Shippers and carriers need greater communication

Hong Kong: Shippers and shipping lines both need to raise their game if global container supply chains are not to be habitually subject to wildly fluctuating service levels. This was a key take-away from Day 1 of the TOC Container Supply Chain Asia conference being held in Hong Kong, on 12-14 March.

Addressing the conference session ‘Carriers Close Up’, Mark Holloway, Head of Supply Chain Asia for global beverage group Diageo, explained that his company’s supply chain is focused on “cost, service and quality”. However, he added that in his experience container shipping lines have little or no engagement with their customers either to discuss issues that arise or plans to improve service levels. He argued that the focus was almost exclusively on price, which in times of highly volatile rate movements often leads to unreliable lead times impacting service levels for end customers and unreliable updates on where particular shipments are at any moment along the logistics chain.

These factors have a negative impact on business often resulting in increased inventory and service risks. However, Holloway emphasised that the current poor state of relationships between shippers and carriers was as much the result of shippers allowing that to happen as also being the fault of the carriers. His principal message was that both partners need to improve their communications with each other in order to achieve more collaborative supply chain management.

“It is now the responsibility of shippers to elevate the quality of the conversations we have with carriers and focus on cost, service and quality, and therefore allow us to have an on-going relationship with our supply chain colleagues just I have an on-going relationship with the customers I serve,” he concluded.

From a carrier perspective, Stanley Smulders, Senior Vice-President Asia - Europe & West Africa Trade Management, for MOL Liner, accepted that various strategies recently adopted by carriers do impact supply chains. However, he also pointed out that the response of many carriers has simply been as a result of the lack of sustainable financial returns. The creation of wider alliances, for example, is an obvious response to the need to phase in larger vessels economically in order to ensure that the ships are fully utilised. But this will likely result in fewer sailings, which has a direct effect on supply chains.

Source from SinoShip