DHL to handle Hitachi's global shipments
Hitachi Ltd. will contract integrated logistics company DHL Japan Inc. to ship audiovisual equipment direct from the factory to customers.
The move is in support of a new Hitachi shipping system designed to reduce inventory.
The system will be implemented in April 2004 solely for shipments of liquid-crystal display projectors to Europe. Hitachi will broaden the system to include all audiovisual products in every global market by March 2006.
The contract marks the first time that DHL has won an order to handle all global shipments of a certain class of products for a major electronics manufacturer.
By April, Hitachi and DHL will invest 100 million yen to develop a data system for automated online ordering and real-time global monitoring of shipments.
Under the new system, a customer in Europe will be able to receive an LCD projector shipped by air within 72-96 hours of ordering from a factory in Japan or China. This currently takes one to two weeks by air, and about a month by ship.
Shorter lead times will allow the firm to reduce inventory levels to one month from the current three months, helping reduce logistics costs for LCD projectors by about 15% to 1.2 billion yen.
