The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, which together make up the nation’s busiest shipping container complex, showed gains in cargo traffic for the fourth straight month in March, boosting trade-related employment in Southern California.

In Los Angeles, the largest U.S. port, exports jumped 15.8% compared with March 2009, driven by such items as scrap paper, scrap metal, agricultural products and finished manufactured goods. Long Beach’s exports also rose strongly, 10.9%, as both ports benefited from the weakness of the U.S. dollar against other major world currencies.

“Retail sales are starting to improve and retailers are importing merchandise in the quantities they need to meet that demand,” NRF Vice President for Supply Chain and Customs Policy Jonathan Gold said. “We expect these numbers to continue to climb as merchants and their customers move away from the recession and back toward normal shopping habits.”

U.S. ports handled 1.01 million Twenty-foot Equivalent Units in February, the latest month for which actual numbers are available. That was down 6 percent from January as shipping hit its traditional slow point for the year but up 20 percent from the unusually low numbers seen during February 2009. It was also the third month in a row to show a year-over-year improvement after December broke a 28-month streak of year-over-year monthly declines. One TEU is one 20-foot cargo container or its equivalent.

March was estimated at 1.02 million TEU, a 6 percent increase over last year as spring products began to head for store shelves. April is forecast at 1.07 million TEU, up 8 percent from last year; May at 1.12 million TEU, up 7 percent’ June at 1.18 million TEU, up 17 percent; July at 1.24 million TEU, up 12 percent; and August at 1.32 million TEU, up 15 percent.

The first half of 2010 is expected to total 6.5 million TEU, up 10 percent. Imports for 2009 totaled 12.7 million TEU, down 17 percent from 2008’s 15.2 million TEU and the lowest since the 12.5 million TEU reported in 2003. The forecast for first-half growth is down from the 17 percent increase projected a month ago as more recent data becomes available.

“Port volumes have begun to rebound and we expect growth to continue going forward,” Hackett Associates founder Ben Hackett said. “Retailers were maintaining lean inventories during the recession but are carefully building back up.” 

The predictions come from IDC analysts Simon Ellis and Kimberly Knickle.  Here is an excerpt from the article and if you want to read the full story, click here.

1. “Dynamic Optimization,” will dominate capability investment to support redefining of the supply chain: Though it’s been projected before, IDC believes 2010 will really be the year of supply chain optimization technology to further drive out costs and waste. Key to this will also be the ability to respond to market and environmental changes rapidly and optimally.

2. S&OP will re-emerge as the synchronizing process for reconciling supply and demand: This one confuses us a little, as we didn’t see S&OP disappearing and thus requiring “re-emergence,” but IDC says that while always important, effective Sales and Operations Planning is even more so in dynamic times. “Manufacturing supply chains are not going to suddenly become simpler, as increasingly available data sets make business planning and execution more complex, not less,” IDC says.

3. Balancing supply and demand across the value chain will prompt a strategic redesign of supply networks: The need to penetrate emerging markets and increasing analysis of labor versus logistic costs will continue to drive changes to network strategies.

4. Supply chain and product lifecycle management (PLM) applications will increasingly converge as manufacturing companies focus on delivering innovation: Innovation today is critical to market success, but “the new product development and introduction process (NPDI) in many companies is poorly executed, with generally low levels of cross-functional involvement,” IDC says. Better integrating PLM tools into supply chain processes can help.

5. Intelligent supply chains will put broader supply chain visibility burdens on supply chain organizations, both owned and outsourced: “2010 will be the year that network visibility comes of age,” IDC says.  Essential for managing increasingly virtual supply chains.

6. Supply chain organizations will invest in capabilities that facilitate global operations: As we’ve noted before, the growth in globalization has in most cases outpaced corporate investment in global supply chain technology.  “While it remains to be seen how closely integrated global trade management needs to be with more traditional transportation management capabilities, we do think that this will be a hot application for manufacturers in 2010,” IDC says.

7. Transportation capacity will tighten, causing supply chain organizations to rethink fulfillment strategies: The current excess capacity in transportation markets, and by extension depressed lane rates, “are not sustainable and will not last,” according to IDC. “Shippers should prepare for higher rates as we move into 2010, and expect capacity shortfalls for next year’s holiday season.”

8. The increasing pace of supply chain outsourcing/offshoring will keep risk management high in the strategic agenda: Investment though will be focused on building risk awareness: Due to the economic crisis of 2009, most companies put supply chain risk management on the back burner, says IDC. “Leading manufacturers continue to find ways to develop the right combination — risk awareness and early detection, followed by rapid response, but for now, with minimal new IT investment,” it adds.

9. Smart services and the need for persistent assets will create the inflection point for RFID, sensors and M2M (machine-to-machine): Advances in technologies, experience, and operational need will lead to major advances in companies building “sensory networks.”

10. Armed with metrics, manufacturers will move from sustainability reporting to “intelligence”: While many companies have started carbon emissions reporting, “The next step is to create intelligence — to apply the information to make better decisions about their material selection, sourcing, use of limited resources, product life cycle, supply chain, and more. Companies are showing an increasing willingness to make changes to fundamental business processes, design for sustainability and cradle to cradle, or greening the supply chain.”

Supply chain management companies like Komar Distribution Services (KDS) have been called to executive round table discussions to map out how new technology and business processes can reduce the cost of delivered goods.  KDS has a 100 year history of working in partnership with manufacturers, suppliers and retailers to innovate the supply chain.

Richard Owens Excerpt

Richard Owens, tackles a piece of the challenges business supply chain partners are facing in his guest blog post.  Here is an excerpt from the Business Time article.

A customer walks into an electronics store to buy a new mobile phone. He has a brand in mind but it is not in stock. What does he do? Does he decide to go home and return when the brand he was looking for is available again? Unlikely. He will probably buy another model from a brand that offers similar features at the same price point.

In a world where the customer is increasingly informed and time-poor, convenience and efficiency can often drive a purchasing decision over brand loyalty. This means that companies must not only focus on marketing a product to create the demand, but equally importantly, businesses must ensure that the supply chain can deliver the product to store shelves around the world in an efficient and precise manner. Without the right supply chain, companies risk losing customers and ultimately market share.

The above example could just as easily have been a notebook PC, LCD TV or a non-consumer electronics product. Regardless of the market, businesses have to get their products to market and in front of customers on time, every time. And, to stay financially healthy, they have to do this without amassing large inventory levels. It’s a fine balance. It’s also one of the reasons that in recent times, I have witnessed the art of supply chain management moving from the warehouse into the boardroom.

So, has the current economic downturn elevated the importance of supply chain management in strategic business decision making? It would be an exaggeration to say that this recession is solely responsible for the increasing priority that businesses are giving to the supply chain. But what I hear from customers is that it has undoubtedly spurred on what has been a gradual evolution in that direction. Between the first half of 2008 and the same period of 2009, DHL Global Customer Solutions has seen a 133 per cent increase in consultancy for supply chain optimization projects.

Before the slump, our customers, especially those in the technology sector, had their supply chains designed around a high-demand scenario. They built up stock to meet insatiable customer demand. When the market slowed down suddenly without much warning, many companies were caught off guard and were left with over stocked shelves. Businesses cannot afford high inventory levels, least of all technology companies, who deal in products with extremely short lifecycles. The downturn has forced many businesses to immediately examine how they manage their supply chains and order-to-cash cycles.

A positive outcome we can see, partly due to the recession, has been an increase in true consultation and partnership between logistics providers and their customers. While this is part of the natural evolution of the industry, the recession has brought the need for closer engagement to the fore. Previously, the purchasing of supply chain services, including warehousing, freight and express services, was primarily driven by procurement groups and was very much focused on achieving the lowest transportation charges.   (Read full article)

Supply Chain Management

If you are a growing business looking to reduce the costs associated with your supply chain processes, contact the executive team at KDS.  If you are looking for a competent supply chain logistics partner with 100 years on experience with manufacturing, overseas transportation, warehousing and distribution of  retail goods across America, give us a call.

Komar Distribution Services
16 E. 34th Street, 10th Floor
New York, NY 10016
(918) 429-7779

KDS has provided helpful links to US terminals, ports and transportation services for your research and reference:

• St. Lawrence Seaway Authority, http://www.seaway.ca
• Air Transport Association, http://www.airlines.org
• Airports Council International, http://www.airports.org
• Association of American Railroads, http://www.aar.org
• Federal Express, http://www.fedex.com.
• Ship Photo Database, http://www.ship-photos.de
• Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, http://www.panynj.gov
• Port of Montreal, http://www.port-montreal.com.
• Port of Rotterdam, http://www.portofrotterdam.com/en/home/
• Panama Canal Commission, http://www.pancanal.com/
• World Oil Transit Chokepoints.
• Flags of Convenience, http://www.flagsofconvenience.com
• Freeway Management and Operations Handbook, http://www.ops.fhwa.dot.gov/Travel/traffic/freeway_management.htm
• International Organization of Motor Vehicle Manufacturers, http://www.oica.net/

With global businesses looking for innovative ways to decrease costs and reduce waste in the supply chain, the executive team at KDS has new offerings in 2010 to meet market demand for cost effective 3PL solutions.  KDS offers a complete line of service that include cross docking, inventory warehousing, foreign trade zone (FTZ) logistics, GOH and supply chain management.

Visibility in The Supply Chain

Here is the beginning of the Peter Bradley article and you can read the full version on DC Velocity Website.

When the global recession hit last year, companies around the world found themselves stuck with inventory that suddenly stopped moving. Within days, the repercussions for cash flow started to become apparent. All that inventory meant lots of working capital was tied up in product —and was not available to pay the bills, says Rick Becks, senior vice president of E2open, a company that offers Web-hosted supply chain visibility tools.

Few could have predicted the extent and depth of the recession, but it’s a good bet that companies that had good visibility across their supply chains —that could see actual orders, production, goods in transit, and so on —fared better than those that did not. As for the source of their advantage, it’s a simple matter of exposure.

The companies with the best visibility were less likely to have amassed vast stores of inventory as a hedge against uncertainty —demand fluctuations, forecasting errors, supplier failures, and the like. Visibility into their own and their suppliers’ stocks gave them the confidence to keep global inventories as spare as possible.

The argument for the importance of supply chain visibility is hardly new, and technology that can provide it has been around for more than a decade. But the financial exposure created by the recession sheds new light on just how crucial visibility can be in managing risk.

The imperative to create a clear, near real-time view of the supply chain has only become more pressing over time. Professors Hau Lee of Stanford and Martin Christopher of the U.K.’s Cranfield School of Management argued in a 2004 paper in the International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management, that a number of forces were combining to make supply chains more vulnerable and turbulent.

Demand in nearly every industrial sector was becoming more volatile, product life-cycles shorter, and competition more intense, they wrote in the article, “Mitigating Supply Chain Risk Through Improved Confidence.” Supply chains had become more subject to disruption from external factors such as wars or strikes and internal factors like shifts in strategy. Lean practices that minimize inventory, the outsourcing of key components of the supply chain, and reliance on fewer suppliers across far-flung networks added to the risk.

That risk has only become greater. “I think it is clear that supply chain vulnerability has increased significantly in recent years,” Christopher wrote in an e-mail reply to a DC VELOCITY query. “The reasons are partly to do with economic and geopolitical uncertainty, but mainly due to increased volatility and turbulence on both the demand side and the supply side. Everybody I meet tells me that it is much harder to run the business on the basis of a forecast and that long-range planning is a thing of the past. Instead, we have to build in the capability to react to the unexpected —this is what I believe resilience in a supply chain context is all about.”

Nari Viswanathan, vice president and principal analyst for the Aberdeen Group’s Supply Chain Management Practice and co-author of a supply chain visibility study published earlier this year, said in a recent interview that while supply chain managers may strive to shave inventories, improve data flows, and compress lead times, several factors are working against them. Fewer suppliers can mean greater risk of supply disruption. Geographic expansion across China, India, other parts of Asia, and Eastern Europe can extend lead times, which leads to greater amounts of inventory in the overall system, once again creating greater complexity and greater risk.

The risk spiral

Now, another development threatens to further complicate supply chains, and thus increase the need for visibility: Supply chains that once were one-way channels are fast becoming multi-directional as countries like China —perhaps China especially —rapidly develop a large consumer market.

Lee and Christopher argued back in 2004 that one of the keys to mitigating the risk caused by complex supply chains lay in developing end-to-end visibility. Visibility helps eliminate one of the major causes of supply chain volatility, what they called the risk spiral —i.e., if a participant in a supply chain lacks confidence in, say, when goods will arrive, the response may be to add safety stock, which in turn creates added pressure on production and extends lead times, resulting in a further erosion of confidence.

The lack of confidence is exacerbated as increases in physical distance and the number of outsourced participants add time to material flow and reduce visibility of any participant in the supply chain to the activities of others.

To read remainder of article, click here.

What began two years ago as a 350,000-square-foot distribution center in San Bernardino, Calif., for Charles Komar and Sons’ own brands—which include sleepwear and intimates labels—has now grown into Komar Distribution Services, a back-office and distribution-services provider.

The company, which has operated a distribution center out of McAlester, Okla., for approximately 80 years, made the move west to satisfy its own distribution needs and quickly found brands eager to use its facilities and resources.

Ron Weissbrod, Komar’s vice president of business development, said Komar currently has approximately 10 customers being serviced out of the San Bernardino location. Those customers represent 15 percent to 20 percent of Komar’s business out of the West Coast location, and Weissbrod expects that number to more than double in the next several years.

He declined to name Komar’s current clients. But Weissbrod said customers include domestic and international swimwear, sleepwear, intimates, sportswear, dress, and children’s and juniors brands that retail in major and big-box retailers through to specialty stores and independent boutiques. Client testimonials on Komar’s Web site count Liz Claiborne Sleepwear among its satisfied customers.

In Down Economy – Interest is Up

As the economy forces companies to cut spending and reduce overhead, interest in Komar’s services has never been higher, Weissbrod said. “A good example is that of a swimwear company that only uses its warehouse 50 percent of the year, when it is actually shipping goods. The rest of the year the warehouse sits empty, but it is being paid for,” he said. “With this economy, companies are looking for ways to increase their efficiency.”

With its 40-plus employees and state-of-the-art facility, Komar’s San Bernardino location offers apparel imports, warehousing, distribution, pick and pack, supply-chain management, customer service, accounting and back-office systems for bigger operations as well as boutique brands. “Everyone needs to lower their overhead,” Weissbrod said.

He declined to discuss Komar’s fee structure, but Weissbrod said most companies, whether they have their own distribution and back-office operations or outsource them, would realize savings. One way Komar could fatten a company’s bottom line is by reducing the kinds of costly mistakes that are often made when shipping to new accounts as well as big box or major retailers. “We work with so many retailers—and have for nearly 100 years—that we know their specific requirements,” he said. Meeting shipping requirements and “virtually eliminating chargebacks” make for significant client savings.

Technology—which allows Komar to track goods from overseas factories onto boats, into and out of the warehouse, and onto the sales floor—is another money-saving bonus. “If a company knows where every single piece of product is at any given time—from the moment the order is placed to when it is cut and sewn down to whether it has been invoiced and when it is paid—they have so much more to work with and can be more agile,” Weissbrod said.

Komar Technical Prowess

With the influx of interest and business, Komar is keen on staying at the forefront of technology—from developing proprietary software that enables it to keep clients informed in real time as to the status of their goods to implementing Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) mapping and compliance with “nearly every major retailer.” The facility is also Radio Frequency Identification (RFID)–enabled, something that is becoming a key factor for companies selling goods to the likes of Wal-Mart and other big-box stores.

“We are very technology-focused,” said Melinda Cook, Komar’s director of customer service. “Our array of services and clients requires us to be at the forefront of what is going on. It’s how we save our clients money and run our own business more efficiently.”

To communicate with clients, Komar has developed a software that is installed directly onto clients’ computers. The dashboard, as it is called, gives clients constant access to reports such as sales reporting and history, gross margin analysis, style master management, reserve and bulk order management, inventory forecasting, production-order status, and real-time inventory visibility and control, a release from the company states. “The software makes everything visible and transparent. And it eliminates the hundreds of e-mails from different people that would otherwise be necessary from the moment a purchase order is written until it is delivered,” Cook said.

Currently, each client’s record is updated multiple times a day so they can track the progress of their goods in real time.

“The minute a shipment passes through our dock doors, it is in our system,” Weissbrod said. “That means a client can turn stock as soon as it comes in— and that is something that is a big advantage in the current market,” he said.

Third party logistics providers like Komar Distribution Services have streamlined the daily warehousing and shipping logistics so flawlessly, it’s nearly impossible for major apparel manufacturers to work efficiently without them.

Komar Distribution provides solutions for apparel imports, warehousing, distribution, supply chain, customer service and back office systems using advance business systems and best practices.  With their advanced inventory, supply chain reporting dashboard, clients have constant access to reports such as: sales reporting and history, gross margin analysis, style master management,   reserve and bulk order management, inventory forecasting, production order status and real time inventory visibility and control.

More information on the third party logistics services of Komar Distribution is available online at http://www.komardistribution.com/

Komar Distribution Services has served the apparel industry with third party logistics solutions for 98 years.  Komar Distribution provides invaluable services to its clients like real time inventory reporting and constant and immediate inventory access which eliminates stocking excessive inventory.  Komar Distribution third party logistics, in a nutshell, is about saving the manufacturer unprecedented time and capital by outsourcing a large segment of the manufacturing process.

Apparel manufacturers are spared the task of distribution, supply chain management, inventory reporting and back office administrative work.  Komar will handle all Inventory Management, Re-ticketing, Re-packaging , Returns , Production Order Tracking , Foreign Trade Zone Management,  E Commerce, Retail Sell Through Analysis , Data Warehousing , Data Reporting , EDI Setup and Maintenance and more.