On the Characteristics and Development Trend of Distribution of Chain Enterprises in China
I. Development of Retail Chain
The retail industry, which is characterized by chaining, informatization, and scaling, is developing rapidly, and it has become the pillar industry of today's social economy. At present, as far as sales are concerned, retail enterprises have surpassed manufacturing, financial services, information and other types of enterprises and become the world's first, which was unimaginable in the past. And among them, the application of chain of this advanced form of business organization is a core factor that today's commodity retail enterprises can develop to such a large scale. The development of chain business in China has not been a long time, but has gradually become a main force in the commercial retail industry. In recent years, the sales growth of chain enterprises has been above 50%, and it is expected that in 2003, China's top 100 chain enterprises will realize sales of 350 billion yuan, the total number of stores will reach about 20,000, and the sales of the top 100 chain enterprises will account for more than 8.0% of the total retail sales of social consumer goods. The gradually expanding sales scale of chain enterprises makes chain commercial enterprises play an increasing role in the supply chain and gives a great impetus to the modernization of China's circulation. The essence of chain enterprises is five unity, namely, unified procurement, unified distribution, unified accounting, unified logo, unified management. And the unified distribution is an important part of the core competitiveness of chain enterprises.
Second, the chain of several characteristics of commercial logistics
Relative to industrial logistics, commercial retail logistics, especially the chain of commercial logistics features:
1. Price change quickly: that is, the price of goods in the fast-acting changes: usually chain supermarkets operating in the fast-moving consumer goods prices along with the changes in the market demand and supply will be faster changes, while the manufacturer or retailer's promotions caused by frequent Frequent price changes.
2. Frequent orders: retail chains have many stores, high order frequency, and time requirements, some small convenience stores even require delivery twice a day.
3. Zero: suppliers of large packages of supplies, distribution centers need to be in accordance with the store's order quantity for zero, sorting.
4. Returns: Distribution centers also deal with issues such as gifts, returns (genuine, defective).
5. Replacement: the frequency of new merchandise elimination is also very high, increasing new products, elimination of slow-moving products.
6. Shelf life: consumer goods usually have different shelf life, the need for targeted shelf life management. Third, the main chain of commercial logistics
1. Large retailers to establish their own logistics and distribution centers
In the international arena, representative of large retailers as the dominant establishment of logistics and distribution centers of enterprises is Wal-Mart. At present, Wal-Mart has independently invested in the establishment of more than 200 distribution centers, specifically for the company's chain stores on time and on-demand provision of goods to ensure the stability of the operation of the store. Carrefour, Metro, Sears, Gisborne and other major international retailers, have established their own system of modern logistics and distribution centers.
Some of China's large-scale chain companies have their own logistics and distribution centers, the main reason is that a considerable number of chain companies in China are from the traditional food companies, vegetable companies, grain stores, and other ancillary outlets on the basis of the establishment of up. These traditional enterprises, are very rich in sites, facilities and equipment, personnel and other basis for the establishment of distribution centers, this form of distribution has a larger proportion. In most of these logistics and distribution centers, the degree of information technology and mechanization is low, mainly relying on manual operation, distribution efficiency and response speed to the store is low. However, there are some large-scale enterprises with a high level of logistics distribution centers. For example, Hualian Supermarket Distribution Center: Shanghai Hualian Supermarket's distribution center has a building area of 20,000 square meters, an inventory capacity of 900,000 boxes, a daily throughput capacity of 190,000 boxes, and can park 80 freight trucks at the same time, with a service radius of 250 kilometers, which is one of the more advanced distribution centers of domestic chain enterprises at present. The distribution center has high technical content: (1) the center adopts the warehousing system combining high-level three-dimensional shelves and picking shelves for detached commodities; (2) the use of forward-moving battery forklifts, electric trucks, electric picking trucks and trays, to realize the mechanization of loading, unloading and transporting operations; (3) the dispensing of detached commodities electronically. Adopt electronic label picking system and use electronic labeling equipment. After the store order is entered into the computer, the goods position indicator and variety display immediately shows the picking goods in the shelves of the specific location and quantity, the operator can easily take out the goods, ordering goods with all the goods into the stocking link, greatly improving the speed and reducing the error rate.
2. Supplier-managed logistics
Direct commodity distribution by the supplier, this distribution method is mainly applicable to large-scale stores, large-scale procurement of supermarkets. Such as some of the domestic hypermarkets and integrated supermarket companies, they are determined by the headquarters of the unified supplier, the store to the supplier to ask for goods. By the supplier direct delivery of goods to the store. The advantages of this direct delivery by the supplier is: greatly reduce the cost of chain enterprises and the complexity of the operation, so generally speaking, small and medium-sized chain enterprises mainly rely on suppliers to provide commodity distribution. But this distribution of high operating costs, and the distribution of the store's response speed by the supplier's logistics level of restriction, but also depends on the store and the supplier of information exchange efficiency.
3. Third-party logistics
In recent years, due to the increasingly fierce competition in the international distribution industry, some of the international big retailers gradually try to operate based on the main business, take the road of professional development, and gradually will be the enterprise's logistics and distribution business entrusted to the community of professional logistics and distribution enterprises to serve their own services, the development trend is becoming more and more obvious. Such as Japan's 7 - 11 convenience store business enterprises and Ito-Yokado, the United States, many single supermarkets. Especially in Japan, single decentralized retail stores account for about 90% of the total number of stores, out of competition, these retailers mainly rely on third-party logistics for commodity distribution.
China's current manufacturers use third-party logistics more, their products through the third-party logistics company to the retailer's distribution center or regional center. Not many retailers use third-party logistics, but there are some supermarket chains that are trying to use third-party logistics. One of them is our Beijing Wumart Group Company. Since 2001, Wumart has commissioned Hwangtianbai to carry out logistics and distribution for its stores. Wumart has more than 300 convenience stores and supermarkets in Beijing, and Hutchison is a professional third-party logistics company with a large market share in Europe. Wumart has partnered with HWT to distribute to its 200 convenience stores. The distribution center has a warehouse area of 10,000 square meters, an annual distribution capacity of 5 million boxes and a distribution amount of 1 billion yuan, which can meet the distribution requirements of 200 convenience stores for dry goods once every two days. Logistics costs account for about 2% of sales. The key performance indicators are: supplier delivery timeliness, receiving efficiency, store order fulfillment rate, picking efficiency, return on time rate, inventory discrepancy rate, and order document delivery timeliness. Wumai's experience in applying third-party logistics: