MEASURING LOGISTICS PERFORMANCE FOR COMPETITIVENESS- A CASE STUDY OF AUTOMOTIVE CONNECTION SYSTEMS COMPANY, KERALA, INDIA

A company having implemented a logistics system must continually monitor and evaluate its effectiveness. Similarly, a company may utilize several different methods to measure logistics performance. This study was conducted at Automotive System Connections Ltd., in Kerala, India. This company's warehouse handles 720 traded parts out of which 96% comes from intercompany basis and the remaining 4 % of items comes from their local suppliers located in India. It was found that the company moves 98% of traded parts by road / surface transportation mode and the remaining only by air cargo mode. These parts are supplied to original equipment manufacturers in India. So, logistics performance measurement was considered an important area for this research. Twelve important metrics were selected for measurements and three years data collected from their main information report (MIR), returns, and reports followed by interview method with senior executives of the company. This company is in the process of implementing lean approach in their warehouse operations. This company should more focus on some of the metrics like inventory turnover ratio, overall customer satisfaction, total logistics cost, and capacity of warehouse vs space utilization. This company should focus on Full Truck Load (FTL) rather than Less Truck Load (LTL) by consolidation and collaboration with Third Party Logistics Service providers (3PL). This company should also change incoterm to Freight on Board (FOB) / Free along Ship side (FAS) from Ex-Works.