How Can Essential Goods Be Better Delivered Under Seal Control? Logistics Experts Offer Six Suggestions

In this rapid transition, there are also a number of challenges that hinder the smooth flow of distribution.

As Shanghai's Pudong and Puxi areas enter closure control one after another, the food supply in the city's livelihood protection system is rapidly flattening from the usual "agricultural wholesale market-farmers' market/supermarket/electricity store-home" model to a regional direct distribution model.

The distribution teams of supermarkets and e-commerce platforms, some courier companies and volunteer teams that were originally not professional distributors, have taken on the task of distributing the daily necessities of 25 million people.

However, in this rapid transition, there are also many challenges that hinder the smooth flow of distribution. Tao Jun, Vice President of the Trade Logistics Branch of the China General Chamber of Commerce, made six suggestions on how the distribution system and distribution personnel should be managed and how the distribution software and hardware should be built during this period.

1. Immediately start to set up a backup system for urban distribution, urgently mapping the distribution resources of professional logistics service providers, super distribution companies, courier enterprises and other social forces, drawing a "business-community" pairing map according to their resource status, referring to the counterpart support model, and taking charge of the counterpart, implementing it to the community, to the enterprise, to the team and to the individual. The map will be assigned to the community, to the company, to the team and to the individual.

2. The local economy hotel in the community was requisitioned in accordance with the law, and reference was made to the "four designations, four fixes and two concentrations" (four designations: designated staff, designated service area, designated rest area and designated in-field transport vehicle; four fixes: fixed staff, fixed operation site, fixed production equipment and fixed rest area; two concentrations: fixed work-related work area and fixed rest area) during the epidemic. (four designated: designated staff, designated service area, designated rest area and designated on-site transport vehicle; four fixed: fixed working staff, fixed working site, fixed production equipment and fixed rest area; two centralised: relevant working area centralised and relevant working staff centralised) mode, distribution staff are grouped together in fixed residences according to the segregation mode and grouped in shifts according to the vertical operation mode.

In communities with abundant hotel resources, distribution teams live in hotels; in communities with few hotel resources, distribution teams live on separate floors from hotels, with antigen testing once a day and no contact with each other to reduce the chance of cross-infection and avoid the occurrence of regional distribution teams being wiped out due to cross-infection.

3. temporarily set up a number of "regional material receiving and supply centres" according to administrative divisions, population density, storage resources, spatial coverage distances and other factors to unify the receipt of stocks and additional livelihood protection materials in the region, and evaluate the counterpart logistics enterprises "WMS", "TMS", "TMS" and "TMS".

The logistics enterprises' systems such as "WMS", "TMS" and "OMS" are evaluated for availability, and with the help of their shared systems, unified storage, unified deployment, unified management and unified distribution are carried out. Improve the efficiency of distribution guarantee and reduce the loss of materials caused by multiple disorder. Note: WMS refers to Warehouse Management System, TMS refers to Transport Management System, OMS refers to Order Management System].

4. The community selects IT personnel among volunteers according to the differences in the IT systems of the corresponding distribution service providers, and the distribution service providers open temporary terminals and grant temporary work numbers to the corresponding volunteers. "This improves the efficiency of demand information flow, reduces waste and makes use of real data. This not only reduces waste, but also makes use of real data to improve the coupling of supply and demand, and reduces the imbalance in the quantity, type and timeliness of material distribution across the city.

5. Referring to the model of "medical and nursing staff from all over the world helping Shanghai", we will use national logistics and express companies (such as China Post Logistics, China Logistics Group, SF, Jingdong, SCT, etc.) to prepare backup distribution resources and set up a distribution reserve team in advance and nearby, so as to prepare software and hardware, fully loaded and staffed, so that once needed, they can enter Shanghai in time and quickly.

6. adjust the existing distribution system according to the development of the epidemic and the actual situation of the distribution system, and appoint a qualified and professional third party to take over the existing administrative-led distribution system, so that professionals can do professional work and government departments can be transformed from operators to supervisors.

The cost of the enterprise during this period will be reasonably compensated according to the business volume (distribution, sub-assembly, delivery and other parameters) after the epidemic has stabilised.