LOGISTICS PROBLEMS AND WAYS OF THEIR SOLUTION IN UKRAINE
11.11.2021 20:16
[2. Економічні науки]
Автор: Savchenko D., student of International economic relations, Sumy State University
In difficult economic conditions, the need to pay attention to logistics as one of the means of optimizing trade enterprises is growing. Better knowledge of logistics theory and the effectiveness of its control methods will naturally lead in the future to the priority development of contractual transportation and specialized transport and logistics activities. The highly developed countries of the world are already moving along this path.
An important role in reducing the cost of transportation is played by high-quality organization of transportation and comprehensive mechanization of loading and unloading operations. The key solution to these issues allows you to effectively use the carrying capacity of transport and minimize their ease of loading and unloading.The maximum cost reduction is set by applying conditions that increase transport productivity and increase the utilization rate.
Logistics allows to carry out the complex account of the problems existing at the enterprise. This accounting is based on an integration approach. But to solve these problems, others arise or worsen, and in the current state of many companies are thinking more about how to somehow survive the crisis. But all this may be needed in the near future, and analysis is needed constantly. In Ukraine, when solving many economic issues, various economic levers are used, which requires the creation of powerful transport logistics units and chains. As practice has shown, it makes sense to create independent logistics centers that can successfully become international, gradually merging into the global logistics network. Their creation requires a good legal framework, which in the conditions of Ukraine's transition to a market model of economy is quite difficult to organize. Although companies have the opportunity to independently plan the main ways and conditions of their work, choose forms of management, conduct business activities, dispose of labor, material, financial and
information resources, choose partners.
Due to the instability of Ukraine's economy, there are problems in logistics. Their solution must be addressed in all areas of logistics flow management, paying special attention to the enterprise itself as a mechanism in a single system, because it is the level of the enterprise that shows the problems of the entire logistics chain. The main problem of logistics in Ukraine is the supply sector. There is a constant increase in purchase prices, for various reasons, late execution of orders in production units, difficulties with warehousing, aging equipment, large stocks of materials and equipment in warehouses. In addition, this area is related to transport, which plays a special role in logistics. Many transport companies do not have new vehicles that meet international standards, which can be traced to the backwardness of the transport network infrastructure, a very low technical and technological level and the level of transportation organization.
It should be noted that transport is one of the main objects of costs in the logistics system of the enterprise. However, the company cannot operate without the supply of raw materials, finished products or materials. The consequences of shutdowns in the operation of transport are direct and indirect losses of enterprises, as well as their complete bankruptcy, due to the cessation of supply of raw materials needed for production, which leads to delays in shipment of finished products, its downtime and being spoilage.
Warehousing logistics in Ukraine is characterized by a low level of production and technical base of warehousing, a huge lack of quality technological equipment for product processing, a low level of mechanization and automation of warehousing works.
In distribution logistics there are problems of slowing down the movement of goods from producers to their consumers, high levels of demand, low reliability and insufficient quality of customer service, no well-thought-out strategy for the development of distribution systems and organized product markets.
Information logistics to some extent is important for optimizing the work of the enterprise, but the price of this service is high, which is always advisable.
When listeners and practitioners who try to improve transport logistics in enterprises clash, the same problems arise: quality of transport service; wear of rolling stock and difficulties associated with its renewal; poor information support;
reduced competitiveness of Ukrainian carriers compared to foreign ones; difficulties in compiling transport routes; underloading of transport in terms of load capacity or useful internal volume of the body; insurance of goods and vehicles; complexities of the organization of transportations with participation of several types of transport; lack of information about software products that allow you to automate, simplify and speed up the operations that accompany the transportation process.
To study logistics as a new branch of the economy with a relatively new and young concept of human activity. To denote activities such as information exchange, transport delivery, inventory management, warehousing, cargo handling and packaging.
Every year, logistics is perceived as an interconnected complex process, has the direction of reducing overall costs. In the case of an increase in production, which led to a sharp increase in costs, companies stop looking for opportunities to reduce costs in the areas of circulation.
Presentation of the main research material. It is important for the company to choose the right type of transportation that will allow you to quickly deliver the goods without damage. However, when choosing a particular mode of transport, it is necessary to shape not only what will reduce transportation costs and reduce delivery time, but also how the choice of mode of transport will affect other logistics operations. In modern economic conditions, during transportation, the company must combine several orders into one for certain groups of goods [1].
Creating a transportation schedule allows the company to move the material flow in a timely manner. This is especially important for high-tech industries, where the product life cycle is shorter than the time of its design, assembly, production and distribution.
To improve the quality of services, reduce lead times, increase flexibility in difficult cases, establish trusting relationships with customers, companies can choose their own transport system. Under the condition of additional costs for the maintenance of independent transport and rational organization of the load of its own transport units, the company will have a lower level of costs compared to the costs of services of transport companies [4].
When solving problems in the field of warehousing, it is first necessary to implement a strategy of conservation of stocks,pay attention to the physical storage of the stock and additional operations with it. It is necessary to clearly determine the effective ratio between the cost of filling the warehouse and processing stocks, location, make calculations to determine the territorial size of the storage area and the area of orders, determine the required site, arrangement of warehouse and placement of stocks.
In contrast to the field of warehousing, in the field of sales it is necessary to build both horizontal and vertical sales channels, as well as to establish interaction with wholesalers, intermediaries and directly with consumers. Their use can be an information logistics system. It should be noted that this system must be integrated into all areas of the enterprise (marketing, management, production, finance). This is necessary to build effective management of the enterprise.
Many companies whose activities are related to transportation, decide to outsource all or part of the transportation. This solution allows them to focus on the main area of activity, improving the quality of work and improving their products, which in turn improves the quality of transportation, and in many cases - and reduces transportation costs.
However, external carriers do not always provide quality services. This applies, first of all, to simple freight forwarding or transport companies, the former of which do not have their own rolling stock and work as intermediaries between the customer and the carrier, and the latter - engaged in transporting goods by their own vehicles, do not try to optimize the transportation process. Although this could be done by collecting consolidated cargo from several shippers, drawing up optimal routes, connecting a more efficient mode of transport at a certain stage of the route, and so on. [5]. We can say that now there is a tendency to eliminate from the market "simple" transport market operators and the transition to the combination of freight forwarding, transport and other functions of transport logistics in one company. For such integrated enterprises, the term “logistics operator” is often used, which conveys the systemic nature of their activities and a clear focus on the trade-off between transport (and associated) costs and the level of quality of services provided.
The wear of rolling stock should focus not only on the problem of determining the optimal service life vehicles engaged in the carriage of goods, as well as the need for adequate calculation of their depreciation. Depreciation methods are quite different, and at the moment each company decides which of them to use, at least for domestic purposes. The practice of enterprises that have their own vehicles on the balance sheet, shows the feasibility of different methods of calculating the depreciation of vehicles using rolling stock produced in the CIS and Europe, Japan, USA [2]. Thus, for domestic brands it is recommended to calculate based on 5-6 years of service of the car, while for "foreigners" this period can be doubled.
To determine the optimal time to replace a vehicle, one of the techniques used in logistics is appropriate, which takes into account the increasing over time operating costs on the one hand and the gradually declining productivity and the residual value of the car on the other.
This technique makes it possible to understand at what service life it is more profitable to sell a car at a residual market value than to operate it with ever-increasing costs, including depreciation, repair costs, etc.
Poor information support of the transportation process, unfortunately, leads to insufficient "informatization" and "computerization" of modern logistics, the flow of information that accompanies the transportation process is still far from perfect [5]. This applies to communication with the driving vehicle, especially when it is in another state or at a border crossing, and monitoring of cargo during transportation, and monitoring the condition of the vehicle, its location.
This problem is felt somewhat differently in domestic, Ukrainian transportation. However, here too there are cases of loss of communication with the transport, which negatively affects the coordination of the transportation process, especially in cases of urgent need to transfer or adjust information for the driver. All these factors lead to a decrease in the competitiveness of Ukrainian carriers compared to foreign [8].
It is possible to change the situation with the improvement of transport legislation, as well as the "opening" of borders with EU countries, which would make the sphere of transportation in Ukraine quite attractive, both domestic and foreign carriers. This would lead to an increase in transport operators, which in turn would destroy the monopoly and would be the beginning of falling tariffs [7]. Thus, at present, with low driver's wages and more expensive fuel, outdated equipment and high tariffs compared to foreign companies, national carriers suffer losses in the domestic market.
In this situation, it is recommended to return to the method of calculating the cost of transportation and start not from the market price per 1 km, but from individual profitability. Then the work of the transport company will not only become more transparent to the customer, but also allow you to track how profitable a particular transportation [7].
But there are still a number of questions in the complexity of building transportation routes. Even in the days of the Soviet Union, transporters used quite effective methods of drawing up optimal routes, both pendulum and prefabricated and delivering. This is the so-called transport task - the need to find the shortest network of connections, the shortest path between two points of the territory, as well as the compilation of groupage routes. Unfortunately, with the transition to market relations, there was some chaos in the design of the transportation process, and these methods of optimizing the transport process were simply forgotten. At the same time, an increasing number of companies facing the problem of building optimal traffic routes are ready to invest a lot of money in software that can automate the process of finding the most rational route. The use of "semi-manual" method of determining the route allows not only to obtain the optimal result, but also easy to analyze, which will lead to some change, if for some reason it does not suit the manager or customer [12].
Having solved this problem, carriers face a new one - underloading of rolling
stock. The problem of insufficient use of vehicle capacity directly related to the frequent reluctance or inability to complete shipments from different shippers. After all, the transportation of groupage cargo brings a large profit to the carrier, because for each of the owners of such cargo, the cost of transportation is reduced slightly compared to if his cargo was in the car alone. This is because, although it is not economically justified, the basis of transport tariffs in any case is the mileage traveled by the vehicle. Therefore, the cost of transportation per 1000 km for the same type of cargo weighing 2 and 5 tons will not differ.
It is determined that the delivery of groupage cargo is associated with more problems than sending from one sender to one recipient, but it is more profitable, both for the sender and the carrier. For the carrier, the cost of transportation of groupage cargo significantly exceeds the cost of transportation from one sender [3].
Nowadays, more and more shippers and consignees are trying to insure their transportation. And, according to practitioners, insurance of cargo, instead of the vehicle with cargo prevails.
Thus, in most cases, the insurance is issued as a percentage of the value of the goods, and in the event of an insured event, the insurance payment is made in the amount in which the damage to the goods. Usually the cost of damages is reimbursed in full. In any case, the insurer and the insured are looking for the most acceptable combination of the cost of insurance and the amount of insurance benefits, which is stipulated in the insurance contract [5].
Cargo insurance reduces worries about the transportation process, which usually has a positive effect on all participants. As for vehicle insurance, it is used less often. At the same time, the long-standing distrust of insurance companies as such slows down the process of spreading insurance for both vehicles and goods.
There are also difficulties in creating the interaction of several modes of transport. With the existence of any possible routes to our country, road transport remains the most used [12]. This is all the more surprising if we consider a large area of our country, because at distances of 700-1500 km, rail transport becomes much more economical than road. It is possible that the prevalence of road freight transport of all others is associated primarily with the mobility of this mode of transport. Thus, firstly, it was easier for road transport companies to rebuild their existence in a sovereign state, and secondly, this type of transport successfully carries from door-to-door transportation, which in most cases is not available to others. As for tariffs for transportation, here for road competitors are rail and water transport. However, the complexity of relations with the railway and different rules for transportation on different modes of transport lead to a refusal to work with "non-motor" modes of transport, and even more so to combine them. Also important is the fact that the interaction of different transport almost always increases the time of transportation. This is with congestion from one mode of transport to another, which is usually accompanied by short-term storage of goods.
Thus, a small decrease in the total cost of transportation is usually combined with an increase in delivery time and increase the complexity of the organization and control of such transportation. It should be added that combined transport is usually much more difficult to predict the timing and possible risks. Here the problems of information support are much more acute than during road transport.
There is a lack of information about software products in the field of transport logistics. The software market is growing exponentially [12]. More and more programs that improve themselves allow us to simplify our lives. However, there is another side of the coin - it is very difficult to navigate in the program mass that fills the market. Everyone is used to the fact that before we have time to install a new program, we already see the release or demo version of the new one. Therefore, the desire to constantly update the software base is meaningless and impractical. As for the software for transport logistics, things are a little different. Unlike warehousing, there are far fewer of them on the market, reviews of them are very different, and there is no normal, objective analysis. Given the considerable cost of such programs, it is not surprising that potential buyers are lost and gradually abandon the idea of acquisition. Therefore, it is necessary to develop improved software packages and instructions for their potential buyers.
Then consumers will see the difference and be able to make the right choice,
and it will be easier for manufacturers to find and mark their niche in the market of transport logistics programs.
So, logistics is a unique field of activity, as it is practiced all over the world 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for 52 weeks a year. Only some areas of business operations can boast the same complexity of internal relationships and the same breadth of geographical coverage, which are characteristic of logistics [10]. Modern logistics is a paradoxical phenomenon. What is called logistics today arose with the birth of civilization, that is, it is not an innovation. However, the most perfect achievements of logistics were achieved, as noted, much later - in the economic environment, ie, among modern business. Having solved many problems and tasks with logistics in Ukraine, it can be argued that Ukraine is quite successful in solving the problems of creating international transport corridors on the basis of the program "FROM - DOOR - TO - DOOR" [9].
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