Explain the main factors affecting the supply of transport services for a transport mode of your choice I would

like talk about rail of transport services. what are the factors might affect railway,let's see the characteristics of it. At passenger transport side, provide a speedy means of transport over middle to long distance, and into and out of congested cities and towns. Also it can carry large volumes of passengers in anenvironmentally acceptable way and is able to compete favorably with air on certain domestic routes. At the fright transport side comparative advantage over road for bulk shipments of basic products and for container traffic over longer distance. there are interchange limitations for certain types of potential traffic. Increasingly used fir intra-EU loads. After know these information above that I think infrastructure may affect it, for example if there are some damage of rail, the rail transport services can not operate, also if they meet some natural accident,like coast,Niagara and so on,those accident will stop the rail and it need a long time to fix the rail. In another hand, the factors of economic also can influence it. For example , with the income of people increasing, people may think about to use rail or not, some of them think about maybe rail will be more quickly than other transports services, because their are lower congestion and may lower price, and then they can save more money. Also they may think about, use rail transport services may waste the time, because almost use railway to transport some things need full capacity, if not the cost of railway will increase, so they need to wait, and also there will be some risks, like the natural accidents.So according to the opportunity cost, they may choose use car or another transport services. Also maintain rail, how to operate rail transport will effect it . etc. I am not sure about my answer is right or not, I tried to understand the question and answer it,Mr Chris can you give me some suggestion. Barriers to Entry Barriers to entry: the technical or economic factors preventing firms from entering an industry and competing with existing firms Barriers to entry in transport include i Legal monopoly eg a eg Train Operating Companies have been given a regional monopolies with a time-limited franchise by law i Vertical integration: where by acquiring suppliers or distributors a firm can exclude rivals from a producing a product or supplying a market i Predatory pricing where established firms lower price to force competitors into losses and so force their withdrawal from industry eg Laker Airways Skytrain no frills transatlantic route i Economies of scale. Initially, new entrants with low output cannot enjoy the same economies of scale and low unit costs of established firms i Large potential sunk costs deter new entrants from risking entry i Branding establishes products as unique. New entrants require expensive advertising to establish sales deters entrants Monopolists sustain abnormal profits by blocking potential entrants. Barriers to entry largely determine the degree of competition in a market. Transportation cost nearly accounts for 15 to 35% of total cost of products or imported. There is direct relation between cost, speed and flexibility with the choice of transport. The cost decrease as we go from air to road transport, to rail transport, to waterways. The freight charges depend upon type of material, size, bulk, fragility and packing. Transportation cost reductionImporter can achieve greater reduction in cost through effective use of lowest cost transportation with the most satisfactory services. Following point may consider-

(a) It is possible to reduce the transportation cost by appropriate choice of (b) Mode of transport, route selection and management of claim. The supplier should be told clearly about shipment not confirming to importer's specifications on packing, handling, documentation and delivery time etc. Resilience Reduces Risk Economic problems, political risks and environmental disasters can cause significant harm to companies investing in emerging markets and growing their global supply chains. This overview offers insights to executives on how they can build supply chains that are resilient enough to withstand unexpected disruptions and help their organization to excel. Resilience in the Supply Chain A lack of resilience, flexibility or slack in the supply chain leads to a brittleness that hampers the ability to respond effectively to inevitable problems or disasters, says Simon Ellis, director of the Supply Chain Strategies Practice at IDC Manufacturing Insights. By the same token, do we create unnecessarily complicated responses to these problems or to complexity? Supply chain managers have historically concerned themselves with running a tight ship. Excess inventory or capacity was to be eliminated. Sweat the assets might have been the motto. But to use Ellis's word, a certain brittleness often results, and when a big event occurs, you may find your supply chain running down. So while there remains the need to manage for cost control, efficiency and risk, Let's be more aware of where we have some flexibility, where we need to have some slack so that when things inevitably go wrong, we can be more resilient and not be shut down for six weeks or more. Ellis speaks of complexity versus complication. The former is inherent in the supply chain. We run a global supply network with long lead times, with lots of suppliers and customers, and that creates a level of complexity. You can't do a lot about that at the end of the day. How you respond to that complexity is where the complication comes in. How do we react to it? Do we create unnecessarily complicated business processes, unnecessarily complicated IT infrastructure what are the things we do as a result of that complexity? The order of the day may be to simplify, but how? Clearly, processes have to be studied. More practical analytics programs may be needed. New technology? You don't want to buy an application for the sake of a buying an application, Ellis says. You buy something to solve a business problem and which has a good ROI. Better planning and warehouse management systems are among the technology needs many companies have. These are very useful to supply chain organizations. You have significant capability gaps if you don't have them. High quality global journalism requires investment. Please share this article with others using the link below, do not cut & paste the article. See our Ts&Cs and Copyright Policy for more detail. Email ftsales.support@ft.com to buy additional rights. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a2a14824-df88-11e0-845a00144feabdc0.html#ixzz1fHUrrcOh

Anyone wishing to see a physical example of the perpetual drive to streamline, make more efficient and generally drive down the costs of moving goods around the world could do no better than visit the go-downs clustered around Hong Kongs container port. Resembling multi-storey car parks, these big, multilayered warehouses take advantage of the regions easy-going customs regulations to sort shipments of goods coming from China, where rules are stricter. Staff in the dingy warren of rooms offer a number of services, packaging, sorting and dispatching goods for containers leaving the port, one of the worlds busiest. The logistics companies operating in the go-downs have been grappling with a world that has grown far more wary of risk since the sharp economic slowdown of 2008.

According to logistics executives and experts, most customers are newly focused on ensuring they hold only strictly necessary levels of stock, and order goods only when they need them, having found themselves, amid the downturn, with large volumes of stock that proved nearly impossible to sell. Yet logistics companies find providing slicker, just-in-time services has become more difficult because of the slowing down of some transport modes particularly container ships. One upshot of the changes in customer behaviour could be to accelerate the slow shift of some distribution and sorting activities away from consumer countries and towards places such as Hong Kong. As such, the containers that emerge from the go-downs are increasingly stuffed not with shipments of single commodities but with batches of goods, packed in the order they will be unloaded at shops or factories in Europe or North America. Mark Parsons, vice-president of business development in the UK and Ireland at DHL Supply Chain, says there are significant financial advantages to doing away with the need to take goods out of containers before delivery in consuming countries. Retailers are trying to do distribution offshore, Mr Parsons says. Its a lot cheaper. The challenge is to ensure when the mix of goods each shop or factory will receive is decided three or four weeks in advance that this mix remains appropriate. They have to get their demand forecasting a lot better, Mr Parsons says of his customers. Otherwise youre having to put a lot of stuff on planes to make up for the fact youve got the wrong stuff on the ship. Whatever the difficulties in the post-crisis world, there is little doubt that many aspects of the logistics industry became out of kilter during the period of high growth before the 2008 crash. Operators grew used to rushing goods at the highest possible speed to make up for the delays that overstretched ports, railways and other transport facilities were all but certain to impose. The result was an industry with high fuel costs but still relatively low reliability. Speed of delivery which, during the boom prompted the development of superfast container ships is a far lower priority now, because of high fuel prices. Reliability and punctuality have become more important. Nearly all container shipping lines now run their vessels far more slowly. Alan Braithwaite, a logistics consultant, says the signs are that ship speeds may never be increased again and journey times between Asia and Europe will be permanently two to three days longer. People are beginning to look at whether they need to take that time out [instead] through the way they plan or schedule things, Mr Braithwaite says. According to Mr Parsons, DHLs customers are now far more interested in using tracking technology which can tell them precisely where the ship carrying their container is at sea, for example to try to enhance the efficiency of the final delivery. While other parts of the chain have slowed down, the speed of final delivery from port or warehouse to shop or factory has increased, Mr Parsons says. What we have is a lot more agility around the sourcing package that companies are using, Mr Parsons says. The question of shifting the sorting of goods towards manufacturing areas and away from consuming areas is part of the complex calculations logistics providers and their clients must make.

Cost savings from slimming down rich-world distribution centres will be squandered if stores constantly find themselves either short of the fastest-selling items or stuck with excess summer dresses in autumn, for example. The potential for pitfalls means that Mr Braithwaite, while he sees opportunities for origin warehousing, doubts it will become widespread. Most of the companies we work for havent been able to make it fly, he says. But people are definitely looking at it. Theres no question. Hong Kongs origin warehousing also illustrates the unrelenting pressure on the operators of the go-downs and other logistics facilities. For years, its facilities had a near monopoly on the most complex sorting and packing tasks because southern mainland Chinas customs officers made it so complicated to do such business there. However, southern China is now beginning to relax its rules to win some of the business. It is a sign of how elusive competitive advantage in logistics can be. And the pressure is only likely to intensify, according to Mr Braithwaite, if the world economy slips once again into recession and logistics operators find themselves struggling to cope with declining traffic. Customer service is the provision of service to customers before, during and after a purchase. According to Turban et al. (2002),[1] Customer service is a series of activities designed to enhance the level of customer satisfaction that is, the feeling that a product or service has met the customer expectation." Its importance varies by products, industry and customer; defective or broken merchandise can be exchanged, often only with a receipt and within a specified time frame. Retail stores often have a desk or counter devoted to dealing with returns, exchanges and complaints, or will perform related functions at the point of sale; the perceived success of such interactions being dependent on employees "who can adjust themselves to the personality of the guest," [2]according to Micah Solomon quoted in Inc. Magazine. From the point of view of an overall sales process engineering effort, customer service plays an important role in an organization's ability to generate income and revenue.[3] From that perspective, customer service should be included as part of an overall approach to systematic improvement. A customer service experience can change the entire perception a customer has of the organization. Some have argued[4] that the quality and level of customer service has decreased in recent years, and that this can be attributed to a lack of support or understanding at the executive and middle management levels of a corporation and/or a customer service policy. To address this argument, many organizations have employed a variety of methods to improve their customer satisfaction levels, and other KPIs Connecting Communities: Expanding Access to the Rail Network is a 2009 report by the Association of Train Operating Companies(ATOC) identifying potential expansion of the National Rail passenger railway network in England, primarily through the construction or re-opening of railway lines for passenger services, and the construction or re-opening of up to 40 new passenger railway stations.[1][2]

The report was published on 15 June 2009, and identified 14 commercially viable schemes involving new passenger lines, requiring the definite re-opening or construction of at least 30 new stations. These schemes would be using a mixture of historically closed lines, recently closed or currently operating freight only lines, or

sharing heritage railway tracks with permission from their owners. The report also identified seven commercially viable sites for new Park and Ride stations (a.k.a. Parkway stations) to be built on existing lines. The report also identified seven potential new passenger 'link lines' on the existing rail network, opening up new passenger routes but without new stations. The report covered relatively low cost short term localised schemes, with lead times from initiation to completion ranging from 2 years 9 months to 6 years, complementing larger schemes already in place for completion past 2014. For the schemes to reach completion, the proposals would need to be taken forward by the respective local and regional governments, Network owner) and theDepartment for Transport. The schemes would complement development to the national rail network already undertaken since 1995, comprising the completion of 27 new lines (totalling 199 track miles) and 68 stations, with 65 new station sites identified by Network Rail or government for possible construction. The report examine schemes in England only, due to fact rail development in Scotland and Wales was already being organised by Transport Scotland and the Welsh Assembly. It is considered an attribute of a commodity, that it be traded in significant volume in order to help ensure pricing and stabilty. And thanks to the standardization of a futures contract, parameters like specific grade and size (or trading unit) clear much of the fog from what is being traded with the commodity itself forming the underlying asset. The below lists many of the main commodity types: Metals: Metals are of two main types; precious and base metals. The precious variety are gold, silver, platinum and palladium and CBOT is a standout exchange for these being traded. Base metals are aluminum, copper, zinc, lead, nickel and tin and the London Metal Exchange is active in these markets. Gold and silver are favorites among many traders whenever global instability rears or to serve as a store of value. Energies: When energies are mentioned, crude oil springs to mind. It is the number one traded commodity in the world today. Certainly with a focus on dwindling reserves, and surging demand, it is easy to see why. Oil is traded on CBOT and NYMEX. Though other energies are natural gas (especially for winter months heating, with weather playing a key role) along with coal, with many electricitry plants still coal-fired for producing electricity, and with uranium a necessary fuel for making enery for use in nuclear power plants (all NYMEX). The biofuel ethanol trades both at the Brazilian Securities, Commodities, and Futures Exchange and at CBOT. Agricultural: Agricultural products are divided into three main types of commodities; grains and oilseeds, softs and meats. Grains would include wheat, rice, oats corn and soybeans. Types of Softs, also known as Food & Fiber include coffee, sugar, cocoa, and orange juice (at CSCE) represented as abbreviated frozen - FJOC, type A and type B, then also there is cotton (NYCE New York Cotton Exchange). Meats include pork bellies, feeder and live cattle (adults) and hogs. Many grains and softs are particularly sensitive to weather and temperature. Such as frost and the Brazilian coffee tree and freezing termperature or mere rumors even of Florida frost and its oranges. The mini contract trades on the Mid American Exchange, Chicago, for reduced quanties over the full size contract -- one possible choice open to the beginner trader. Mini's are available not only for corn, wheat and soybeans, but gold and silver as well (however, in reality, the mini may not trade in the same way as the full size contract). Financials: The realm of financial possibilities include U.S. treasury bonds, the S&P 500 indexes and foreign currency futures at the IMM International Monetary Market. Rail (the infrastructure