The order in the warehousing - the actions of the auditor. Warehouse audit: "interrogation" with predilection Warehouse logistics audit

It is logical to assume that the most objective data, according to the results of the audit, can only be provided by independent logistics expert. Who, as you know, gets paid to identify and specifically show errors and problems that led to inefficient processes, and not hide them and keep silent about them, unlike full-time company specialists, motivated not to endure once again , "litter from the hut."

I often (more than 15 audits) had to be in the role independent expert and in the process of conducting various kinds of audits logistics systems, I, first of all, paid attention to the warehouse ( warehouse logistics) of my customer. Why exactly stock, you ask?

Because the warehouse is a very important indicator by which, practically without error, one can judge some important factors that affect the efficiency of the entire business, just as, for example, by the pulse of a person, one can judge in general the state of his health.

Obviously, when a person comes to the doctor, before starting treatment, the doctor first checks his pulse, pressure, temperature. And according to the state of these and some other easily measurable indicators, he judges how healthy the whole human body is, and whether it is necessary to continue to investigate it further in order to put correct diagnosis.

Also stock. If you want to know how effective (healthy) your business is, the easiest and most logical way to start is to do warehouse audit, and then, based on the results of the audit of the warehouse, decide whether it is worth continuing to examine, or you can immediately begin to solve the identified problems (treatment).

You may ask: why exactly does the warehouse act as this indicator, why, for example, neither purchase or delivery, or sales with finance, because they are also very important links in the logistics system?

The thing is that it is in the warehouse that usually concentrate (merge) all the problems caused by the inefficient work of almost all key divisions companies.

For example, respected purchasing department, ordered and coordinated the delivery of goods to the warehouse in a quantity significantly exceeding its capacity, even taking into account some reserves.

As a result, the goods had to be placed in the aisles between shelving, blocking access to the goods that were on the shelves and subject to picking, and thereby significantly reduce the speed of almost all warehouse operations, and, accordingly, the speed and quality of the set of orders.

It would seem that the mistake was made in the office by a purchasing specialist, who may stock I have never been at all, and as a result, the problem surfaced precisely in the warehouse.

Or, for example, sales department A that ordered a certain quantity of an item to sell to the purchasing department.

The purchasing department ensured the supply in the right amount and at the right time, but the sales department could not sell this product and he "hung" in stock and turned into " illiquid", or worse, in "delay".

And thus took the place highly liquid goods in the warehouse, thus slowing down some very important warehouse processes.

It would seem that the reason sales planning error, and the warehouse, as always, turned out to be “extreme”.

What exactly can be learned from a warehouse audit?

First and the most important- this is how it works in a company inventory management system.

Many executives who are responsible for the effectiveness of the company's inventory management, sitting in the office and looking at their computer monitors, often find it shameful "go down" to the warehouse to see what is really going on there.

And as a result, in their computers for some positions they have one number, but in fact in the warehouse they are completely different. And all because inventory, since it must be carried out, it turns out that it is expensive to carry out, and “reluctance to dirty your hands”.

And here such goods lie in such warehouses, somewhere in the far corner, and on it lies a thick layer of dust. And no one, for the time being, needs this product, and it gets in the way in the warehouse, and there is no sense from it. And if no one, to whom for it "They won't give you a hat", does not remind of such a product, then it will lie until it is written off at the expense of the personal funds of the business owner.

More besides stock status, as a result warehouse audit, you can learn the following useful things, for example:

a) how efficiently money is spent on warehouse maintenance, reconstruction or construction

b) how efficiently warehouse space is used, shelving and lifting equipment

c) How efficient is it? FOT,

d) how productive the staff is,

d) How effective is it? motivation.

e) what is warehouse production culture how it affects the quality of operations performed

g) other important "usefulness"

Another conversation is that not everyone and not always wants to know the truth about their warehouse, but this is another topic not related to warehouse technologies, although no less important in this context.

To illustrate how useful it can be to simply visit a particular warehouse, a particular distribution company, a audits of logistics systems, I will give the following example.

Imagine a warehouse distribution company about 3000 sq. m. with a height of 10 meters to the lower edge of the beam, with rack storage of 4 tiers, floor at +1.2000, self-leveling, with docks, with shipping / receiving areas, a ready-made order area, a storage area and a reject area .. everything is as it should be.

Warehouse, by the way, real. The owner ordered its design and construction according to a template project taken from beautiful picture in the Internet.

I did an audit of this warehouse in 2011.

Having entered the territory of the warehouse, at 9:00 I saw on the site in front of the docks a cluster of cars for loading, with a carrying capacity of 1.5 to 10 tons, and on the territory there were several heavy trucks(parishes).

Cars for loading were loaded using a forklift, which removed pallets with goods from open docks, put them in front of the cars, and then the loaders and storekeepers manually loaded and placed the goods in the vans.

Why is it not clear for these operations a warehouse with docks?

Since the docks were busy, the trucks that came to unload the receipts stood and waited for the end of the loading of the flow.

When I entered the warehouse, I saw a shipping area occupied by pallets of goods destined for shipping, used as a ready-to-order area. All other processes during the shipment of the expense were not performed due to the lack of personnel and space in the warehouse to perform the corresponding operations.

While in the storage area, I examined base cells and saw that the goods in the base cells were not laid out in such a way that it was convenient to complete them, but scattered(as if it was completed for the last time).

AT picking area there is a product that has not been taken for a long time (it can be seen that it lies for a long time on an even layer of dust on the boxes) and goods in randomly torn boxes (piece) and scattered, including in the aisles.

stacking goods "engaged" reach truck and loader, which can move the goods no higher than 3 tiers, due to the fact that the aisles were cluttered, the equipment was idle (we saved some time on the cargo handling equipment)

The last tiers of shelving were ~90% empty. The third tiers were filled by 50 percent, the second tiers were overcrowded, there was practically no stock of empty cells in them.

From communication with Stacker, after he removed a few pallets for me, I came to the conclusion that the rotation of the goods is unsatisfactory.

By the amount of dust on pallets with goods from the 4th and 3rd tiers, it was clear that this product more than a month has stood idle, and some positions have stood for much longer (some positions have stood idle since the launch of the warehouse)

The product is either not labeled at all, or marked incorrect (delivery date, batch number, product code are not indicated).

After talking with the Warehouse Manager, I found out that inventory in stock are carried out without "empty", when recounting, the goods are not removed from the upper tiers (what is written in large marker on the boxes is recorded).

After observing, a little later, the operation acceptance of receipts, I saw what I expected to see: most of the goods that came to the parish were not arranged as they should be, according to the “fi-fo” principle(or for some other ..), he was simply set aside (into the aisles), because there was a shortage of all the goods that arrived and this product had to be shipped to the next shipment.

Thus, with the naked eye it was possible to see that in this warehouse it is real turns around only about 1/3 of the total volume of goods, and the rest of the product simply takes up all the remaining space, practically without movement.

No ABC warehouse analysis Couldn't have shown the problem better. better than that, as seen in given time in stock.

Defective goods was located along with other things, it was collected and written off once a week.

Warehouse personnel changed constantly, staff motivation there was a “curve”, there was no team as such ... people worked from inventory to inventory and almost everyone quit every 3 months.

With all this, the head of the business hired highly paid inventory management specialists, which never went down to the warehouse at all, but at the same time they gave the Customer a lot of different smart tables and calculations regarding the state of stocks in his warehouse, and, oddly enough, he believed them.

In addition to this, the Business Manager had to make decisions within the framework of strict distribution agreements, where strict conditions were provided for sampling inflated volumes of goods for pleasant bonus percentages.

The condition for receiving these bonuses was that at a certain time a consignment of goods arrived at the warehouse without any agreed plan, exceeding several times the usual income rates.

As a result, goods were displayed in the aisles, and all warehouse processes slowed down significantly, or stopped altogether.

Ultimately, the Company carried some indirect costs, which were harder and more unpleasant to calculate than the direct benefits from bonuses associated with an additional bonus to the Head of Business and some of his subordinates, but in magnitude these losses, even on the surface, were significantly higher than the income from bonuses.

After the warehouse audit, purchases and delivery, The head of the business of this company received a complete breakdown of the existing problems according to priorities, and he gradually began to purposefully eliminate them.

Thus, a warehouse audit must of course be done!

Don't let it get to the point where, like in the example above, you have to freeze 2/3 of inventory in non-liquid, following the lead of Counterparties.

It is clear that there are fewer staff with high salaries in the warehouse who are able to lobby the interests of the warehouse in front of the company's management, but still no need to make a "garbage pit" out of the warehouse where to attribute the "jambs" of all other units. It's all too early, in the long run, will only aggravate the overall situation.

But, even if everything is not as bad in your warehouse as described in my example, all the same, you should not stop there.

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Improve the efficiency of your business, across the entire supply chain! And do not consider it shameful to once again look at the warehouse and communicate with the warehouse staff!

Warehouse logistics audit is a search for ways to improve the work of the warehouse as part of an express study of warehouse resources and processes. It can be either a one-time event or a regular one.

Logistics audit is aimed at finding shortcomings in the organization of the warehouse and in its work and at the formation of proposals for their elimination. A particular task of a logistics audit in some cases is to justify the need for warehouse automation.

Often logistics audit is considered as a mandatory step preceding the implementation of the WMS system. The results of examinations and recommendations of specialists help to find best solutions for the storage of goods, optimize the performance of warehouse operations, loading and number of personnel, etc. In other words, a logistics audit contributes to understanding what needs to be done in a warehouse in order to put it in order before automation.

What is a warehouse audit for?

• warehouse overload, when the volume of purchases and deliveries exceeds the actual capacity of the premises. This may be due to the fact that the storage areas are not properly located in the warehouse, as well as the system of personnel work is not established, which slows down warehouse operations and leads to an increase in errors.
• High maintenance costs. Usually the cause is an inefficient warehouse operation: an inappropriate product identification system, an overabundance of employees or a lack of equipment.
• Preparing for automation. In this situation, it is almost necessary to conduct a logistics audit in order to correctly and effectively implement the management system.

What does a logistics audit include:

• Infrastructure analysis
• Process Analysis
• Documentation analysis
• Information systems analysis
• Development of proposals
• Calculation of a feasibility study for the implementation of WMS

Logistics audit tools:

• Interviewing employees
• Warehouse monitoring
• Document analysis: work instructions, technological maps, layouts

Logistic audit results:

• List of issues found
• Problem Solving Suggestions
• Feasibility study on the need for warehouse automation

AXELOT has considerable experience in conducting logistics audits as part of complex warehouse optimization projects, including the implementation of a WMS system. If your company does not have a logistics service, does not have enough human and time resources to conduct a survey, or you just need an outside perspective, AXELOT specialists will help you find and eliminate discrepancies between the needs of the company and the actual state of affairs in the warehouse.

Already in Russia, the time has come when it is relatively inexpensive to hire a competent specialist from the consulting services market and get detailed advice from him regarding the “well-being” of your warehouse. Suppose you have found the right “specialist” who has all necessary qualities(although this is not easy), and sent to your warehouse. What will he be able to see in your warehouse with his scientific and “non-soapy” look? A lot of interesting things if you know when and where to look and with whom and how to talk ...

When a person comes to the doctor, the doctor first checks his pulse, pressure, temperature, and according to the state of these and some other easily measurable indicators, he judges how healthy the whole human body is, whether it is necessary to continue to investigate it further, or you can immediately make a final diagnosis and start treatment immediately.

So is the warehouse. If you want to know how efficient the whole business is, it is more logical to start with an audit in the warehouse, and then a lot will immediately become clear and understandable.

You may ask: why does the warehouse act as this indicator - why, for example, not purchase or delivery or sales with finance, because they are also important links in the supply chain?

I answer: in order to understand the complex, you must first turn it into a simple one. Put it on the shelves, as they say, "separate the flies from the cutlets", and so on ...

"Cutlets - separately ..."

You ask how to do it? How to simplify, for example, a complex and cumbersome system of accounting and control of commodity and financial flows, or how to evaluate the effectiveness of the IT system of a large holding company, or how to find out how efficiently the money you invested in the modernization of any systems and technologies is converted, and how, finally, to find out when the promised profit from this modernization will appear?

Answer: There are two ways. You can invent some even more complex system in order to use it to try to evaluate the above systems and, as a result, possibly complicate things even more, or you can simply look carefully at some indicators lying on the surface, for example, in a warehouse, and use them to make the necessary conclusions.

And what are the important indicators in stock?

Over the years of my practice, being engaged in the audit of supply chains at a wide variety of enterprises, with a wide variety of warehouse technologies and the degree of equipment with various, modern and not very, ways of analyzing inventory management systems, for a preliminary analysis of the state of stocks, I always first of all went to the warehouse and at about within one working day already knew almost unmistakably how effectively inventory is managed in this company.

By and large, after all, a warehouse is a kind of indicator by which one can judge the efficiency of a business without error, just like, for example, by a person’s pulse ...

In the process of further in-depth and comprehensive study of data from CIS (corporate Information system) and conversations with department heads and company management, I almost never found good reasons to change my mind about the state of stocks that I had after visiting the warehouse.

What else, besides the state of stocks, can be learned from stock indicators?

As a result of a warehouse survey, you can find out how efficiently money is spent on its maintenance, reconstruction or construction.

You can also find out how efficiently warehouse space, racking and lifting equipment are used.

You can also find out how efficiently the wage fund is spent, how productive the staff is, how effective its motivation is, what is the production culture in the warehouse, how it affects the quality of operations performed. And a lot more interesting and useful things can be learned from a professionally conducted audit.

Another conversation is that not everyone and not always wants to know the truth about their warehouse, but this is another topic not related to warehouse technologies, although no less important in this context.

I'm not going to reveal all my secrets here, but I'll just give one example to illustrate how useful a simple visit to the warehouse by a logistics specialist and SCM can be.

Well structured chaos

Imagine a warehouse of a distribution company with an area of ​​approximately 3000 m2, with a height to the bottom edge of the beam of 10 meters, with rack storage of 4 tiers, a floor at +1.2000, loading, with docks, with shipping / receiving areas, a ready-orders area, a storage area and a marriage. Everything is as it should be, just a dream, not a warehouse!

Warehouse, by the way, real. The owner ordered its design and construction according to a template project taken from a beautiful picture on the Internet.

I did an audit of this warehouse in 2011.

Having entered the territory of the warehouse, at 9:00 I saw on the site in front of the docks a cluster of cars for loading, with a carrying capacity of 1.5 to 10 tons, and on the territory - several heavy trucks (arrivals).

Cars for loading were filled with the help of a forklift, which removed pallets of goods from open docks, put them in front of the cars, and then loaders and storekeepers manually loaded and placed the goods in vans. Why a warehouse with docks for these operations is not clear.

Since the docks were thus occupied, the "wagons" that came to unload the receipts stood and waited for the end of the loading of the expense.

In a warehouse, for example, it is possible, for example, to evaluate the effectiveness of the use of warehouse stocks almost without error ...

When I entered the warehouse, I saw a shipping area occupied by pallets of goods destined for shipping, used as a ready-to-order area.

All other processes during the shipment of the expense were not performed due to the lack of personnel and space to perform operations.

Being in the storage area, I examined the base cells and saw that the goods in the base cells were not laid out so that it was convenient to pick them, but scattered (as if they had been picked for the last time).

In the picking area there were goods that had not been picked up for a long time (it was evident that they had been lying for a long time, on an even layer of dust on the boxes), and goods in randomly torn boxes (pieces), including those scattered in the aisles between the racks.

The stacking of goods was carried out by a reach truck and an electric forklift, which could move the goods no higher than the third tier due to the fact that the aisles were cluttered, the equipment was idle (“saved” at one time on the lifting equipment).

The last tiers of shelving were 90% empty. The third tiers were filled by 50 percent, the second tiers were overcrowded - there was practically no stock of empty cells in them.

From the interaction with the stacker, after he removed several pallets for me, I came to the conclusion that the rotation of the goods is unsatisfactory.

By the amount of dust on the pallets with goods from the fourth and third tiers, it was clear that this product had been idle for more than a month, and some positions for much longer (it turned out that some positions had stood idle since the start of the warehouse). The product is either not labeled at all, or labeled incorrectly (delivery date, batch number, product code are not indicated).

After talking with the head of the warehouse, I found out that the warehouse is carried out without "blank graphs", when recalculating the goods are not removed from the upper tiers (what is written in large marker on the boxes is written down).

After observing the operation of receiving receipts a little later, I saw what I expected to see: most of the goods that came to the receipt were not placed, as it should be according to the FIFO principle (or some other), it was simply set aside (into the aisles ), because there was a shortage for all the goods that arrived, and this product had to be shipped to the next shipment.

Thus, it could be seen with the naked eye that only about 1/3 of the total volume of goods is actually turned over in this warehouse, and the rest of the goods simply occupy the remaining space with little or no movement.

No ABC analysis of the warehouse could have shown the problem more clearly than was seen in the warehouse at this time.

It was located along with other things, it was collected and written off once a week.

The staff of the warehouse changed constantly, there was a “curve”, there was no team as such, people worked from inventory to inventory and changed every 3 months.

With all this, the business executive hired highly paid inventory managers who never went down to the warehouse at all, but at the same time provided him with a lot of different smart tables and calculations regarding the state of stocks in his warehouse ... and, oddly enough, he believed them.

Improve the efficiency of your business throughout the supply chain! And don't be afraid to take another look at the warehouse to see what's really going on there and to chat with the warehouse staff!...

In addition to this, the business manager had to make decisions within the framework of strict distribution agreements, where strict conditions were provided for sampling inflated volumes of goods at pleasant bonus percentages.

The condition for receiving these bonuses was that the supplier could at any time, without any approval, ship a consignment of goods that exceeded several times the usual receipts. As a result, goods were displayed in the aisles, and all warehouse processes slowed down significantly, or stopped altogether.

Ultimately, the company incurred some indirect costs that were harder and more unpleasant to calculate than the direct benefits from bonuses associated with an additional bonus to the head of the business and some of his subordinates, but in magnitude these losses, even on the surface, were significantly higher than the income from bonuses.

After auditing the warehouse, purchasing and delivery, the head of the business of this company received a full alignment of the existing problems by priority, and he gradually began to purposefully eliminate them.

Thus, an audit of the warehouse must be done. Do not bring to the point that, as in the example above, you have to freeze 2/3 of the inventory in non-liquid liquidity, following the lead of counterparties.

It is clear that there are fewer high-salary personnel in the warehouse who are able to lobby the interests of the warehouse in front of the company's management, but all the same, there is no need to make a “garbage pit” out of the warehouse and take the “jambs” of all other departments there. This will only exacerbate the overall situation in the long run.

But even if everything in your warehouse is not as bad as in the example I described, you still don’t have to stop there.

Instead of an epilogue

After all, even the most modern and smart accounting and control planning systems will not be of any use if they analyze data that is not related to live and really ongoing processes in the warehouse.

Yuri Kolmachikhin, logistics and SCM expert, for Consultant magazine

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Invaluable experience in solving urgent problems, answers to complex questions, specially selected fresh information in the press for accountants and managers.

2 Turlaev Evgeny Gennadyevich Founder of the consulting company Proficom (the company's goal is to solve business problems for enterprises that have a far-sighted strategy for developing their brands), business coach, crisis manager, practitioner. More detailed information on the website Direction of activity: consulting services on business development; building a high-quality distribution sales system; work in the development of the sales department and sales strategy in retail and manufacturing companies; building logistics systems; holding open and corporate seminars; crisis management in sales and logistics.

The purpose of the logistics analysis Expert review existing warehouse system and a constructive proposal for implementation new technology in the work of the warehouse, processing of technological operations with goods, technical support warehouse complex. four

The key principle of conducting an audit The key principle of conducting an audit is to move from the global goals of the enterprise in changing the existing warehouse logistics system to a detailed study of warehouse technological processes, the reasons for low efficiency and missed opportunities in work warehouse logistics. 5

Task definitions Meeting with company management. Preparation of a list of changes, which indicates the formulated project goals that are required to be achieved as a result of the changes. The list of goals is divided into priorities - mandatory, planned and desired. Mandatory targets must be defined. Planned and desired serve to evaluate individual aspects of the solution. Signing the contract and confidentiality agreement. 6

Communication with personnel Communication with employees in the warehouse, which lasts five working days; Maximum involvement of them in the ongoing processes of change, which is one of the main goals of the audit; Obtaining the maximum amount of information and an objective assessment of the work of the warehouse economy today

Analysis of the received information Development of solutions in optimizing the system of interaction with others structural divisions companies; Development of schemes of commodity flows and placement of products in the warehouse; Design and calculation of the number of storage places; Calculation of warehouse equipment by type; Development of the scheme of the technological process; Optimization of warehouse operations; Calculation of the number of personnel depending on the proposed options for the warehouse operation technology; Development of recommendations for optimizing the warehouse accounting system, workflow, information exchange.

Yrysbek Tashbaev, Ph.D., deputy CEO for the development of the Institute for the Study of Merchandise and Market Research wholesale market(ITKOR)

Efficient logistics system modern enterprise requires the presence of qualified and competent personnel, modern storage and transport equipment, high-performance technologies. Unfortunately, not all enterprises are ready to implement system projects in the field of logistics. The reason for this may be shortcomings in the organization of the company's work, an unregulated management system, and unpreparedness of personnel. In addition, logistics consultants usually offer solutions in those functional areas in which they are competent, without paying attention to the systemic problems of the enterprise. All this in combination forces companies to turn to independent experts with a request to conduct a logistics audit.

Logistic audit is more in demand at industrial enterprises, where all logistics functions are involved in the complex, including procurement, production and marketing of products; it makes sense to carry it out also in trade. The results of the audit can be useful for firms offering information and consulting solutions in the field of logistics, for warehouse operators and forwarding companies.

What is meant by a logistics audit and how does it differ from a “usual” accounting audit? According to existing definitions, “audit is a systematic process of obtaining and evaluating objective data on economic activities and events, establishing the level of their compliance with established criteria and presenting the results to interested users.” Synonyms of this term are the words "research", "diagnosis", "study". Therefore, a logistics audit can be understood as an assessment by an independent party of all aspects of the company's supply chain, determining the "strong" and "weak" sides of the enterprise's logistics system, tracking trends that affect their formation, analyzing cases of inefficient use of resources, determining the level of competitiveness of the logistics system enterprises.

The key principle of a logistics audit is moving from the general to the specific: from global goals and performance indicators to the reasons for low efficiency, productivity and missed opportunities, and only after that - to a detailed study of selected areas of the enterprise.

According to this principle, for example, local warehouse optimization or transport system is not carried out at the stages of product marketing or procurement - such decisions are made only on the basis of a systematic vision of the entire supply chain. To conduct a logistics audit, a team is created at the enterprise, which includes representatives of both logistics services and other functional units (finance and accounting, control, marketing and sales, production and procurement, Information Technology), as well as third-party experts. extremely important professional level recruited professionals. They do not have to be experts in the specifics of a particular business, but at least they must be competent in the theory and practice of logistics and supply chain management. This will reveal the reserves and hidden potential available at the enterprise, and give an objective assessment of the level of its logistics management.

At the preliminary stage, the team studies the sales areas (retail and wholesale clients), warehousing (warehouses for raw materials and materials, finished products), production. Then, within a week, experts process the results of the audit and prepare a list of recommendations (more precisely, a range of issues) to be audited. Together with the specialists of the enterprise, invited experts formulate questions that form the basis of interviews, questionnaires, questionnaires, and compile a list of indicators by which logistics functions are evaluated. To do this, they select from various existing models (such as SCOR, etc.) indicators that are most applicable to this enterprise. At the preliminary stage, it is important to establish contacts between members of the audit team and business owners: for the enterprise, logistics issues are an expense component, and it is important that the owners clearly see what benefits they will receive from the implementation of a well-functioning logistics system.

At the end of the preliminary stage, you can proceed directly to the logistics audit procedure, which can be divided into external and internal in form. There are different opinions about which of these approaches should be preferred at the initial stage, but when working with a non-formalized structure of internal logistics, it will be more logical to conduct an audit within the enterprise.

The internal audit procedure includes:

Interviews with representatives of functional areas on issues related to logistics (transport, warehouses, stocks, supplies, management system, motivation);

Processing a selection of enterprise documents (primary documentation, various files, reports, both internal and external);

Collection of data on contracts for conducting statistical analysis and an accurate description of the operation of the existing logistics system.

It is important that the main proposals for the action plan, decisions and ideas come from those members of the logistics audit team who represent the customer enterprise. In the course of the ongoing system analysis, a system of operational indicators is built, which can be divided into four groups:

• customer service performance indicators (internal and external customers) and service quality assessment;
• indicators related to the costs of performing logistics functions (purchase costs, supplies, transport, warehouses, warehousing, stocks). When analyzing costs, the “cost-benefit” calculation is carried out - this means the benefits received by customers from the implementation of certain solutions;
• asset utilization rates ( storage facilities, own fleet of rolling stock). Infrastructure components with the expansion of the scale of business and the geography of operations are beginning to increasingly affect the cost of products for manufacturing enterprises and goods for trading companies;
• benchmarking indicators - studying the best practices of the customer's competitors in areas related to logistics.

With the results of the internal audit in hand, the team can move on to an external audit, during which they study the expectations and requirements of customers in order to determine the performance of the company, consider the techniques used by competitors, and the levels of service required. An external audit is carried out in the form of mailing questionnaires, selective interviews with clients (representatives of various market segments served, buyers with different volumes of purchases and from different geographical locations). Model questionnaires and questionnaires are adapted for each enterprise; at the same time, both the heads of the company and individual departments, as well as specific specialists, are usually interviewed. Questionnaires perform several functions: they serve as a source of obtaining structured information about the company's logistics system and a means of attracting the attention of specialists to key issues in the functioning of this system. When processing questionnaires, the main attention is paid to the quality of customer service, analysis of the causes and consequences of different types costs.

The results of the external audit allow the logistics audit team to formulate recommendations regarding the future strategy of the company and indicate changes that need to be made to the current operating system logistics, describe a recommended strategy for developing an efficient and productive logistics system.

As an example, I propose to consider how a logistics audit was carried out in a holding that included industrial enterprises for the production of eggs, a trading house and a management company. For surveys, interviews and other ancillary activities during the audit, students and teaching staff of universities located in the same city as the holding were involved. This, in our opinion, is a fundamental point - such a step will solve the problem of training system analysts in the field of logistics, so that in the future they can take the positions of coordinators or logisticians at enterprises.

During the audit, it was revealed that each of the enterprises has specialists responsible for warehouses, purchases, finance, and accounting. Management Company exercises overall control, coordinates operations, manages investments. Whole logistics process was divided into separate sub-processes: procurement and supply of raw materials for the first enterprise, supply and shipment of products / semi-finished products from the first enterprise to subsequent ones, shipment of products from these enterprises to the trading house, which shipped and delivered products to the buyer and direct shipments to other wholesale companies. The main problems in the holding arose at the intersection of divisions and enterprises; often there was duplication of functions and responsibilities. The information system consolidating the information that came from the departments at different stages of the logistics process was not always available.

The following activities of the holding were subject to research and analysis:

1. Customer service.

2. Transportation.

3. Warehousing.

4. Inventory management.

5. Operations planning.

6. Sales and marketing.

7. Finance and accounting.

8. Purchasing.

9. General management.

The purpose of the work was to identify problems, bottlenecks and reserves for improving the logistics system, increasing the efficiency and productivity of the logistics support system for the supply, production and marketing activities of the holding.
What did the experts advise to do to improve logistics at this enterprise? Since the list of all recommendations was quite large, we will consider only the first four positions, which are most related to logistics.

In the field of customer service

Development of a customer service system. Development of a classification of clients based on an analysis of existing clients, procedures for working with clients, conditions for standardization and formalization of work with clients.

Analysis of priority work with clients.

Analysis of customer requirements for various parameters.

Development of service standards, including justification of customer service levels.

Analysis and justification of the value added structure for internal and external customers.

Calculation of indicators of efficiency and productivity of customer service.

In the field of transportation

Analysis of the conditions for the implementation of a transport management system.

Analysis of opportunities to reduce the number of overloads.

Analysis of existing procedures for the delivery of eggs.

Analysis of measures to eliminate irrational transportation.

Analysis of the existing structure Vehicle(outdated fleet of rolling stock).

Analysis of rolling stock utilization indicators.

Analysis of the conditions for the introduction of a driver motivation system.

Analysis of existing procedures for hiring external transport.

Development of a transport cost management system.

Calculation of indicators of efficiency and productivity of transportation.

In the field of warehousing

Development of a warehouse management system.

Analysis of storage conditions for eggs in warehouses.

Analysis of the procedure for shipping products from the warehouses of poultry farms to Moscow.

Analysis of the capacity of warehouses and poultry farms in feed production.

Analysis of technological processes in warehouses of raw materials and finished products.

Analysis of delays and downtime during unloading (loading) in warehouses.

Cost-benefit analysis of having a distribution center warehouse in the city.

Analysis of the processes of delivery of fresh eggs from factories to the warehouse of the distribution center.

Development of measures to maintain the optimum temperature in warehouses.

Calculation of indicators of efficiency and productivity of warehousing.

In the field of inventory management

Development of inventory management system.

Analysis of failures in terms of deliveries.

Analysis of the grain price forecasting procedure.

Analysis of work with manufacturers.

Analysis of the procedure for concluding and extending contracts.

Analysis of the procedure for allocating money for purchases.

Analysis of strategic reserves.

Development of a procedure for calculating and justifying the size and structure of stocks at all stages of the supply chain (from retail to procurement of raw materials).

Development of a procedure for calculating the safety stock.

Calculation of indicators of efficiency and productivity of the inventory management system.