Logistics glossary

This logistics glossary defines and explains both English and German technical terms for logistics : Today, logistics terminology is peppered with anglicisms and abbreviations that are not always immediately apparent. In addition, there are often several German equivalents.

1-9

2PL Second Party Logistics: Second party logistics service providers are logistics service providers who specialize in taking over so-called TUL services (transport, handling and storage services).
3PL Third Party Logistics: Third party logistics providers are logistics service providers who, in addition to taking over classic TUL services, also offer their customers added value logistics services as part of outsourcing. With your own infrastructure, for example, you take on the entire distribution logistics of a goods manufacturer.
4PL Fourth Party Logistics: Fourth Party Logistics Providers are logistics service providers who coordinate and optimize the logistical processes of a company using their own know-how, without bringing in their own material assets for the processing.

A.

Proof of delivery , engl. Proof of Delivery or POD: is a receipt that proves the delivery of a shipment.

Actual time of arrival (ATA): the actual arrival time of a means of transport at the specified destination. Compare: ETA

Actual time of departure (ATD): The actual take-off time of an aircraft, i.e. H. the time at which the aircraft loses contact with the ground.

Air Way Bill (AWB): Air waybill

ARA ports: also ARA area , includes the seaports of Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Antwerp. Common abbreviation in shipping , for example also in Incoterms . For example, the Incoterm CIF ARA covers the costs up to one of the ports in the ARA area without specifying the exact port in the commercial contract.

Available to promise (ATP): Characteristic of a customer-oriented logistics system that is able to confirm a binding delivery date to the customer upon receipt of the order on the basis of the likely available stocks. Compare: Capable-to-promise ;

Advice: in the movement of goods is the announcement of a delivery (dispatch notification), which allows the recipient to take precautions in good time for receiving the delivery (personnel planning, warehouse planning, production planning)

B.

BAF: Bunker Adjustment Factor = freight cost adjustment to changing fuel prices in maritime shipping. See also fuel surcharge (air transport) and diesel floater (road freight transport)
Procurement strategy: As part of a company's materials management, the procurement strategy defines the distribution of the procurement of goods and services among individual suppliers in the medium term.
Procurement logistics: In business administration, it describes the process of purchasing goods through to transporting the material to the warehouse or to production.
Inventory unit: see Stock-Keeping Unit
Break-bulk point: German separation point
Logistic node where a large delivery is split up into individual partial deliveries / partial quantities. Counterpart to the consolidation point (see d.).
Bordero: A bordero (from French bordereau) is a directory for groupage consignments that contains information about the recipient, sender, description of goods, etc., as well as information on the handling of the consignment up to delivery and is therefore part of the accompanying documents.

C.

CAF: Currency Adjustment Factor = currency change factor
Capable-to-promise (CTP): Characteristic of a customer-oriented logistics system that is able to confirm a binding delivery date to the customer when the order is received on the basis of material availability, procurement ability and production capacities. Compare: Available-to-promise .
Chaotic storage: see dynamic warehousing
CKD: completely knocked down: dismantled into individual parts
Colli: Package in transport, German spelling Kolli ; see general cargo
Consolidation point: German collection point
Logistic hub at which several individual deliveries are combined into a single delivery. Counterpart to the break-bulk point (see d.).
Critical path method (CPM): see network plan technique

D.

Decoupling point: see decoupling point
Diesel floaters: is used in road freight transport to adjust freight costs to changing fuel prices without changing the underlying base price structure. The diesel floater is usually based on a reference fuel price that is checked regularly, for example every month. If the current fuel price exceeds or falls below a threshold set by the contractual partners, the freight costs are adjusted according to the diesel floater. See also Bunker Adjustment Factor (BAF) (sea shipping) and fuel surcharge (air traffic)
Direct Product Profitability (DPR): The gross profit less the direct product costs (DPK) at the wholesale and retail level, based on an individual sales unit and serves to define the optimal efficient unit load.
Direct traffic: A traffic between a pick-up and receiving point without changing the means of transport.
Disposition: The disposition is the quantitative division of orders with current performance requirements and the scheduled allocation to the available resources.
Dynamic warehousing: The next free storage space is always used for an incoming storage unit. There are no fixed assignments.

E.

European Article Number (EAN): is the previous name (replaced in 2009) for the Global Trade Item Number
Efficient Unit Loads (EUL): In order to optimize or reduce the costs of purchasing, packaging, transport, transshipment and storage, with the help of Efficient Unit Loads, an optimization or modularization of all unit loads and the most extensive standardization of logistical framework conditions are sought.
Decoupling point: At the decoupling point, two logistic control circuits meet. A logistic control group is the sales or procurement logistics area belonging to a company. So all logistical activities either for the procurement of production equipment or for the manufacturer to sell them.
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP): Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) or corporate resource planning describes the entrepreneurial task of using the resources available in a company (capital, operating resources or personnel) as efficiently as possible for the operational process and thus optimizing the control of business processes.
Disposal logistics: Disposal logistics (or reverse logistics) are all logistical measures for preparing and carrying out disposal. This includes all planning and executing activities that relate to the use, recycling and orderly disposal of the disposal objects.
Escalation management: Escalation management is a formalized system of troubleshooting in which predefined processes (information channels, measures) are initiated depending on whether certain alarm levels have been reached.
Estimated time of arrival (ETA): the planned arrival time of a means of transport at the destination under the given conditions. Compare: ATA

F.

FCL - full container load: Full container load
FTL - Full Truck Load: Full truck load
opposite: LTL - Less Than Truckload
First In - First Out (FIFO): The products produced or stored first are also outsourced first - to avoid obsolescence.
First Expired - First Out (FEFO): The products with the shortest shelf life are also stored first - this serves to avoid obsolescence.
Driverless transport vehicle (AGV): Device for automatic in-house transport of goods
Driverless transport system (AGV): The entirety (system) of one or more AGVs and the master control required for coordinated operation
Airport: An airport is an airfield and infrastructure, on which regular commercial air traffic normally takes place.
Floor conveyor device , also floor conveyor: is an in-house conveyor on wheels or rails for moving loads, such as a pallet truck or forklift truck .
Fuel surcharge: refers to the fuel surcharge in air traffic, which is added to the basic freight to compensate for fluctuations in fuel prices. See also Bunker Adjustment Factor (BAF) (maritime shipping) and diesel floaters (road freight transport)
Fulfillment: is the entirety of all activities which, after the conclusion of a contract, serve to supply the customer and fulfill other contractual obligations.

G

Geographic Information System (GIS): Geographic information systems or spatial information systems (RIS) are information systems for the acquisition, processing, organization, analysis and presentation of geographic data. Geographic information systems comprise the hardware, software, data and applications required for this.
Global Trade Item Number (GTIN): GTIN is a collective term for the code schemes for barcode labels.
Freight traffic center (GVZ): are logistics centers in which goods are reloaded between different modes of transport, put together for loads and prepared for transport trips.

H

port: is an area on the seashore or on the bank of a river or lake where ships can dock for the handling of goods and passengers.
Port railway: is a railway in the port area that enables cargo to be loaded onto the railway.
Main run: is a section of the transport chain in which a large number of individual shipments are grouped together by a forwarding agent to form a groupage to a forwarding agent; compare lead, lag.
High-bay warehouse
Hub and Spoke
HTS: Harmonized Tariff Schedule, United States of America's harmonized tariff schedule

I.

Incoterms - International commercial terms: Commercial clauses established by the International Chamber of Commerce ICC, which regulate the responsibilities between seller and buyer with regard to the delivery of goods.

J

Just in time (JIT): Production or delivery at the moment of request. Products are no longer (temporarily) stored for a long time, but only delivered in partial transport quantities as required.
Just in sequence (JIS): The just-in-sequence concept is a further development of the just-in-time concept. When providing according to the JIS procedure, the supplier not only ensures that the required modules are delivered on time in the required quantity, but also that the order (sequence) of the required modules is correct.

K

Combined cargo traffic (KLV): Goods transport via one or more intermediate destinations with reloading to another means of transport and / or intermediate storage.
Picking compartment: see pick face
Contract logistics: Execution and management of complex logistical parts of a business process by a logistics service provider on the basis of a long-term contract.

L.

Loading meters: A measure used in forwarding and transport to simplify communication and planning of the loading space of a transport container, usually a closed truck.
Item in stock: see Stock-Keeping Unit
Warehousing: In production and logistics, storage is the storage of material as a part of the task of materials management.
Late differenciation: creation of variants as late as possible ; see postponement .
LCL - Less than container load: also less than carload
LTL - Less than truckload: Partial load . Transport quantity that does not make up a full truck load. Opposite: FTL - Full Truck Load
Supplier-controlled inventory: Inventory management by the supplier; see Vendor Managed Inventory
logistics: Logistics deals with the organization, control, provision and optimization of processes for the flow of goods, information, energy, money and people along the value chain and the supply chain.
Logistics service provider: Commercial companies that mainly offer and provide logistic services for third parties.
Logistic unit: (Eng. Unit Load )
The logistic unit is formed by combining a defined quantity of goods into a manipulable unit (Eng. Unitization ). In the ideal case, the logistic unit is retained throughout the entire supply chain without having to be broken down into subsets or combined into higher-level units. In this case, the following would apply: packing unit = storage unit = order unit = loading unit = transport unit = consumption unit. A logistic unit that is inexpensively formed in terms of total logistic costs is called an efficient unit load . The creation of logistic units is the subject of packaging logistics .
Logistic assistance system: computerized logistic aid

M.

manifest: Load list List of all goods loaded on a sea voyage or a flight; it is valid as an ID for customs and as a document for cargo control.

Over-delivery: Delivery of a higher quantity than the contractually agreed quantity.

Milk run: A specified, regularly traveled route along which deliveries are made. Compare: Tour .

Short delivery: Delivery of less than the contractually agreed quantity.

Multimodal transport: Multimodal traffic or broken traffic is generally understood in the transport sector to mean the transport of a good with two or more different modes of transport (rail, road, inland and ocean-going vessels, aircraft, pipeline).

N

trailing: In the forwarding business, a transport after the main transport, for example from the ship in the port to the recipient of a container; compare preliminary run, main run.
Cash on delivery: (Eng .: COD Cash on delivery), (French: remboursement = universal postal union language) describes a method of shipping and payment in which goods are paid for by the recipient on receipt of the goods to the postal or logistics company.

P

Packing: German packaging ; see packaging and packaging technology
Packing group: Packing group ; see also ADR
Pick face: German picking compartment .
Storage compartment from which goods are taken when the order is put together.
POD: Port of Discharge = port of discharge
POD / Proof of Delivery: see proof of delivery
Postal company: (Postal authorities) are state or private companies for the transport and delivery of letters. Before the introduction of automated processing in the mid-1990s, sending both letters and parcels was organizationally linked. This can still be seen in the structure of many state-owned European postal companies.
Postponement: Creation of variants as late as possible (synonym late differenciation ).
Press logistics: Logistics processes associated with the production, processing, transport and delivery of print media.
Product logistics
PTO: Production tryout
Push / pull boundary: see decoupling point

R.

RFID: refers to a technology for transmitter-receiver systems for the automatic and contactless identification and localization of objects with radio waves. Is increasingly used in logistics for contactless identification of packages. The technology is also used to some extent in electronic toll systems, in which vehicles passing through are automatically recorded and identified by appropriate portals.

S.

Groupage: In the logistics and forwarding industry, denotes piece goods that are transported together in a groupage.
Serial Shipping Container Code (SSCC): German shipping unit number (NVE) , a worldwide unique number for identifying a shipping unit
Gauge meter: a unit of measurement for determining the loading capacity of RoRo ships.
Standard container unit: see Twenty foot equivalent unit
Stock Keeping Unit (SKU): Stock keeping unit
General cargo: In logistics, general cargo refers to everything that can be transported individually in one piece.

T

Twenty-foot Equivalent Unit (TEU): German standard container unit
TEU denotes the loading capacity of container ships . The English term comes from the dimensions of the ISO container (20 ft x 8 ft x 8 ft).
trip: A trip from a certain point with different stops that differ from earlier or later tours at which goods are loaded or unloaded. Tours are planned and controlled as part of a tour planning (see d.). Compare: Milk-Run.
Tour planning: Tour planning is the problem of finding the best possible assignment of vehicles to orders and finding an optimal sequence of the order locations to be served for each vehicle.
Tracking and tracing: is a system that allows the status of a delivery to be monitored and checked both before and after delivery.
TUL: Transport, transshipment, warehouse management

U

Unit load: see logistic unit

V

Isolation point: see break-bulk point
packaging: See packaging and packaging technology
Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI): Vendor Managed Inventory: An inventory managed by the supplier, which is located in the premises of the customer downstream in the logistics chain (manufacturer or dealer).
leader: In the forwarding business, a transport before the main transport, for example to move a container from the warehouse to the cargo ship; compare main run, tail run.
Reservoir area: A reserved storage area to optimize the loading process. In the pre-storage area, loads for the coming vehicle (ship, airplane, wagon) are provided.

W.

Warehouse Location Problem (WTP): A mathematical model for site planning

Z

Time slot management: In logistics, refers to the coordination of all loading and unloading processes at the loading ramp.
Timely inventory system: Automatic inventory management system that determines the shelf inventory for each product based on the electronic incoming goods reports and the electronic PoS sales data.
Target area bundling: Consolidation of shipments for a defined area with the aim of efficiently carrying out the transport to one or more recipients.
Target customer affinity: Measure of the attractiveness of a category for a selected target group.
ZLW: Central warehouse
Suppliers: The supplier delivers goods for the manufacturer.
Additional packaging: Packaging with a subordinate function (e.g. lid, intermediate layers) that is not managed in packaging management.
Secondary placement: Presentation of the same article at another point in the store. This is usually done in separate action areas.
Intermediate freight forwarder: Intermediate freight forwarders are commissioned by the main freight forwarder or regional freight forwarder to take on partial tasks within the processing of a transport order, for example as a receiving freight forwarder in the freight forwarder groupage, to handle the pre-carriage or on-carriage or at the interfaces when shipments are transferred from one to another transport company.

Individual evidence

↑ Logistics glossary of the Deutsche Post DHL Group; accessed on August 18, 2017.

[DHLGlossar-1] Logistics glossary of the Deutsche Post DHL Group; accessed on August 18, 2017.