Shanghai overtakes Singapore as the busiest port

Shanghai said it overtook Singapore in 2010 to become the world's busiest container port due to the economic recovery and six-month long World Expo with boosting the container and cargo traffic travelling through the port.

Shanghai's port handled 29.05 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) in 2010, in line with the municipal government strategy in turning Shanghai into a global shipping centre. China's cabinet has declared it wants Shanghai to move up the value chain and become a full-service world-class shipping centre by 2020, with shipping financing, reinsurance and arbitration services.

Singapore's container traffic rose 9.9 percent to 28.4 million TEUs in 2010.

Twitter as a powerful marketing tools

Do you know which is the most discussed web-based marketing tools at this point?

Twitter, a 140-character micro blogs/ message that allow your follower to get the immediate update from you. A number of corporate giant has registered corporate account with Twitter as an update to its client/ as an announcement/ as an communication (single-way)/ as an marketing tools.

For instance, Starbucks Corporate account has about 140,000 on its Twitter account.

Existing/ potential customers are getting an immediate update from you, and certain corporate giants find that the Twitter account has help boosted their revenue. It helps to stand-out from alone by having a positive web image.

Do you have one?

#5- Inventory Management software

There are many software available in tracking the stocks movement and doing the logistics planning. The software not be feasible or cost-efficient to small-sized company, while it is absoultely suitable for medium-sized company. Logistics planning is an important part of Wal-Mart success.

A very good software we have used is SAP software, which is essentially a well-developed inventory management software to plan the logistics flow of the Company.

#4 Inventory Management- Obsolete Stocks

Quantity of obsolete stocks could be controlled or managed via:

1) emphasizing quality checked on stocks received and returned the goods to suppliers by adhereing to quality policy of the Company
2) order minimal amount of stocks based on sales forecast, rather than purchasing a huge sum of stocks on hand.

We want to emphasize on point 1 that, company should have a clear inventory checking policy and forming a culture of adhering stocks' quality policy. Damanged stocks/ faded stocks have to be returned to suppliers immediately. Besides that, SME entrepreneur should communicate the policy to suppliers, in order to acknowlege the suppliers in respect of the quality policy of the Companies

#3- Inventory Management ( Post II)

In #2, we mentioned a few common inventory problems faced by Small and Medium Enterprises. And we intended to summarize the solutions in this post and a few coming positngs.

The very basic solutions are to have a proper stock records, that have keep tracked on the following:
1) Stock Balance information
2) Recording of stock-in
3) Recording of stock-out

We noted that most of the SMEs do not have a proper stock records, and some of the enterprises do not even know the stocks on hand. A proper stocks record enable the owner of the SMEs to develop an understanding on the stock turnover of every single stocks. With such information, the manager is allowed to monitor the purchase more accurately, or even forecast the seasonal sales pattern of respective stocks.

Accumulation of excess stocks represents a cost ( finance cost, maintenance cost), a proper stock movement allow the manager to forms a fundamental basis of developing the Company's purchase pattern without bias (as the manager will be assisted by numerical data).