Why are there so many people discussing delivery metrics these days? Delivery is not one of the major aspects companies have to deal with, right? This is just one of the minute ones, is it not? The fact of the matter is, no company is able to achieve customer satisfaction without an efficient delivery system at hand. The goods have to be delivered to the customers in a timely manner and they have to be in mint condition as well. And with the advent of improved technology, delivering goods on time is certainly made faster, easier, and more efficient as well.

So, just how are these products delivered? You need to understand this aspect first if you want to measure delivery performance. You need to ask yourself if there are any rules to follow when it comes to cargo services, transportation, and couriers. You also need to ask how many parcels are sent to the different destinations. Another question to ask pertains to the earnings garnered just by delivering the products as well as the materials involved in the process.

Delivery performance is actually measured through the combined efforts of research, assessment, monitoring and gauging, as well as the interviews conducted with the clients regarding the products and services at hand. All these activities are conducted by a few select people – key people, so to speak – and they can be employed by the company itself or by a third party service, like an agency. By measuring delivery efficiency, the company would then have a clearer idea as to how it is presently doing in terms of achieving the goals of customer satisfaction, speed, and competence level.

Furthermore, this can be done by gathering customer feedback as well. With the feedback gathered by the key people, data can then be processed, measured, and analyzed, giving the company the opportunity to come up with relevant decisions. These decisions can pertain to equipment upgrades, the improvement of quality service, and manpower efficiency.

Just like how you would do any other type of research, it is important to identify key operational aspects way before the process. One of these key operational aspects would definitely be the points of delivery. There are four points to consider here:

* Point of production

* Point of storage

* Point of sales

* Point of utilization

Typically, a company would go through these four points. However, there are times when a company would skip one or two of these points and this would depend on the nature of the product or service offered for instance, house chemicals and canned goods would move from the point of production, which is the farm or the factory, and then to the point of sales, which can be the retailer.

Another aspect to keep in mind is the delivery mode. This is the mode of transportation that you will use in delivering products. Ferries, choppers, merchant boats, tricks, motorcycles, freight aircrafts, even water rafts can be examples that you can consider.

Knowing how to measure delivery efficiency is indeed one important endeavor that you should take on. By discussing delivery metrics openly, you can implement the ideal system for your company in no time.

The operations of any business entity would come with a lot of hard work, time, money, and effort. More often than not, the aspect of time would be of much more demand here, as compared to that of money and effort. So that the business would do well and continue to do well, all operational aspects have to be taken into consideration all of the time. This means all possible details in operations, from the biggest ones right down to the smallest ones. There are quite a lot of companies that do not really pay particular attention to their delivery system, thinking this is just one of the minute details of distribution and operations. However, this is not the case at all. You have to understand that in order for your company to achieve the goal of customer satisfaction, the customers themselves have to receive the products and services first. Thus, paying attention to the performance of your delivery system is certainly a must. There is then the need to implement delivery scorecard metrics to deal with the matter more accurately.

Delivery metrics plotted on a balanced scorecard would be al about the determination of the efficiency of your delivery system. That is the primary purpose of these metrics, first and foremost. Yes, you have top of the line delivery trucks and you have a delivery schedule that you can adhere to. However, there is always room for improvement, and this can be in the form of revamping your delivery schedule, for starters, so that more deliveries would be done during the course of just 4 days, instead of the usual 5 days. How then can you determine how to do this? By implementing delivery metrics in your scorecard, plain and simple.

Delivery system metrics are quantifiable figures or indicators that you use to evaluate the status and the success rate of your delivery units. The metrics are actually encoded into a piece of software known as a scorecard system. This application processes whatever data you input into it, thereby translating this into meaningful data that you can then use to analyze your existing system. All of your employees should contribute in inputting data, no matter the departments they belong to.

Delivery metrics inevitably vary from one company to another. This is because companies do have different goals and objectives that they want to achieve. Naturally, there would be distinct differences amidst the similarities as well. To illustrate, here are some of the commonly used delivery metrics that you might want to consider using:

* Cost savings for consolidation

* Counts of shipments

* Counts of orders

* Volume categorization

* Productive miles driven

* Freight claims

* Freight billing

* Returns handling

* Cycle count

* Cost perspective weight

* Average time for procedures

* Average vessel turnaround

* Storage utilization

* Warehouse use

* Frequency of damage

These are just some of the many delivery scorecard metrics you might want to look into. Remember to go for just a few relevant ones so that you would be able to use them to make more practical and cost-effective decisions.

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Many people do not really stop to think about the role that delivery companies play in the overall success of any enterprise. This should not be the case at all. No matter how cool or how useful your product or service may be, if this is not delivered to your customer on time and in mint condition, you can kiss customer satisfaction goodbye. Thus, there has to be a systematic approach towards measuring delivery performance and this can be done with the implementation of delivery metrics.

How then do these metrics work? By definition, these metrics are primarily designed to measure and control a company’s delivery service and other aspects related to delivery. What then do they measure? They actually measure performance when it comes to manufacturing, the warehouse, delivery from different viewpoints, as well as customer satisfaction. Apart from that, these metrics also provide the manager KPIs or key performance indicators that they can use to monitor the performance of its supply chain business unit. This metric pack typically includes the following KPIs: inventory months of supply, defects per million opportunities, claims percentage for freight costs, transit time, on time pickups, on time line account, and customer order promised cycle time. With these KPIs at hand, it is clear how much of a benefit it would be to have this metric pack. In a way, this metric pack provides you a flexible approach towards improving the performance of the supply chain unit itself.

The fact that these metrics come in Excel files is actually of great help. MS Excel has many performance calculation formulas that you would definitely find handy when you are developing your own metrics for your delivery system. In turn, these formulas are developed using the results of extensive research conducted by highly acclaimed experts from the transportation industry. All these formulas are geared towards improving the status and performance of the enterprise. Moreover, the IT industry is also becoming more and more involved in the development of the metrics themselves. Internet technology, for one, has made many businesses aware of the importance of IT infrastructure. Because of this, companies are now relating all these to the accomplishment of goals and objectives.

In spite of the economic recession that companies find themselves dealing with today, there will always be a bright and steady future for metrics to measure delivery performance. One of the main reasons behind this is the fact that the metrics themselves can be used for efficient content management. Some of the programs could come in two forms: completely decoupled management or loosely coupled management. There are also some companies who prefer to have a bundled content management and delivery system. The result of such is that the metrics would be packed tightly in one package.

Just so you would know some of the commonly used delivery metrics in today’s arena, these are inventory, warehousing, and transportation. All of these are incorporate to make the whole process more manageable and faster. The result of having such a system would naturally be customer satisfaction because the products and services reach end consumers faster as well.

Supply chain metrics, which include cycle time, fill rate, inventory turns, and DPMO are used in monitoring the performance of the supply chain. Metrics are typically used by supply chain management and these greatly help you in understanding your company’s operations over a certain time period.

Supply chain metrics can also cover different areas, which include customer service, distribution, inventory, procurement, production, transportation, and warehousing. These areas constitute logistics operations. However, it is not enough that there is only good performance management in only one area of the supply chain. Keep in mind that the supply chain in logistics is very volatile. To ensure sustainability of the logistics supply chain, you need to measure all of its key areas.

Also, there are some things that you need to keep in mind. One is to track your metrics in order to monitor how your company is performing over a period of time and guide you on supply chain optimization. Tracking your measurements enable you to spot problem areas in your management and allows you to compare your performance with those of the other companies by way of industry benchmarking.

There are some metrics, like inventory turns, that have a broadly accepted definition. On the other hand, other measurements, like backorders, may require customization for your logistics industry model or specific model.

Remember that metrics alone are not the be-all and end-all solution to your company’s weak points. The solution also rests in the corrective action you adopt to improve your industry’s logistics measures. System improvements or process may provide a solution to this.

In addition, metrics should also have owners that are directly responsible for ensuring that metrics are achieved right on target. And in order to get the desired results, supply chain management should enable and support changes in logistics processes.

When using the right set of metrics, you also need to know whether or not you have just the right balance between cost and service. There are other aspects that you need to consider, such as how to optimize supply chain performance; improvement of your supply chain’s logistics management and measurement of backorders, fill rate or inventory turns.

Although measurements vary, there are some common supply chain metrics that you can use to improve logistics operations.

First, you should understand what these metrics mean. Do not just vie these metrics as they are, for you also have to understand the essence behind these metrics. Next is to learn how these metrics work. Know what factors, whether positive or negative, drive these metrics and understand what led to your results. Determine weak points and other areas that need improvement in your processes with the information that you have. Establish aggressive yet reasonable goals and objectives based on these points. Apply corrective action to improve processes, whenever necessary. Make sure that these changes are clearly understood. Finally, keep track of your results. Check whether or not the corrective actions you applied have helped you get desired results. If it hasn’t, closely examine what went wrong. If it hasn’t, know which area you want to improve next and plan on it.

Almost everybody nowadays is talking in terms of KPIs or Key Performance Indicators and this term is just as meaningful in the logistics industry as it is in other ones. Logistics KPIs can be understood to refer to those management metrics that are used to measure the performance of a logistical system. While KPIs for logistics will differ based on the goals of a logistical system at a certain point of time, these KPIs will also vary for logistics departments or companies working in different industries. However, at the same time, the importance of these logistics KPIs as crucial performance measurement and decision making tools is equal and unchallenged across all sectors. These KPIs can be used to track and measure performance of any logistics system and are therefore key indicators signaling change and improvement. We will discuss here how logistics KPIs can be used to improve the performance and profits of any logistical system.

Most of the KPIs in logistics can easily be bundled under the broad areas of asset management, customer service, productivity, growth, cost and quality. Organizations involved in logistics or supply chain management generally want metrics on costs per case, percentage of on-time delivery, cases transferred per man hour, accuracy, inventory turns, DPMO, fill rates, cycle times etcetera. Of course these will vary from company to company and department to department based on individual job profiles and organizational goals. However, irrespective of the KPIs that you consider important or consideration worthy, you cannot deny their importance as a management and performance assessment tool.

Monitoring relevant KPIs can help logistic managers in a number of ways. They are the best method till date of assessing overall and process wise performance and can easily guide you towards areas where more effort or resources need to be concentrated. Apart from this, key performance metrics let you compare the performance of your firm with already existing industry benchmarks, giving you a clear idea of how high or low you stand vis-à-vis others engaged in the same field. A logistics KPI study will also let you know about the problem areas in your organization. Overall, KPIs make management decision making easier and more calculated.

In order to use KPIs to their best advantage, one first needs to understand what exactly these metrics mean and what are the factors driving them. Knowing what factors contribute to a certain number is more important than the number itself. Once the key factors behind every KPI metric have been identified, it is the time to to identify the weak areas and lay out a strategy for improvement. Corrective action should be undertaken and implemented as soon as possible towards the attainment of an obtainable goal. Using the same set of KPIs, you can monitor changes and the results of your changes after a certain point of time. In most cases, you will be able to have made some positive change. If this has not been the case, then a further analysis of what went wrong where is required.

Logistics KPIs are potent tools for managers who understand them and know how to use them. They are extremely useful not only for problem finding and performance assessment, but also during resource allocation and business decision making.