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Using Maps to Visualize the Global Supply Chain

By Ko Fai Godfrey Ko

Republish: EasyPublish™ Published: 25Aug2011 Word count: 524 Viewed: 78 time(s) Get Free Content For Your Site

Interactive and online maps have proven to offer many benefits to business and corporations, as well as to end users and consumers. Maps can be tailored to highlight sales and customer information by region, to provide accurate searches and directions, and much more. In terms of corporate benefit from online and interactive maps, there are a number of potential uses. Here, we will examine the potential uses for interactive maps for logistics professionals and how they can help make it easier to visualize the global supply chain and thus to create a more efficient flow of products and supplies.

Logistics and the Use of Maps as a Visualization Tool

One of the most difficult tasks for any logistics team is to find and establish the most effective and efficient global, state, regional, and local supply chain. Getting inventory or employees from point A to point B is about more than just picking a starting point and a direction. Depending on your business, you may need to consider everything from transit time to climate, customs ports, traffic, allowance for oversized vehicles, and more. Interactive maps make this task much easier by enabling you to make planning a visual experience.

With interactive maps to help you plan your supply chain, you can highlight potential routes as well as areas where certain factors could have an impact. You can find the best customs ports, the roads that provide the fastest transit times for vehicle fleets, or the airports that provide the best destination in terms of travel time to distribution centers as well as cost. Whatever your needs as a logistics planner, you will find that interactive maps make it easier to physically see your options and to plan accordingly.

Plan Logistics on All Levels

With quality interactive maps, it is possible to plan every area of your supply chain with greater accuracy. Examining the best international routes for trucks, flights, and ships can be accomplished with greater ease, and you can even use features that will help you look at the average time spent with customs at major ports or destinations. Planning on a national level offers the ability to view various highways and interstates, considering vehicle weight allowances, the number of mandatory weigh stations, and speed, while also allowing you to factor in anything from average fuel prices to speed limits. Even on a local level, these maps make it easier to identify traffic patterns and to find the best routes for drivers coming from distribution centers to various locations within a region.

A More Efficient Supply Chain Means More Money and Less Hassle

The bottom line, of course, is that the more efficient your overall supply chain, the more effective and profitable your business will be. Interactive maps help make the entire planning process a visual one, offering satellite or traditional map images as well as the ability to overlay the map with various data and information. With such valuable resources to aid in the process, creating a more efficient supply chain becomes a far simpler task to accomplish.

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