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A perspective from Dawn Boulden about the fast moving hi-tech industry and the importance of having a logistics provider with the expertise to keep pace.

In today's fast-paced hi-tech industry, customer service and supply chain management have evolved to become crucial competitive factors. So crucial, in fact, the industry can't survive without them. The solution we bring to the hi-tech industry is the internal knowledge of the market's dynamics, the global infrastructure to support it, and a staff of professionals who are logistics - and hi-tech - experts.

As we all know in the tech game, leading edge products become obsolete in a very short period of time, access to capital can change quickly, and opportunities to take advantage of low cost sourcing alternatives are everywhere.

That means today, when a company chooses a supply chain provider, the ability to act quickly, identify processes, establish supply chain infrastructure, and have complete visibility to inventory is now a "must have" for long term success. The only differentiation today between one hi-tech product and another can be the logistics infrastructure supporting it.

Think for a moment about the typical sourcing, manufacturing, and retailing patterns for high tech companies. It almost always involves regional and global sourcing, and expansion into new international markets. It's all about flexible entry and exit on a global basis and about quickly developing infrastructure to take advantage of new sourcing partnerships and, most important, to have global coordination and visibility of the supply chain.

Global visibility is now the price of admission, and what it means is having the capability to track everything, manage everything from PO's to JIT deliveries throughout the world in a web-enabled environment, with direct interface to customer ERP systems or via a stand alone PC based system. And the reality is, very few global logistics providers can say they have this capability.

Another major consideration and a big change in the hi-tech world is the increased use of vendor managed inventory or VMI. We currently operate more than fifteen global VMI programs, because customers take ownership of the components only when they are released from the inventory hub to their product lines. This enables them to operate in a JIT environment and not take actual ownership of the goods until they're ready for manufacture.

Another trend is merge-in-transit, where logistics providers like BAX bring various components into a central point for a single assembly. This eliminates the need to carry large inventories and reduces the number of assembly facilities. Still another is configuration, a process allowing customers to simplify manufacturing into a single version for export and then having the final customization done in the country of destination. Finally, all of this is followed by transportation management, or the optimization of distribution programs to ensure the best combination of price and mode-neutral service is used.

Let Schenker/BAX become part of your integrated global logistics planning process, and we can help you maintain as well as increase your competitive advantage in today's dynamic hi-tech environment.