Third-party logistics provider Panalpina has added logistics manufacturing services to its operations for a large telecoms company in Brazil.
The Swiss forwarder said this is part of the changing role of logistics companies, which are now not just transporting goods but taking more ownership and responsibility for their customer’s supply chains.
“Some logistics companies now provide value-added services that take on more of a manufacturing role in the supply chain,” a company release said.
At a facility near São Paulo, Panalpina now handles assembly, warehousing, and outbound delivery of telecoms equipment for its customer. The 32,000-square-meter facility replaces five separate warehouses that the customer used to operate, one for each section of its supply chain.
With a 3PL company spearheading manufacturing, some order cycle processes can be run in parallel instead of in a sequence, greatly reducing order fulfillment times, the company said.
The five sections of the customer’s supply chain are terminals (cell phones, tablets, modems), spare parts for terminals, semi-knocked down (SKD) assembly, finished goods, and spare parts for finished goods.
“Adding logistics manufacturing services to our offering is a major part of our strategy, and is the future of our industry. It allows us to deliver faster time-to-market while cutting costs,” explained Mike Wilson, global head of logistics at Panalpina. “We want to set the benchmark for fully integrated, value-added logistics and raise expectations of what a logistics service provider can do.”
