In a race to be more competitive, a field of study that is in the limelight isLogistics. It has become one of the frequently used words in the world of business today, and like other buzzwords it is confused and misused. Organizations and managers, who have understood it well, have been able to use it for gaining Competitive Advantage for their organizations. This paper briefly explains the concept of Competitive Advantage and how it can be achieved. It also provides a detailed insight into Logistics includingits historical perspective; factors that resulted or caused its development; its process and points of distinction between Logistics and Supply Chain Management and Logistics and Physical Distribution. Finally, the paper clubs the two areas (Logistics and Competitive Advantage), and studies the impact of Logistics and Supply Chain Management function on the competitiveness of organizations by means of studying practices adopted and followed by various companies, in these areas. As Competitive Advantage can be gained either in the form of productivity advantage or value advantage, the paper explains in detail how effective Logistics management has provided both value and productivity advantage to various business organizations by means of brief corporate cases from a number of Indian companies that have achieved success through effective implementation or some innovation or improvement in their Logistics function. The number of such organizations has increased dramatically in recent times, and a few examples have been taken of those companies who have pioneered and made full use of Logistics to gain Competitive Advantage. The paper also touches the following sub-areas of the Logistics functiondelivery, delivery chain, reverse Logistics, third party Logistics, fourth party Logistics and use of IT in Logistics. This paper includes cases from Indian Companies likeReliance Petroleum Limited, Essar Steel Limited, ICICI Bank Limited, Safexpress, Indian Airlines, Indiatimes.com, Coca-Cola India, Bharat Petroleum, Maruti Udyog Limited, Asian Paints, etc., to explain the intricacies of the topic and also to justify the point made in this paper.
There
can be various ways through which a business organization can achieve success
in the market, but all those ways can be comprised into a model, then it can be
rightly said that it revolves specifically around three parties or more; the triangular
linkages or the relationship between these three parties (company, customers and
competitors) determine the success and failure of business organization. |
