of materials is researched, and the mathematical model of lowest logistics cost is established with the total logistics cost as the objective function. Finally, according to the workshop equipment layout optimization process, the simulation mode in unit is established with the computer simulation software eM-Plant, and the logistics cost is optimized and compared with the initial result.

With the development of domestic economy and the change of consumption patterns, especially the boom in online shopping, the logistics industry has a dramatic development in our country. Nevertheless, the logistics enterprises are still facing some issues such as high service cost, lack of competition, etc. Previous study on the cost of logistics enterprises concentrated more on the theoretical analysis.This study is based on the study of the logistics costs、ratio using and contrast analysis to analyze the cost of main operation、period charge and main business income and according to the financial statement of 15 logistics listing enterprises,discuss the reasons of the high cost of logistics enterprises. Current situation of logistics cost In 2012, our country's logistics costs as a share of GDP at 17.8%. In 2013, it did not decline, is still around 18%, essentially flat with 2012. While at the same time, the developed countries, such as America, Japan, Germany, the total social logistics costs accounted for the proportion of the national GDP is respectively 8.5%, 8.7% and 8.3%. The BRIC countries, such as India and Brazil, were respectively 13% and 11%. The world average level is at 11.2%.Therefore, the development and the operation efficiency of China's logistics industry is far behind the developed countries and the other BRIC countries, even behind the average level of the world. Table1 the comparison of China's logistics cost data in 2012 and 2013 Unit: trillion RMB Project

Pariaman is a city in West Sumatra with many residents whose livelihoods are in the fisheries sector. Usaha Perikanan Mandiri Muaro Cinto (UPMMC) located in the Pariaman area faces challenges in managing logistics costs. This MSME has not been able to identify the components of the logistics costs of the business they run so business improvement strategies have not been formulated considering that key activities along the supply chain have not been mapped. Therefore, a logistics cost analysis was conducted for the UPMMC fish supply chain using the activity-based costing method. Several actors in the supply chain observed include suppliers, distributors, manufacturers/retailers, and customers. Based on the calculations carried out, it is known that the largest costs are in procurement activities, especially in fishing operations with a proportion of 33.15%. In addition, it is also known that shipping costs have a proportion of 32.93% or equivalent to IDR 2,143 per kg of tuna while packaging costs take a proportion of 19.98% of the total logistics costs.

This paper focuses on the logistics of the online sales of grocery items. More specifically, it seeks to find out the distribution of logistics costs throughout the supply chain from the order picking at the supplier up to the delivery to the shopper's doorstep. First, the three most commonly used supply chains for the online sales of grocery items are presented. Then, the paper describes the general methodology used to execute the cost analysis, including activities, resources and drivers. Third, the model framework is explained and situated in a more high-level view on online retailing. Subsequently, the results of the analysis are presented in the form of a cost distribution over different processes in the supply chain, including transport, picking, storage and last-mile delivery. It is found that last-mile costs typically represent a high share in total logistics costs, but that delivery-specific factors play a big role.

Purpose – In transportation and distribution systems, the shipment decisions, fleet capacity, and storage capacity are interrelated in a complex way, especially when the authors take into account uncertainty of the demand rate and shipment lead time. While shipment planning is tactical or operational in nature, increasing storage capacity often requires top management’s authority. The purpose of this paper is to present a new method to integrate both operational and strategic decision parameters, namely shipment planning and storage capacity decision under uncertainty. The ultimate goal is to provide a near optimal solution that leads to a striking balance between the total logistics costs and product availability, critical in maritime logistics of bulk shipment of commodity items. Design/methodology/approach – The authors use simulation as research method. The authors develop a simulation model to investigate the effects of various factors on costs and service levels of a distribution system. The model mimics the transportation and distribution problems of bulk cement in a major cement company in Indonesia consisting of a silo at the port of origin, two silos at two ports of destination, and a number of ships that transport the bulk cement. The authors develop a number of “what-if” scenarios by varying the storage capacity at the port of origin as well as at the ports of destinations, number of ships operated, operating hours of ports, and dispatching rules for the ships. Each scenario is evaluated in terms of costs and service level. A full factorial experiment has been conducted and analysis of variance has been used to analyze the results. Findings – The results suggest that the number of ships deployed, silo capacity, working hours of ports, and the dispatching rules of ships significantly affect both total costs and service level. Interestingly, operating fewer ships enables the company to achieve almost the same service level and gaining substantial cost savings if constraints in other part of the system are alleviated, i.e., storage capacities and working hours of ports are extended. Practical implications – Cost is a competitive factor for bulk items like cement, and thus the proposed scenarios could be implemented by the company to substantially reduce the transportation and distribution costs. Alleviating storage capacity constraint is obviously an idea that needs to be considered when optimizing shipment planning alone could not give significant improvements. Originality/value – Existing research has so far focussed on the optimization of shipment planning/scheduling, and considers shipment planning/scheduling as the objective function while treating the storage capacity as constraints. The simulation model enables “what-if” analyses to be performed and has overcome the difficulties and impracticalities of analytical methods especially when the system incorporates stochastic variables exhibited in the case example. The use of efficient frontier analysis for analyzing the simulation results is a novel idea which has been proven to be effective in screening non-dominated solutions. This has provided the authors with near optimal solutions to trade-off logistics costs and service levels (availability), with minimal experimentation times.

The article is devoted to the actual issues of evaluating the efficiency of logistics activities of an industrial enterprise. The main methodical approaches for assessing the efficiency of logistics activities of enterprises in modern conditions are presented and characterized. Usage of an improved methodology is proposed and substantiated for assessing the efficiency and reliability of logistics activity. The methodology for evaluating efficiency and reliability is based on the analysis of the structure of logistics costs in relation to profit. Profit is calculated by allocating them according to the articles of the financial results report: general production costs, administrative costs and sales costs. Logistics costs include costs for logistics administration and material flow management as part of administrative costs. Logistics costs include warehouse costs, transportation costs, and loading/unloading costs as part of sales costs. Logistics costs include supply costs, production logistics costs and service costs as part of general production costs. The methodology takes into account the peculiarities, influencing factors and other factors of the industrial enterprise. It is proposed to use indicators for a comprehensive assessment of the efficiency of the logistics system by its elements (supply, production, transportation, storage, marketing). The complex indicator is calculated for the efficiency of the logistics activity of the enterprise according to the formula of the geometric mean. The integral indicator of the efficiency of the logistics activity of the enterprise is calculated as the geometric mean of the integrated indicator of the efficiency of the logistics activity over the years of research. It is expedient to assess the reliability of the enterprise's logistics activities for each group of indicators using the coefficient of variation. The higher the rate of variation, the less reliable a particular logistics system is. An assessment of the efficiency and reliability of logistics activities at a specific industrial enterprise was carried out using the proposed methodology.

An attempt of evaluation of level and structure of logistics costs in chosen great area agricultural enterprises was shown in the paper. Results of research have shown, that great area agricultural enterprises have got high share costs of logistics both in total costs of production 42,2%, and in selling value of products and services 27,5%. Costs of physical flow of materials predominate in the structure of total logistics costs of great area agricultural enterprises 86,5%.

The competitive environment of global markets has forced many manufacturers to select the most appropriate logistics for the optimisation of total logistics costs, time and inventory. Cost and time are the two important factors in the competitive market that are often not addressed comprehensively by the researchers. In this study, the genetic algorithms (GAs) and the fuzzy logic techniques are used for optimising a novel mathematical model of the logistics network. The objective of the proposed model is to minimise the costs of production, distribution, holding and backorder. In addition to the optimization of logistics costs, the model can also determine the economic production quantity (EPQ), and with help of the GAs and the Fuzzy logic solver with probability parameters and various dimensions for validation of the studied model in real-life situations, and we compared the outputs to demonstrate the performance of the two optimization techniques . Using Genetic Algorithm and fuzzy logic, the optimized value of the logistics cost, and volume of the logistics network were obtained.

Consumers are increasingly demanding high-quality food, which presents significant challenges for agricultural supply chains. While the majority of research in the agri-food sector has concentrated on optimizing logistics costs and meeting demand by focusing on minimizing the last mile, the complexity of the first mile in the agricultural supply chain has been less explored. Farmers must efficiently manage the harvesting process and the transportation of harvested produce to consolidation centers to ensure the delivery of high-quality products. This paper addresses this research gap by introducing a mixed-integer programming model that leverages vehicle routing problem concepts to optimize the logistics processes involved in transporting harvested products from various fields to a central depot. The primary objective is to minimize total logistics costs associated with visiting different fields during a pick-up round using multiple vehicles. The model has been applied to a case study involving an agricultural cooperative in Greece as part of the European BBTWINS project, which aims to enhance agri-food value chain digitalization for improved resource efficiency. The results demonstrate that organizing the first mile of the agri-food supply chain with a cooled vehicle for pick-up rounds can reduce logistics costs by up to 40% compared to the current practices.

Logistics optimization through a social approach for food distribution

We consider the problem of setting appropriate safety leadtimes in an assembly system where all components are purchased and the only manufacturing operation is final assembly. First, we describe two formulations of this problem: (1) minimize total inventory carrying and tardiness costs and (2) minimize inventory carrying costs subject to a service constraint. Second, we discuss how these formulations sometimes fail to adequately provide a decision maker with sufficient information to establish leadtimes when applied independently but how they can be used together to provide a useful decision support system. Finally, we describe a procedure similar to ABC analysis that allows us to solve a much smaller related problem whose solution provides a good approximation to the solution of the original problem. We conclude the paper with numerical examples and a discussion of an actual implementation.

Thailand is the world’s largest natural rubbers exporter. The major type of natural rubbers exported is block rubber. Currently, the transportation of natural rubbers in Thailand depends mainly on truck mode because of the convenience and extensive network of roads. However, Thailand confronts road transportation limitations including maximum acceptable weight, traffic congestion and high fuel prices. Dealing with these problems, the multimodal connection from roads to container yards (CY) and ports is expected to decrease logistics cost, and increase various opportunities to trade with neighbouring countries. This paper, thus, aims at examining key factors influencing the use of multimodal transportation utilizing the exploratory factor analysis (EFA). The principal components analysis (PCA) method, together with the eigenvalue over 1, factor loading of 0.40, and varimax rotation method, extracted five key factors with a total of 20 associated attributes, which are the Multimodal Operation, Service Operation, Multimodal Service Provider, Market Consideration, and Road Constraints factors. The result also pinpoints the capacity of container yard (CY) or port, accessibility to container yard (CY) or port, documentation process, logistics cost, adequacy of a multimode service provider, and law enforcement on truck driving hours, as crucial attributes in planning for multimodal transportation. This paper can be used as a guideline for a feasibility study of multimodal transportation of natural block rubber in Thailand.