Logistics Analysts
Do you prefer buying the things you need from online shopping sites? Have you ever thought about how online shopping and e-commerce sites actually work? Most online shopping sites are really just a middleman between the seller and the buyer. Amazon, for example, displays sellers' products, processes purchases made through the site, and handles transporting and delivering goods to customers. Every shopping site earns its profit through the commissions it takes on the thousands of purchases made through it every day. These sites can suffer huge losses if anything goes wrong with how products are displayed, payment methods, or shipping and delivery processes. That's why the companies that own shopping sites hire a specialist called a "logistics analyst" to make sure everything runs smoothly. Logistics analysts work in most factories, companies, and commercial institutions, and they're responsible for improving the processes these companies use in their operations - especially when it comes to improving the quality of service provided to customers, and finding the best ways to store and ship products.
Meet the Writer: Waleed Abo Omiraa
What You'll Actually Do
The core tasks and responsibilities that fill a typical day.
- Identify opportunities for inventory reductions.
- Monitor industry standards, trends, or practices to identify developments in logistics planning or execution.
- Enter logistics-related data into databases.
- Contact carriers for rates or schedules.
- Communicate with or monitor service providers, such as ocean carriers, air freight forwarders, global consolidators, customs brokers, or trucking companies.
- Track product flow from origin to final delivery.
- Write or revise standard operating procedures for logistics processes.
- Review procedures, such as distribution or inventory management, to ensure maximum efficiency or minimum cost.
- Recommend improvements to existing or planned logistics processes.
- Provide ongoing analyses in areas such as transportation costs, parts procurement, back orders, or delivery processes.
- Prepare reports on logistics performance measures.
- Manage systems to ensure that pricing structures adequately reflect logistics costing.
- Monitor inventory transactions at warehouse facilities to assess receiving, storage, shipping, or inventory integrity.
- Maintain databases of logistics information.
- Maintain logistics records in accordance with corporate policies.
- Develop or maintain models for logistics uses, such as cost estimating or demand forecasting.
- Confer with logistics management teams to determine ways to optimize service levels, maintain supply-chain efficiency, or minimize cost.
- Compute reporting metrics, such as on-time delivery rates, order fulfillment rates, or inventory turns.
- Interpret data on logistics elements, such as availability, maintainability, reliability, supply chain management, strategic sourcing or distribution, supplier management, or transportation.
- Apply analytic methods or tools to understand, predict, or control logistics operations or processes.
- Analyze logistics data, using methods such as data mining, data modeling, or cost or benefit analysis.
- Remotely monitor the flow of vehicles or inventory, using Web-based logistics information systems to track vehicles or containers.