Skip to main content

E-commerce Companies & Logistics Management

There are lots of articles available online for studying the details of how the logistics of any e-commerce company work. I won’t share a specific logistics management process of Flipkart but yes, the following process is almost same with what Flipkart follows in their logistics division.
So nowadays e-commerce companies maintain their own firm to fulfill requirements of customers. Flipkart has WS Retail for the same. Apart from this, they have independent sellers who provide products. Now for any e-commerce firm, there could be two processes to fulfill the customer order and which are:
  1. Seller - pickup hub - mother hub - delivery hub - Customer
  2. Fulfillment centres - mother hub - delivery hub - Customer
Now, when a customer orders something on the site then the seller gets the order on the web kiosk being maintained between seller and e-commerce firm. Once, the seller accepts the order for delivery, he/she clicks web kiosk for acknowledgement of the same. In order to maintain a proper process for processing orders, e-commerce firms set some time from which they calculate time given to the seller to ship the product. In this case, we’ll consider it as 11 AM that if a seller gets the order before 11 AM then he/she has to ship the order within next two days. In another case, if a seller gets order after 11 AM then he/she has to ship the order in next three days because the count of that day would get nullified. One all this happens, the seller will prepare the order accordingly for shipping to pick up hub. Now for the shipment of product from seller’s location to pickup could happen in two ways:
  1. Logistics firm owned by e-commerce itself (for example, e-kart of Flipkart)
  2. Third party logistics (3PL) firm
Now assuming that logistics firm is being owned by e-commerce firm itself so product movement would happen with the help of that firm (name it as XYZ). Once, the products reach pickup hub, there sorting would happen in following terms:
  1. Next day delivery/Same day delivery
  2. Local delivery
  3. Zonal delivery
  4. National normal delivery
  5. National express delivery
Sellers are two types:
  1. Normal Sellers who provide only 20% of the products. (They generally use bikes)
  2. Golden/Express Sellers who provide 80% of the products. (They use vans)
Sorting at pickup generally happens with the help of barcode scanning (generally). From pickup hub, products get shipped to mother hub and further sorting happens there. As mentioned earlier, there are two processes to deliver product to a customer, so at the mother hub, fulfillment centres are attached (which are basically for maintaining inventory and are generally being taken care by e-commerce owned seller firms like WS Retail of Flipkart). From mother hub, the process is same for both the processes.
Sorting at mother hub happens in two ways:
  1. Primary sorting
  2. Secondary sorting
From mother hubs, products are shipped to delivery hubs where sorting happens pin code wise. And from there on, deliveries are being made. Now delivery time being given to customers is based on this whole process. I have explained where the generic process which is almost same in all e-commerce firms in one or the other way. Take the example of Seller, he/she is taking two days to ship the product, then pick up & mother hub will take another two days to process the order and then delivery hub one more day to ship the product means: Total delivery time = 2+2+1+delay allowance, so consider one day more Therefore, Total delivery time = 2+2+1+1 = 6 days to deliver ABC product to customer. This process looks very simple the way I have written, but in reality, it’s very complex. A lot of factors and issues are being ignored while writing this process. It’s totally based on what generally e-commerce firms follow to manage their logistics processes.

 For further reading:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I respect my identity!

"Hey! I guess, sometimes you find it hard to understand things because you wear big cloth on your head and things don't reach your mind because of that cloth ..... " she said and started laughing. She was not anyone else but a senior professor of my college with a good number of degrees and even she has written one book.  In short, she made fun of my look, my identity, my uniqueness and my faith in a set of principles I follow. I don't want to bring any religion into this conversation because for me religion is about controlling one's hatred and accepting others in their true forms. I haven't learnt religion to pray to God aloud in speakers at 4 AM in the morning so that everyone in the colony must know what I'm doing or to hurt people in the name of God. I have learnt religion to control my inner self and anger so that my actions are not driven by my perception but better by my observations. I look different, people stare at me when I ente...
2 comments
Read more

An affair with Domestic Violence: A short note

Domestic violence plays a very crucial role in one's personality development particularly when you're on a victim side. For types of domestic violence, check: Domestic Violence in India My family faced domestic violence due to my father. I'm 26 and since the very first day, I started understanding worldly affairs I have witnessed my father abusing my mother every day. She has endured a lot. He has always been an alcoholic and a loser in his life. He married at the age of 22 when my mother was 18 and after one year I was born. My brother was born after two years. Post-1992, my father never took responsibility of my family. He was in an automotive spare parts sale and repair business in which he lost hold with time and started drinking too much as a solution to face failure. It was a daily routine of my family wherein he would come home and ill-treat my mother. A lot of times my mother tried to support him so that he could stop drinking and focus on starting somethi...
2 comments
Read more

Pro-BLEMS

These days describing problems have become so easy that you can convince someone with your hard defined situations. If we talk about learning things through hardships! What will you do, when things are becoming so confused that you have no choice than blaming others for your present state. I am not getting this or that, because you all are stupid! I never have had the chance to explore things because of you! My life has become miserable because of you! I am tired of this life and I can't tolerate all this fucking shit! Blah! Blah! Blah!.... These questions are usually signs of one's problematic situation or so called life with hardships. When we read something about motivation or self help, we usually get happy about life and pretend things acting lively all-around. This is a reality in today's world where everyone is looking for reasons to smile, laugh, live and stay. Living life has become more difficult than before. We are more concerned about money than happine...
2 comments
Read more