Direct delivery: goods delivered directly to the customer
Warehousing is associated with high costs and a corresponding organizational effort. In food retailing in particular, the decentralization of sales outlets is leading to efforts to move toward direct delivery in addition to regional central warehouses.
The principle: the goods are delivered directly from the supplier's production or warehouse to the customer or his point-of-sale (POS). In logistics, this is why it is also referred to as a one-stock strategy, since the customer does not need any intermediate goods handling and therefore no external warehouse is involved in the process. The advantages of direct supply are particularly evident when goods with a high throughput as well as a relatively constant consumption are processed in this way.
Prerequisites for direct delivery: absolute trust of business partners
For a strategy like direct supply to work, there needs to be specific agreements between retailer and supplier - as well as absolute trust that everything will be delivered as agreed. Due to the elimination of further handling steps and the associated logistics costs, direct delivery is one of the most cost-effective forms of delivery.
Central aspects in relation to direct delivery are:
- Synchronization of inventories and harmonization of delivery and sales quantities
- Saving on storage (especially intermediate storage) requires transparent, number-driven costing
- Individual goods as well as entire groups of goods are tradable
