Monday, February 12, 2007

中国将延长30公里高速列车轨道

China will Transrapid-Strecke um 30 Kilometer verlängern


12.02.2007
Auftragsabschluss für Siemens und ThyssenKrupp so gut wie sicher
Neben dem Bau einer Teststrecke zur Entwicklung einer eigenen Magnetschnellbahn-Technologie hat sich China dazu entschlossen, die Transrapid-Strecke in Shanghai um gut 30 Kilometer zu verlängern. Wie die Online-Ausgabe des Wirtschaftsmagazins 'Capital' aus Kreisen der Shanghaier Stadtregierung erfuhr, soll die zusätzliche Trasse die bereits existierende Transrapid-Strecke beim internationalen Shanghaier Flughafen Pudong mit dem Finanzzentrum auf der Ostseite des Huangpu-Flusses und dem vor allem für Inlandsflüge benutzten Flughafen Hongqiao im Westen der Stadt verbinden.

Darauf haben sich laut 'Capital' das deutsche Transrapid-Konsortium aus ThyssenKrupp und Siemens und die Shanghai Maglev Transportation Development Co. Ltd., ein Tochterunternehmen der Shanghaier Stadtregierung, nach jahrelangen Verhandlungen geeinigt. Derzeit warten die Vertragspartner darauf, dass die Pekinger Zentralregierung den Bau genehmigt. Die endgültige Entscheidung soll noch vor dem chinesischen Neujahrsfest am 17. Februar bei einer Sitzung des Staatsrats fallen.

Für Siemens-Chef Klaus Kleinfeld wäre dies ein willkommener Image-Erfolg, auch wenn das Projekt für den Konzern wirtschaftlich relativ wenig Gewicht hat. Insgesamt beträgt das Auftragsvolumen für diesen zweiten Abschnitt etwa 1,2 Milliarden US-Dollar. Das entspricht etwa den Baukosten für die existierende Strecke. Trotzdem mussten Siemens und ThyssenKrupp nach 'Capital'-Informationen große Nachlässe geben, um im Geschäft zu bleiben. Denn die Baukosten für die Trasse sind etwa doppelt so hoch wie für die erste, weil neben dem Tunnel drei zusätzliche Stationen gebaut werden müssen und die Trasse durch die Innenstadt verläuft. Außerdem sind die Preise etwa für Stahl seit dem Bau der ersten Strecke vor fünf Jahren deutlich gestiegen.

Um die Preisanforderungen der Chinesen zu erfüllen, musste das Konsortium zustimmen, dass die zunächst 30 Zugsektionen ohne Schwebetechnik komplett in zwei chinesischen Fabriken gebaut werden. Die chinesischen Arbeiter werden in Deutschland angelernt. Nur etwa die Hälfte der Siemens-Leittechnik und die Schwebe-Kerntechnologie kommen noch aus Deutschland, lauten die 'Capital'-Informationen. Immerhin konnte sich China nicht mit seiner Bedingung durchsetzen, die gesamte Technologie übertragen zu bekommen. Die Chinesen erhalten auch die in Deutschland neu entwickelte Fahrzeugreihe 09 nicht.

Die Strecke soll spätestens bis zur Weltausstellung 2010 fertig gestellt sein. Selbst unter chinesischen Fachleuten gilt diese Planung als sehr knapp. Zwar ist es gut möglich, dass der Shanghaier Transrapid in einer weiteren Bauphase um einen dritten Abschnitt in die 175 Kilometer entfernte Sieben-Millionen-Stadt Hangzhou verlängert wird. Doch von den ursprünglichen Zielen ist das Konsortium weit entfernt. Ende der 90er Jahre waren Siemens und ThyssenKrupp angetreten, erst Shanghai und Peking mit einer Trasse von 1.200 Kilometern zu verbinden und dann das ganze Land zu vernetzen.

Web-enabled Logistics: The Road to Best-in-class Shipping Management

Web-enabled Logistics: The Road to Best-in-class Shipping Management



Best-in-class firms retain their competitive edge in a global market with new technologies that bring logistics operations in line with the rest of the company's operations
new

Today's frantic pace of globalization, fueled by rampant outsourcing, has created unprecedented complexity within the logistics process and spiraling transportation costs. A top challenge for best-in-class enterprises is taking back control of the logistics process. Firms are under tremendous pressure to create real-time logistics visibility within their organizations by closing the information gap between manufacturing and the rest of the enterprise and this pressure is increasing daily as the global business day becomes ever more frenetic. To retain their competitive edge in a global market, best-in-class enterprises are adopting new technologies that bring logistics operations in line with the rest of the company's operations to simplify delivery processes and create efficiencies that can deliver real cost savings.

Global Logistics Challenges

Historically, the field of global logistics has not benefited from long-term study or research due in large part to its nature of constant motion. Lack of formal training in the profession has exacerbated its inherent challenges. In recognition of how complex the logistics field has become, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology recently introduced a new Masters degree dedicated to logistics in the school of engineering. But those currently on the logistics battlefield have been fighting on the front lines without the benefit of formal tools they can use to handle today's complex delivery challenges.

Challenge 1: Offshoring and Outsourcing Increase Delivery Costs

With ongoing market pressure for the rapid development and deployment of goods, many companies have moved their manufacturing overseas to save costs on materials. For some best-in-class enterprises, offshore sourcing has gone from 5 percent to almost 50 percent of their materials' spend. Despite the cost-reduction gains from sourcing materials offshore, companies lacking real-time visibility across their logistics operations, together with the ability to optimize international transportation costs, can inadvertently grossly underestimate total landed costs. In addition to transportation fees, enterprises face import duties, taxes, fees, carrying costs, quality costs, supply risk and safety stock as other direct cost factors — costs that can add up to 50 percent, or more, of COGS (cost of goods sold).

Challenge 2: Globalization Impacts Shipping Lanes and Costs

Currently, there is an enormous imbalance between East-West trade. As China's trade activity has increased around the globe, the westbound shipping lanes to the United States have become congested, driving up logistics costs. On the other hand, eastbound delivery routes have been severely discounted so that empty containers can be returned to the Far East. As the world's trade activities proliferate, trade lane changes, which directly drive transportation costs, will continue to impact logistics costs.

To compound the challenge, import regulations, with their extensive use of exceptions and "provisional" rules, as well as the application of non-linear tariff formulas, make it difficult to predict logistics costs. This adds a level of complexity that makes cost certainty in these areas difficult to predict over any length of time — with actual costs often not known until the actual billing has been received.

Fluctuating trade imbalances — not only with China but all around the world — have prompted best-in-class enterprises to look for a technology solution that can provide visibility and control for wildly changeable logistics costs.

Challenge 3: Absence of Centralized Cross-Carrier Logistics Information Impedes Visibility

Many of today's logistics processes are handled manually; logistics data for freight shipments do not flow into the other operational systems of most firms, thus undermining the ability to identify trends, forecast costs or get an overview of delivery activity. Invoices, reports and miscellaneous logistics paperwork come in different formats: static PDF files, sparsely populated Excel spreadsheets, illegible receipts and more. Without data that can be easily reformatted into reports, most enterprises lack the visibility needed to make truly informed decisions about how to reduce transportation costs.

Challenge 4: Limited Resources Means Relying on 3PLs

Another challenge faced by logistics departments is dwindling staff. Because many enterprises underestimate the level of logistics sophistication that their globalization efforts demand, they downsize the one department that needs more resources — not less. Some enterprises have turned to third-party logistics (3PL) companies for help. Unfortunately, the core competency of 3PLs is to expedite traffic, not necessarily to reduce a company's transportation costs.

Challenge 5: Escalating Fuel Costs Increase Transportation Fees

Rising energy costs result in higher transportation fees for trucks, ships, trains and planes. Since enterprises cannot alter the limited supply of fuel in the world, they're turning to technology to help them mitigate other components of their logistics cost equation.

Market Conditions

Three primary forces had to converge to provide best-in-class enterprises a cost-effective, practical solution to their logistics' problems: 1) a secure, ubiquitous World Wide Web with a fast connection, allowing easy access to real-time information; 2) the ability to organize that data into a format that assists managers to make intelligent, well-informed decisions; and 3) technology advances to support permission-based access to a global user community.

Ubiquity of the Internet

Ten years ago, when the Internet was still an unproven entity, it was viewed skeptically by enterprises. Since then, dramatic improvements in firewalls, IP protocols and load-balancing tools have made the Internet more secure, reliable and scalable. Browsers are now an accepted application user interface. And high-speed access has accelerated the adoption of the Internet as a practical day-to-day business tool. Today, enterprise employees use Explorer, Netscape, Safari and other browsers to quickly search for information, buy goods and even pay bills.

Emergence of Web-based technologies

The declining costs of bandwidth have made it possible for complex technologies to be delivered over the Web. These technologies are being developed and deployed by application service providers (ASPs). Enterprises that used to invest costly resources to develop their own applications or buy off-the-shelf software solutions now subscribe to hosted applications for a fraction of the cost of older technologies.

The ASP revolution made it possible to deliver information-rich, price-comparison engines over standard Internet browsers and — this is the important benefit — start making sense of the information. One of the more effective products of this revolution was the real-time reverse auction. Overnight, anyone with an Internet connection could find product information and compare apples-to-apples costs for travel on Expedia and Travelocity or hunt for bargains on eBay. Information that had previously been held hostage by a select few was now available to everyone online. In a free information society, competition abounds.

The Next Step: SaaS

Software-as-a-Service, or SaaS, is the next evolutionary step of the ASP model. Cutter Consortium, an Arlington, Mass., research firm, states that the transformation of the software business model from packaged products — like off-the-shelf solutions — to Web-enabled subscription services like SaaS is one of the most significant present-day trends in the IT industry because of all the benefits they offer enterprises:

  • Low overhead and involvement
  • Little need for IT manpower
  • Immediate return on investment (ROI)
  • Guaranteed cutting-edge technology

SaaS applications provide support for multiple users, multiple applications and multiple platforms. Since they run on the Web, enterprise employees can use them on any computer with Internet access. The SaaS provider takes care of all updates and maintenance to the system; the enterprise is off the hook for IT support. In today's rapidly changing world, updates can be made at a moment's notice at no additional cost to users.

Indeed, best-in-class enterprises have found that using Web-based technologies can shorten their deployment times and minimize total cost of ownership (TCO) by eliminating the upfront costs of hardware, consulting support and network setup. In fact, the Gartner Group claims that application outsourcing can actually reduce TCO by 30 to 50 percent, depending on the complexity of the application.

Business Applications

Consumer applications have paved the way, but sophisticated B2B (business-to-business) applications are now becoming commonplace in the global economy. For example, Salesforce.com is being used for enterprises as large as Cisco Systems. The pharmaceutical industry has also been using the ASP model to advantage. McKesson, one of the nation's largest pharmaceutical distributors, now allows hospital and retail pharmacies to search for and order products with real-time pricing and availability data. Not only is this process saving time, money and effort, it helps deliver the right medication to the right patient every time.

Case Study: Maxim Integrated Products

Maxim Integrated Products is a multi-national leader in the design, development and manufacture of integrated circuits. The company boasts 2005 net revenues of more than $1.6 billion and over 8,000 employees across facilities in the United States, the Philippines and Thailand. Diverse geographic locations made it challenging for Maxim to control shipping and distribution. Like many best-in-class enterprises, Maxim needed help with the following:

  • Centralizing decision-making for how goods would be shipped and which carriers would be used
  • Enforcing strict parameters on shipping methods and vendor selection
  • Reducing overall costs of shipping and distribution
  • Simplifying management of volumes of weekly invoices from multiple vendors

Maxim chose to adopt a SaaS shipping and freight management solution from Agistix instead of developing proprietary software. Within hours of implementation, Maxim was able to enforce a uniform policy for shipping methods and vendor selection. Gradually, Maxim realized increased pricing visibility for small-parcel shipments and began using the spot-quote market for heavy freight. By the end of one quarter after implementing the Agistix on-demand solution, Maxim had reduced shipping costs by more than 28 percent.

Within six months, instead of processing up to 500 shipping invoices each week, Maxim began receiving a single electronic invoice for all weekly transactions. With this change alone, this world-class enterprise reduced accounts payable processing time from 70 hours per week to five minutes per week, generating savings of up to $20,000 each month.

Conclusion

Best-in-class logistics processes are now available to any enterprise. Global companies know that the operational complexities caused by globalization must be managed proactively. They realize that to remain competitive in a global environment, they must optimize their supply lines to build in more flexibility and efficiencies. The road to flexibility and efficiency is technology; in particular, technologies that unite multiple processes and systems into a common information and real-time decision support network that supports all internal and external relationships.

About the Author: Frank Cirimele is a recognized expert on global trade and the practical application of effective Global Logistics Strategies. He has represented the United States on the United Nations International Trade Procedures Working Group (UN/CEFACT ITPWG), which addresses Trade Facilitation and global e-commerce issues. This respected UN group provides strategic and functional guidance to government and business entities on maximizing the efficiencies of an automated trade and logistics environment. Frank was also selected as a private sector expert by the U.S. Department of Commerce, International Trade Administration to join the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) Committee on Electronic Commerce. www.agistix.com.

The Way you look tonight

Defence Logistics Has Become A Huge And Complex Market

Defence Logistics Has Become A Huge And Complex Market


It provides a road map to this complex and fast-changing market.

By Bharat Book Bureau -via PRLog.Org
Feb 12, 2007 04:00:56




The market for logistics services in the defence sector is huge, but at the same time it is also highly specialised. Unlike many other sectors, third party logistics providers play only a small part in a market which is dominated by the 'Systems Integrators', that is, the big weapons' manufacturers.
The market has seen fundamental changes over recent years. Previously the supply organisations of armies, navies and air forces were largely concerned with the storage and transport of ammunition, fuel and food. These concerns are still great but with manning levels in armies shrinking and the forces becoming dominated by vastly capable automated weaponry, the focus of armed forces logistics activities has shifted.

What is emerging is an emphasis on the delivery of 'capability' rather than the delivery of spares. The responsibility of maintaining a whole weapon system is moving from the armed forces towards the weapons' manufacturer. The advanced programmes propose looking towards the 'systems integrators' to handle almost all of the maintenance and logistics activities; handing over the aircraft to the air force only when it has to fly.

The impact which these ideas are having on systems' integrators is substantial. Logistics has become a central aspect of their 'offer to the market' even though these companies still view themselves as engineering specialists.

What information does European Defence Logistics 2007 contain?

Weapons systems, such as those developed by BAe, have become increasingly sophisticated.

European Defence Logistics 2007 provides a road map to this complex and fast-changing market. The report offers an ideal introduction to the opportunities which this sector presents to a wide range of different players: IT providers, contract logistics companies, freight forwarders, road and rail contractors, air cargo and shipping operators. Its in-depth examination of the sector is essential reading for defence logistics staff, consultants and analysts.

European Defence Logistics 2007 contains sections on:

- The logistics requirements, strategies and policies of the three main European
- Defence Departments: United Kingdom, France and Germany.
- The IT systems presently employed and their functionality.
- Analysis and overview of the key European systems’ integrators: Rolls Royce, Thales, Agusta Westland, BAe and EADS.
- The developing role of the third party logistics sector in the market and the key players.
- An analysis of the use of logistics in the recent Iraq War, examining its success and failures.

The report also contains a section on the logistics employed by the British Army during the Iraq War, critiquing its effectiveness and the repercussions it has had, both operationally and politically.

Insight into Defence Logistics

Source: Hungarian ITD European Defence Logistics 2007 will provide you with an insight into how the logistics strategies of the major Defence Departments have changed over the last two decades—from a focus on manpower to technologically sophisticated weapons systems with highly complex logistics requirements. The role of the private sector in maintaining these systems, once unthinkable, is now commonplace and private contractors can even be found on the front line.

However, despite being partners in NATO, the strategies of the three largest spenders in Europe: UK, France and Germany are very different. European Defence Logistics 2007 explains how they diverge and what the future for the sector holds.

Weapons Systems Manufacturers
The most important players in European Defence supply chains are the major weapons systems manufacturers: a relatively small number of high tech multinational conglomerates. Although they still see their core competency as engineering, they are increasingly involved in after sales logistics, ensuring maximum up-time for their products in what can be extreme and hostile environments.

Logistics supply side

Southern Iraq - Key Logistics Bases Logistics companies play an important role in the warehousing and transportation of equipment, product and parts in defence supply chains. As an increasing level of business is out-sourced by Defence Departments, there exist substantial opportunities for their further involvement in the sector. European Defence Logistics 2007 looks at the operations and involvement of the major European carriers, freight forwarders and contract logistics players as they seek to extend their influence in this sector.

Also included in the report is an in-depth look at the recent Iraq War and a critique of the success of the massive logistics operation involved.