Question

Discuss the future challenges and opportunities in logistics management.

Answer 1

Mentioned below are the future challenges and opportunities in logistics management.

Future Challenges:

• Fuel cost is going to be a major challenge as it being a limited resource the price will keep on increasing in future. It is going to affect the transportation cost in a big manner & discounted rate might be difficult to manage in future.
• The continuous business process improvement and companies staying ahead to cope with challenges & continuous adaptation will be a tough process. It will be costly and will require a great amount of external support and collaborations.
• The customer services and meeting the ever-increasing demand and expectations will be a tough process. The tracking information and real-time updates give all the information to customers and it takes a lot of pressure to maintain the consistency.
• The logistics industry will face another major challenge of managing talent and dealing / leading warehouse staff, drivers etc will require better handling & more skills. The teams will need to have higher abilities to communicate at regular interval and ensure smooth coordination and handling of transportation of goods.  
• Considering the environmental scenarios, global warming and focus towards Sustainable development goals the focus on environmental issues is another major challenge. The ones who can reduce their impact and reduce waste will have a better future & brand.
• The adaptation to new technology and new ways of handling the supply chain will be another competitive challenge. RFID, GPS, EDI all such techniques will advance and companies & its talent have to keep adapting to the change. It will hard to keep up with the changes.
• Reverse logistics is another major challenge as customers will become detractors if the process is not offered or managed well. It has to be done in a timely manner and ensure utmost customer satisfaction.

Future Opportunities:

• The Supply chain digitisation offers a great future and helps the firm to plan better in a fast, highly competitive & complex business environment. It will help to improve the speed, dynamics and comntinituiy of the supply chain.
• Artificial intelligence is the future opportunity area for logistics management - with numerous application it can help to improve & automate warehouse management. Robotics and automation can make the supply chain run without challenges and also help in repetitive tasks making the overall process efficiency.
• Another opportunity area involves strong and better collaborations to improve overall logistics management. It will lead to stronger relationships & help avoid risks. It will also reduce the overutilisation of resources & time.
• Risk management techniques and companies adopting the same is the future of logistics management. Outsourcing practices, offshoring, diversity & versatility of the product, security and interdependency can be managed better with these risk planning tools & techniques.
• Knowledge and data work will be more important and will go up in future - as the business will become,e fully global the knowledge work will go global as well. It will allow global companies to work from headquarters and manage all the operations.
• The wearable devices will be the future and be used by the warehouse teams to work in a fast manner and get an accurate collection of inventory data, keeping track of items and distribution channels.

Software as service models and also much-developed logistics & supply chain visibility are future opportunities which will help to increase the efficiency of the entire process. The mobile point of sale sensors will make drastic changes to the entire logistics management.

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