Assignment:
Part 1
This week's post is on bundling. Our reading defines bundling as the transportation of goods with different origins/destination in the same load units. After reading requirements, I've realized that I have been a part of bundling for my entire military career. By bundling, one can serve a wider demographic area. As a 2T2, air transporter we have bundled passengers for decades. We process and send passengers from Ramstein, Germany to Baltimore, Maryland only for them to catch another flight to their final destination. The same is for the cargo we process. He build 463L pallets to a single hub, which we are here at Ramstein, for the hub to break down and send to its final destination.
There are advantages as well as disadvantages of bundling. For passengers, the advantage is full utilizing of the commercial aircraft as well as not having to wait until you have enough passengers to go to a single destination. This allows for more efficient use of resources. The disadvantage can be all the additional traveling that is required. Sometimes, there is no direct flight to your final destination because the destination is in a small town and you have to fly to a big city just to fly back. For example, for me to fly to my home of record, South Bend, Indiana I always have to fly into Chicago and then back to South Bend.
In terms of freight, I'm going to simplify it and just go from my job perspective. The advantage of bundling goods is that you can improve efficiency since you are moving more things instead of just waiting to send things to that one lone destination. Here at Ramstein, we get many pallets with cargo/goods to Afghanistan, Turkey, Spain, Kuwait, and Qatar all on the same pallet. We break it down and send it to its destination on other missions.
This helps keep cargo/goods moving through our system and minimizes the time it sits intransit at one point. However, the disadvantage is the extra work that we must go through breaking the pallets, sorting the goods, and rebuilding the pallets to go out on other aircraft or trucks. For some destinations, we build "pure" pallets, which is good only for that destination.
References
Transport By Sea (n.d.)
Part 2
Although, affordability becomes a pressing issue for most companies striving to meet increased shipping demand; freight forwarding or bundling of goods and services in higher volumes demands complex storing and shipping requirements. That is, "[f]reight [f]orwarding is a business arrangement in which a third party company arranges storage and shipping of merchandise on behalf of its customers" (Orringo, 2018, par. 4) including consolidation of smaller shipments from several customers into one large shipment going to the same location at a lower cost as oppose to outsourcing 3PL providers. In other words, bundling is a level of integrating goods and services into units while adding value and reducing costs and risks.
For example, freight forwarding not only lowers cost and add value, but also provides a specific set of services such as cargo insurance, filing insurance claims, negotiating freight charges, booking cargo space, prepare shipping and export documents, tracking inland transportation, and warehousing as cited by Orringo (2018). In essence, it is having the ability to influence cargo volume to reduce cost while having deep knowledge of logistics and access to global network of freight forwarding agents.
However, the down-side in freight forwarding puts control of shipment decisions such as scheduling in the hands of agents while making decisions relative to timely or delay of action, particularly when operating in unregulated countries as further cited by Orringo (2018).
However, the challenge becomes collecting, evaluating, and developing effective performance measures to decide the most fitting plan of action in moving cargo faster, safer, and lower cost.
Konings,R., Priemus, H., and Nijkamp, P. (2008). Edward Elgar.
Orringo, M. (2018). Freight Forwarding Advantages & Disadvantages. Handshake Website.
Part 3
This week we are discussing bundling which in my terms is like the word describes bundle. A bundle amount of goods. The bundle amounts of goods is bundling and requires transports. This bundle can be delivered at different stops as it doesn't always start and end at the same spot (R. Konings, 2008). If this makes sense its multiple stops and it's like I say a bundle amount of goods.
The advantages are pretty simple to point out as this amount of goods is large. Perhaps multiple containers per load. This can help with transporting a lot of goods at one time and this could help delivery times. This could possibly save money in the long run by delivering this amount of goods per trip. I'm sure everyone has seen the long trains with multiple containers or even trucks with multiple containers and we can think of this term bundling. Which can take me into the disadvantages of bundling.
The disadvantages could be pointed out as well. The length of these trucks and trains can be a disadvantage. As weight restrictions come into play and being able to find this truck or train to ship on. This could lead to long weights when trying to off load the containers. Perhaps the route is different as well and now one container has to come off and then put back on (R. Konings, 2008). This can eat up a lot of time when dealing with handling the assets. Overall it looks like transporting more assets at one time will be the best.
R. Konings, ,. H. (2008). The Future of Intermodal Freight Transport : Operations, Design and Policy. Edward Elgar Publishing.