Atlantic Pacific Lines’ entire operation is a Customer Order Fulfillment Process. There are many steps involved starting from the first contact with customer to the order completion with final billing. The steps are carried as followed:
Customer – Sales Representative Contact
The customer sends in a request of their shipment with
details of the origin and the final destination. Upon receiving the request,
APL’s Sales Representative gets in contact with the contracted carriers, gives
them the details and asks for a price. Since there are many contracted
carriers, there will be many different prices. APL’s Sales Representative picks
the most reasonable price with the best route and adds a few additional fees.
Then, the Sales Representative offers the customer the House Price. Now it’s up
to the customer to either decline or approve the terms and price offered. Once
the customer agrees to the terms and price offered, he/she sends in the proper
documentation of the shipment before the deadline. At the same time, when the
customer accepts the offer, the Sales Representative sends the detailed order
to the Operation Department, if the customer is an old customer; if the
customer is a new customer, the detailed order is first sent to Accounting Department
for a credit check, since APL is a business-to-business provider only.
Customer – Operation Department Contact
With a new order notification from an old customer, the
Operation Department keeps a look out for the incoming documentation. For order
received from a new customer, Operation Department also receives the details,
but with a note to wait for a credit check from Accounting Department; once the
credit check is cleared, the same lookout is used for new customer’s order. When
the shipment documents are received, the Operation employees review and process
it. In the case that the documentation is not sufficient, they get in contact
with the customer for more details. If there is enough documentation, the
processing task is completed with the final review by the Operation Manager.
With the approval from the manager, the order for the release of the containers
is issued. The customer is notified that the containers are coming. The
containers are delivered to the customer; the customer is then responsible of finish
loading the container assigned in a timely fashion. Once loading is done, APL’s
contracted carrier delivered the loaded container to the port for the
transportation of shipment to the final destination. Upon the delivery is
completed, the contracted carrier notifies APL’s Operation Department and
provides proof of delivery. The Operation Department then sends a copy of all
paperwork to Accounting Department for the final billing.
Customer – Accounting Department Contact
Accounting Department is first involved with the credit
check for new customer who put up an order with APL. It is then again
participated in the final billing when the shipment has been completed. Once
the bill is paid by the customer, the whole Customer Order Fulfillment Process
has ended.
Overall, the Customer Order Fulfillment Process used by
Atlantic Pacific Lines as daily operation seems complicated, but it can be
summarized and shortened into the Flowchart below.
Pareto Chart
Pareto Chart contains identifiable problems that customers have complained about, and uses cumulative frequency percentage to try and fix most urgent problems. Here, the nature of the problems is recognized, and the numbers of occurrence are quantifiable. The nature of the problems is listed as the most frequent occurrence to the least frequent occurrence, based on the number of occurrences. Thus, the order of the problems is Late Shipment, Damaged Property, Cost, Delivered to Wrong Address, and Delivered Wrong Size Container. As a result, Late Shipment is an utmost urgent problem to fix, in order to improve customer satisfaction.
Break Down of Many Causes that Lead to A Delay Delivery
With the steps of the Customer Order Fulfillment Process outline at the top page, one may think that the whole operation will be able to carry out smoothly. However, that is just an assumption. As much as there are many times the entire process has been carried out without much interruption, there are still multiple occasions where complications occur in between the steps that lead to the final delay in delivering the shipment. Based on the analysis using Pareto Chart, late shipment is the number one complain filed by unsatisfied customers. If APL can find out the reason why shipments have been delivered late, it will be able to take steps to make the entire process easier and smoother. Below are the many examples of complications that have occurred that caused the late delivery, classified into external and internal causes:
External Causes: (complications that occur out of the company’s control).
Environment
In today world, because of climate changes, the environment
creates lots of problems, hindering the operation’s goal for a smooth delivery.
Those many problems include stormy weather conditions, port worker strikes, port
congestion which prevent all transportation modes to make the proper progress.
Machinery
APL keeps contract with many carriers, which provide modes
of transport as well as machinery to facilitate the process. The many problems
regarding machinery that can occur are Vehicle Breakdown, Transport Vessel
Breakdown, and Insufficient Loading Machines. If the contracted carriers do not
keep up with the maintenance of the machinery, breakdown will occur. In holiday
season, shipping carriers are busy with multiples shipments, thus there may not
be enough machines at the port for loading, since everyone needs to use them.
Others
Other problems that
are out of APL’s control are Custom Inspection Delay, Road Traffic Delay, and
Air Traffic Delay. Things happen unexpectedly, and the only thing APL can do is
wait.
Internal Causes: (complications occur that the company
can prevent).
Technology
Also, as much as technology is getting more advanced, so are
the problems resulted from it. An
example of a technological breakdown is a System Software Breakdown. Every
year, there are many innovative applications created, but the hardware that
store such applications are not as progressive, thus cause problems. When the
company’s operation system is down, no work can be done, thus no customer order
can be processed.
Personnel
APL is growing. In order to fulfill more orders, APL is
looking to get into contract with many other carriers; hence as of right now,
there are an insufficient number of contracted carriers. Also, because there
are many orders and not enough people to review and process those orders,
staffs will tend to forget to follow up changes needed for the specific orders,
and the time needed to process those orders take longer.
Material
Getting sufficient proper documentation is one of the
important steps that needed to be done, before the order can be process.
However, it is not normal for customers to not send in all the needed proper
documentation. Hence, there is a longer waiting period to get all the paperwork
needed, which is a problem. Also, as stated before, APL is growing, thus there
is not enough inventory of containers on hand to fulfill customer order.
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