Transport and Logistics

Transport and Logistics (T&L) activities act as the veins and arteries of industry, keeping the essential lifeblood of business flowing and the heartbeat of commerce beating. T&L involves complex business disciplines that require interactions between many different departments within a business, as well as their partners, suppliers and customers. They have also become a hightechnology activity: a variety of transport and warehouse management technologies and software applications are now associated with the movement of goods from the material supplier to the manufacturer to the end customer.

Businesses need to streamline costs, increase revenue streams and comply with legislation. Companies thatprovide logistic services can significantly reduce shippers’ spending on goods warehousing and transportation. By adopting GS1 Standards, the efficiency and visibility of T&L operations of supply chain stakeholders can be improved.

With increasing globalization and trade liberalization, there has been an increasing need for the actors in the supply chain (manufacturers and material suppliers, retailers, logistic service providers and carriers) to move towards more integrated and collaborative relationships.These business parties aim to achieve greater benefits of interoperability and improve visibility of the supply chain flows. Representatives of the three groups working on transport and logistics - GS1 Logistics Forum, GS1 EPC TLS IUG and Customs group –  got together to create the Integrated Transport and Logistics Industry User Group (T&L IUG). GS1 established the T&L Industry User Group (IUG), a voluntary group consisting of manufacturers, retailers, and logistics solution providers from across the globe, to lead and implement GS1 Global standards in Transport & Logistics. By working with this user group GS1 can be certain that it is tackling the issues and challenges that really matter to industry. The group is working now on defining its Strategy and Roadmap of activities for a short and long term.

With GS1 Standards as the basis for their operations and services, transportation and logistics teams can standardize information and automate its collection and this leads to much greater efficiency in transport and warehousing. Using GS1 Standards means that you can be sure that the information about each part of the process is reliable. It gives much better visibility of goods throughout the supply chain, including being able to track every stage and trace shipments back to their origin. There is also much better security throughout every step of the process, which guards against theft and, in some areas, can also help with regulatory compliance.

Adopting GS1 standards has sustainability benefits, since improved efficiency in transportation means reduced CO₂ use and full traceability of goods ensures better social responsibility. Finally, the improved efficiency ultimately leads to greater profitability, since the right goods get to the right place at the right time.

With GS1’s voluntary, user-designed standards, companies in the transportation and logistics sector can work more efficiently, more economically, more sustainably and more competitively. There are a variety of success stories from transportation and logistics teams who have successfully used the GS1 System of standards to face their challenges and meet their objectives which appear in the brochure “GS1 in Transport, Logistic and Customs”.