subject: Services Of Cross-docking [print this page] Businesses are becoming leaner and more flexible with each passing day. The pressures for entrepreneurs to focus their core capabilities have resulted in such organizations where functions such as marketing or internal audit have been outsourced to organizations which are more able to do so or, in other words, have their core competences involved in performing those specific functions.
A Cross-docking service, as provided by many New Jersey delivery service organizations, is in line with such an evolution of entrepreneurship. Essentially, a cross-docking is referred to a process where a finished product is taken from its manufacturing facility and delivered to the customer with minimal or no stocking or handling in between. The advantage of cross-docking is two-fold; one is that the manufacturing organization shrugs off the cost of handling and storage on its part leading to incurrence of lower costs benefits. Secondly, the pattern of production changes to demand chain from supply chain.
The cross-docking service receives items at one end and readily or after a pause of minimal amount of time, ships those items to their desired destination from another end. The system works in a very simple and subtle way; the goods being received on one end are pre-destined to reach a customer meeting his or hers refill order. In this way throughput is increased and stock levels are kept at their lowest; the brighter side of this is that, only the actual demand is met and resources are not locked or wasted in producing unwanted items.
The function of a warehouse under the concept of cross docking is reduced to distribution center rather than a collection and holding center. Under this system the chain of goods is pulled by the retailer; it is a demand pulled chain. There are various services that are offered in such centers by New Jersey delivery service organizations; they divide and send the goods off to respective clients and load and unload items to or from vehicles designated by the clients.
The various benefits of the cross-docking services make it ideal for fast paced and forward looking organizations. It provides a way of efficiency through which businesses can cut costs, increase their quality and boost their profits. Furthermore, the entire system can work as a separate unit, servicing the transportation and demand needs of various industries; Dell Corporation is a classic example of such an innovation, as the organization does not maintain inventory and simply ships the items demanded directly to the retailers or customers.
