Four foreign-owned companies have been named Malaysia’s best logistics service providers in theareas of automotive, pharmaceutical, retail, fast-moving consumer goods and information
technology/electronics by consulting firm Frost & Sullivan.They named Germany-based Schenker as Malaysia’s Best Automotive Logistics Service Provider inits annual 2006 Asean 4 Logistics Awards. Swiss logistics group Kuehne & Nagel AG was votedBest Pharmaceutical Logistics Service Provider, while Germany’s DHL took both the Best RetailLogistics Service Provider and the Best Fast Moving Consumer Goods Logistics Service Providerawards. The best IT/Electronics Logistics Service Provider award was won by Japan’s Nippon ExpressCo Ltd.
Frost & Sullivan recently honored top logistics firms in five major sectors from Indonesia,Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand at its Asean 4 Logistics Awards based on Voice of the Customerresearch. Sectors included were automotive, pharmaceutical, retail, fast-moving consumer goods andIT/electronics. “In determining the winner, it is not the size of the company that matters, butrather the quality of service in meeting its customers’ expectation that is important,” Frost &Sullivan director of transportation for Asia-Pacific, Kavan Mukhtyar, said in a statement.
He added that the award recipients were judged by 25 evaluation parameters, which include therange of services provided, industry expertise, speed and consistency of service, warehousefacilities, level of integration of supply chain and end-to-end process data capturing and sharing.Mukhtyar said from the research, about 41% of the end-users surveyed were satisfied with theoverall quality of service provided by the logistics service providers. He also said 43% of theend-users surveyed were satisfied with the data accuracy in the information service of theirlogistics service providers. “Overall, quality and consistency of services were the main criteriathat end-users looked at in selecting their logistics service providers in the Asean 4 awards,” headded.
Mukhtyar also said that functions such as packing, labelling and quality assurance are likely tobe outsourced more in the future. “Logistics service providers should develop greater expertise inspecialised services like order processing, transaction management and quality assurance,” he said,adding that transportation has the highest potential to be outsourced.
As such, logistics service providers need to gain expertise in advanced transportation systemsand fleet management. Frost & Sullivan estimate that the outsourced logistics market in Aseanis expected to grow 9.9% to US$14.8 billionthis year from US$13.5 billion in 2005. “The region’soutsourced logistics market in 2005 represented 37.5% of the total logistics market, which includesthe spending on logistics managed in-house by the companies,” Mukhtyar said. He added that theoutsourced logistics market is expected to experience a growth of 10.2% in 2007 reaching a revenuefigure of US$16.4 billion.
