The competition of the future is the battle of the supply chain
The competition of the future is the battle of the supply chain
30 years ago, the first enterprise registered under the name "Logistics" was born.
From then on, the logistics industry began a tumultuous 30 years. Relying on rapid economic growth, dividends are rapidly released throughout the industry, and the story of Kapoklog Logistics also began at this time.
While keeping up with the pace of the times, Kapoklog Logistics is adapting to the needs of the times and leading the logistics industry's iterative transformation from storage and transportation stations to modern logistics, supply chain management, and industrial supply chains.
With every step of keeping up with the times, Kapoklog Logistics is implementing integrated logistics and supply chain services to meet market demands with higher quality products and services. In a sense, the 30 years of Kapoklog Logistics are the 30 years of China's logistics development.
Now, standing at the time point of 2024, Liu Wu, founder and chairman of Kapoklog Logistics, has made a new judgment on the market: the current economy has entered the stage of "high-quality development" from "high-speed development". It is not just about products or individual enterprises competing, but about supply chains competing with each other. Whoever has a fast response, strong resilience, and high efficiency in their supply chain will gain more systematic competitiveness.
(Liu Wu, Founder and Chairman of Kapoklog Logistics)
Supply chain transformation, entering deep waters.
1. The treasure offering of advancing always leads by half a step
The corporate culture of Kapoklog Logistics should start with "daring to be the first in the world" and "always leading by half a step regardless of big or small steps".
The story of Liu Wu and Kapoklog, from contracting a railway freight forwarding station to becoming a leading enterprise in the industry, is a model of the rise of third-party logistics in China and has also become an enlightenment for many logistics professionals.
In the past 30 years, from the first proposal of door-to-door logistics services, the first to provide integrated logistics solutions in China, to the establishment of the "Kapoklog Logistics Award", to the first proposal of the concept of integrated supply chain services, these innovations are actually a reflection of Kapoklog's corporate culture. Every innovation and breakthrough in Kapoklog Logistics quickly addresses the core demands of customers with its first mover advantage and leads an era.
At present, Kapoklog Logistics sees a new leading point based on the reshaping of the global industrial chain division of labor pattern. Enterprises must seek systematic breakthroughs from the perspectives of industrial chain and supply chain with a global perspective and endgame thinking.
And the first to see this subtle change is that Kapoklog Logistics' development perspective is from customers to customers.
The author of the best-selling book "Smart Supply Chain Architecture", Shi Yun, pointed out that the consumer goods retail industry is constantly changing, and the previously static planning model is often exhausted in the face of extremely volatile markets. In the era of Uka, the supply chain needs to be both resilient and elastic.
How to understand the resilience and elasticity of the supply chain?
Firstly, breaking down information silos means connecting various nodes in the supply chain to achieve real-time sharing of information; Secondly, achieve digital connectivity, which means digitizing and standardizing all aspects of the supply chain to make it visible and perceptible; Thirdly, supply chain feedback decision-making refers to the ability to dynamically adjust the supply chain network in order to generate data feedback decisions for enterprises, enabling the supply chain to adjust production capacity, inventory, and distribution according to demand at any time.
It can be seen that the supply chain model is shifting from a hierarchical bidding model in the past to a flexible model that feeds back operations through digital connections.
Different modes bring different results to customers, and layered bidding often means price oriented competition, which brings systemic risks similar to the chaos of this year's "oil tanker". The feedback operation under the digital intelligence link is result oriented optimization, that is, finding optimization solutions for the win-win of the supply chain ecology, and driving a virtuous cycle of ecological health and sustainable growth.
Different supply chain models will lead enterprises towards different paths. This is what Liu Wu described as the stage of high-quality development, which relies on competition between supply chains.
2. Reshaping the supply chain, value driven new growth
There are two directions for the transformation of the supply chain: one is to refine operations around prices, and the other is to build an ecosystem around value.
Price often implies homogenization and internal friction, while value creation implies innovation that breaks through and builds upon.
Obviously, Baofang Logistics has chosen to do the 'difficult but right thing'.
With the continuous rise of new technologies, models, and formats, every node in the industrial chain is worth redoing in a new way. Reshaping is a new proposition for the transformation of supply chains in this era.
The future competition will depend on whose supply chain has fast response, high efficiency, and strong resilience, rather than continuing to squeeze the prices of logistics companies. "Liu Wu believes that this is the logic of supply chain reshaping.
This is also the core path of the recently introduced "Action Plan for Effectively Reducing Logistics Costs in the Whole Society". Cost reduction and efficiency improvement are not about continuing to squeeze the prices of logistics enterprises, but about optimizing the industrial chain to achieve structural cost reduction. The key step in reshaping is to deeply collaborate with the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain.
In the view of Dong Zhonglang, a partner at Hidden Mountain Capital, in the past decade, the rise of e-commerce and express delivery, the release of dividends from state-owned enterprise reform, and the influx of a large amount of capital and technology have enabled China's logistics to achieve rapid growth. However, as we enter the next decade, economic growth slows down, global competition intensifies, and consumption patterns transform, all of which require companies to accelerate their shift from individual efforts to multidimensional collaboration.
(Dong Zhonglang, Partner of Yinshan Capital)
How can this multidimensional collaboration unleash dividends? Kapoklog Logistics has actually explored new value driven growth with customers.
Taking the integration of B/C intelligent warehouse and distribution of a Fortune 500 brand in the fast-moving consumer goods industry as an example. With the channel transformation and BC integration trends in the fast-moving consumer goods industry, there is a growing demand for more agile and efficient supply chains.
The core of channel transformation is to finely operate orders across all channels, and the ultimate goal must be to integrate the supply chain. The cost reduction and efficiency improvement under supply chain integration is to solve problems such as transaction efficiency, delivery costs, and terminal experience.
Therefore, Kapoklog Logistics has explored a "multi warehouse integration" solution with customers, which can provide inventory integration, logistics resource sharing, multiple sorting modes in parallel, and one-stop online and offline fulfillment services for customers with multiple platforms and omni channel models.
During this transformation process, both parties were pleasantly surprised to find that the new model further optimized the layout of the layered warehouse network, resulting in a 30% reduction in customer storage area, a 10% reduction in capital occupation, a 25% reduction in inventory turnover days, and a 20% reduction in overall costs.
While reducing costs, customers have achieved the optimal inventory, highest efficiency, and fastest response supply chain model through scientific intelligent warehouse network layout and data-driven routing design.
This model is also a new connotation of Kapoklog Logistics for the new decade. Extending from logistics to the supply chain, the upstream and downstream of the industrial supply chain form strong alliances to reconstruct a new ecology of the industrial supply chain.
(Source: Kapoklog Logistics)
3. Ten years of efficiency, making the industrial chain dynamic
The first thing to break the supply chain is the old order.
As Liu Wu said, "In the current competition in the logistics industry, the key for enterprises to seize market opportunities is to break the closed and inertial dependence of the original system. Only by establishing cross departmental and cross enterprise collaborative mechanisms, breaking traditional information silos, can the potential of the industrial supply chain be maximized
It can be seen that in the process of restructuring the supply chain between Kapoklog and customers, it is actually breaking the static planning mode and turning the supply chain into a digital driven, efficient, agile, and responsive dynamic mode.
In the context of this industrial supply chain transformation, Dong Zhonglang said, "I call the next decade the 'efficiency decade'
The key point is that the supply chain is moving from "pure resource input" to "efficient resource allocation", not only competing for operational efficiency, but also making breakthroughs in green sustainability, global network collaboration, and other aspects. The supply chain should be optimized as an ecosystem, rather than limited to the small scope of the enterprise itself.
The accumulation of Kapoklog over the past 30 years has led to the formation of an efficiency iron triangle consisting of "logistics network+refined operation+data and algorithms".
From this perspective, we can roughly understand why Kapoklog can be at the forefront of this node, taking the lead in collaborating with upstream and downstream partners, perfectly resolving the development challenges faced by Hengju in the face of the enterprise, and finding new linkage models.
(Kapoklog Logistics products and services, source: Kapoklog Logistics)
Firstly, reconnect the logistics network. Kapoklog has established branch offices in over 130 cities across the country, and invested in the construction of 25 large-scale modern logistics bases in 20 central cities including Guangzhou, Shanghai, Beijing, Shenyang, Suzhou, Chengdu, Hefei, Nanjing, Shunde, Tianjin, and Xi'an, forming a nationwide business operation network and information network.
Secondly, solutions for the six major industries. In the past 30 years, Kapoklog has been deeply involved in six major industries including daily chemical supply chain, food and beverage supply chain, chemical supply chain, automotive parts supply chain, 3C home appliance supply chain, and home building materials supply chain, and has formed industry-leading solutions, which are Kapoklog's competitive barriers.
Thirdly, digital operation that connects the entire chain. After 30 years of development, Kapoklog has built a supply chain system ecosystem based on underlying technologies such as big data, Internet of Things, blockchain, SaaS, etc., covering multiple intelligent application scenarios. Starting from confirming the core operational processes, we will develop a digital workflow and build an integrated digital architecture at the three levels of process, data, and application to achieve digitalization of key touchpoints from production to consumption.
Nowadays, the transformation of the industrial supply chain is an efficiency iron triangle composed of "logistics network+refined operation+data and algorithms", which is released to the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain. It can be seen that in the process of exploring transformation with customers, Kapoklog's efficiency is enhancing their supply chain, and this competitiveness is also being released throughout the industry in the process of serving customers.
The so-called long termism must first go through cycles. Innovation and value creation have been the methodologies of Kapoklog Logistics over the past 30 years, and they are now helping them capture opportunities in the new cycle.
