Logistics industry is the basic industry of modern commodity circulation, which is of great significance to the commercial circulation system and even the whole national economy. The level of logistics informatization is an important symbol to measure the strength of modern logistics enterprises, and it is also the performance of the core competitiveness of logistics enterprises in the market. How about the informationization of logistics enterprises now? Let's have a look!
First, the background of logistics enterprise informatization
With the continuous advancement of economic globalization and information technology, the production process, material circulation and commodity trading of modern enterprises have already broken through geographical restrictions, and the scale and forms of cross-regional flow of production factors, commodities, services and information are also increasing. This objectively requires logistics enterprises to make full use of advanced information technology, break the boundary between transportation and production, establish the planning and control of the whole process of supply, production, sales, storage and transportation through supply chain management, realize the overall optimization of production system design, enterprise operation and management, realize the organic unity of logistics, capital flow and information flow, and reduce the logistics cost and transaction cost of the whole business activities. In 1990s, traditional logistics changed to modern logistics. The biggest difference between modern logistics and traditional logistics lies in taking various information technologies as the core and applying information technologies such as data acquisition system, e-commerce, electronic data exchange (EDI), warehouse management system (WMS), supply chain management system (SCM) and global positioning system (GPS) to promote the digitalization of logistics units, logistics processes, logistics networks and logistics center management. IT technology is an important means to improve the competitiveness of logistics enterprises, which can reduce operating costs, improve management efficiency and provide customers with as many value-added services as possible. IT can be said that whoever has mastered IT technology will gain the commanding heights of market competition. The fundamental purpose of modern logistics is to improve logistics efficiency, reduce logistics costs and meet customer needs, and it is increasingly showing the development trend of informationization, networking, automation, intelligence and standardization, among which informationization is the core of modern logistics.
Second, the connotation of logistics enterprise informatization
The word logistics first appeared in America. After 1980s, communication satellites and computer systems were first applied in American automobile companies, and began to integrate the management of supply chain resources and information systems. After more than 20 years of development, international logistics enterprises have taken on a new look. International experience shows that logistics does not belong to labor-intensive or asset-intensive industries, and its key is the ability to integrate resources.
Logistics refers to the physical movement of material entities from suppliers to demanders. It consists of a series of economic activities that create time value, including transportation, storage, distribution, packaging, loading and unloading, traffic processing and logistics information processing, which is the unity of these activities. Logistics enterprise refers to the industry that manages the flow of goods, which integrates the process of goods storage and transportation and transports goods from the place of production to the hands of users.
Logistics informatization refers to a series of processing activities such as collection, classification, transmission, summary, identification, tracking and inquiry of all or part of the information generated in the logistics process by logistics enterprises by using modern information technology, so as to control the flow of goods, thus reducing costs and improving efficiency. Logistics informatization has profound connotation, which is embodied in the following five aspects. Based on modern logistics information technology, 2. Taking the development and utilization of logistics information resources as the core, 3. Logistics informatization covers all aspects of logistics activities. The ultimate goal of logistics informatization is to enhance the core competitiveness of enterprises. Logistics informatization is a process.
Logistics informatization is divided into three levels: 1. Basic informatization. It mainly solves the problems of information collection, transmission, processing and sharing, so as to improve the decision-making level of enterprises and generate benefits. Information technology and network technology have solved the standard problem and cost problem of information sharing and information transmission. The task of information system is to provide timely and accurate information for decision-making. At this level, there is little or no involvement in process transformation and optimization. 2. Informatization of process change. In order to continuously reduce costs and speed up capital turnover, enterprises apply system theory and optimization technology to logistics process design and transformation, and integrate them into the new management system. The function of information system is to solidify the new process and management system, and provide optimized solutions in the specified process, such as warehouse optimization and transportation path optimization. 3. Logistics management is an important part of the formation and promotion of supply chain management. The core problem to be solved at this stage is to improve the efficiency and competitiveness of the whole supply chain, mainly through the information feedback service for upstream and downstream enterprises to improve the coordination and overall efficiency of the supply chain. The basis of supply chain management is to establish a mutually beneficial interest mechanism, and logistics information system is an important technical means to realize this mutually beneficial mechanism.
According to the innovation of logistics concept and the development stage of information technology, the process of enterprise logistics informatization can be summarized into four periods. In the first period (before 1950s), the collection and transmission of enterprise logistics information mainly depended on ordinary letters, telephone calls and manual records. In the second period (early 1950s), the management of enterprise logistics information mainly focused on inventory and transaction, and enterprises began to use computers to process information. In the third period (from the mid-1950s to the mid-1980s), the enterprise's information management process gradually became standardized, and information management has gradually reflected the central nervous function of logistics management. In the fourth period (the middle and late 1980s ~), Total Quality Management (TQM), Just-in-Time Work (JIT), Business Process Reengineering (BPR), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Supply Chain Management (SCM), Customer Relationship Management (CRH) and Electronic Commerce (EC) were put forward step by step, which made the logistics information management enter the "advanced" stage.
Logistics industry is the basic industry of modern commodity circulation, which is of great significance to the commercial circulation system and even the whole national economy. The level of logistics informatization is an important symbol to measure the strength of modern logistics enterprises, and it is also the performance of the core competitiveness of logistics enterprises in the market. Having several computers, developing several information systems and buying several logistics equipment cannot be called logistics informatization. Logistics informatization refers to the full use of modern information technology in the whole logistics operation from transportation, warehousing, loading and unloading, handling, packaging, distribution processing to distribution.
Third, the problems existing in the informatization process of China's logistics enterprises
China's logistics informatization started in the 1970s, paved the way in the 1980s, and entered the development stage in the middle and late 1990s. At present, the application and popularization of information technology in China's logistics enterprises are not high, and the development is also very uneven.
Compared with developed countries, China's logistics industry is particularly inefficient and wasteful. According to relevant data, in 2005, the proportion of social logistics cost in GDP in China was 18.6%, while in developed countries it was around 9%, with the gap exceeding 1 times. The reason for this problem is that there is still a big gap between China's road infrastructure construction and developed countries, and the low management level and poor information equipment of logistics enterprises in China are also one of the important reasons.
Modern logistics management consciousness is weak. Modern logistics requires not only the automation and intelligence of all aspects of logistics management, but also the specialization and efficiency of various logistics operations such as purchasing logistics, production logistics, sales logistics and recycling logistics, which requires independent logistics enterprises to organize logistics activities by using various advanced logistics equipment and software systems.
The management of logistics information resources is chaotic. At present, many logistics enterprises' logistics informatization work has not solved the problem of information collection in operation layer and operation management layer, which makes the system lack enough information sources and greatly affects the development and utilization of information resources in the whole enterprise. On the other hand, many enterprises ignore the information resource planning, lack the overall planning and unified information standards, which leads to the design, production and management information can not be quickly circulated and shared, forming many "information islands", and enterprises have not yet enjoyed the benefits that information investment should produce, thus seriously hindering the process of logistics management informationization.
The application of information technology and logistics equipment are backward. The backwardness of information technology and logistics equipment has become a bottleneck restricting the development of China's logistics enterprises. At present, the application of information technology in logistics enterprises is not only less, but also at a low level, and computer applications are mostly limited to office automation and daily transaction processing. In a logistics enterprise with information system, the business function and system function of the information system are not perfect, and the necessary logistics service systems such as order management, goods tracking, warehousing management system and transportation management system are lacking, and the integration ability of logistics information resources has not yet formed. Most domestic logistics equipment is relatively old, and logistics automation facilities, including three-dimensional warehouse, automatic bar code identification system, automatic guided vehicle system and automatic cargo tracking system, are not widely used. Compared with foreign logistics management automation characterized by electromechanical integration and intelligence, there is a big gap.
Lack of logistics information management professionals. Many employees in most logistics enterprises don't know what modern logistics is and have a little knowledge of information management. A considerable proportion of employees do not have basic computer skills, which makes many automatic processing processes impossible to implement and hinders the pace of enterprise development and growth.
Informatization has not yet established its authoritative position in enterprise management. Enterprise informatization is a systematic project. From project establishment, design, development to implementation, it takes a long time to continuously improve and perfect, and it also goes deep with the development of enterprises. Therefore, with the increasing role of informatization in enterprise management, an independent it department is needed to take charge of related work. Although most enterprises' information systems have been planned and designed (accounting for 90%), only 55% enterprises have independent IT departments, which is in sharp contrast. On the one hand, this is related to the lack of enterprise informatization talents, on the other hand, it also shows that informatization plays a limited role in enterprise management at this stage and has not yet established an authoritative position.
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