E-Logistics of Swordfish (Sea Food Industry)

This document provides an assessment of logistics and e-logistics in the swordfish industry. It discusses the Australian swordfish logistics, key activities, and support activities. It also explores the definition of e-logistics and its application in the seafood industry. Additionally, it presents an e-logistics plan to improve the swordfish industry performance.

Assignment - II
E-Logistics of Swordfish (Sea Food
Industry)
Group No. 14.

1
Table of Contents
Introduction..................................................................................................2
First: Assessment of logistics and E-logistics Swordfish industry......3
1.1 Australian Swordfish logistics.................................................................3
1.2 Logistics activities...................................................................................3
1.3 Logistics key activities............................................................................3
1.4 Logistics support activities......................................................................4
1.5 Definition of e-logistics...........................................................................6
1.6 Cloud computing.....................................................................................9
1.7 Social media.........................................................................................10
1.8 Fisheries: A balance of benefits and environmental impacts................11
1.9 Swordfish fishing fleet..........................................................................11
Second: E-logistics plan to improve Swordfish industry performance
against the seven rights (7Rs).................................................................12
2.1 The five ‘megatrends’ to influence the industry competitiveness over
the next 20 years........................................................................................12
2.2 The 7Rs of e-logistics application on Swordfish industry in Australia. . .13
Conclusions.................................................................................................14
References...................................................................................................15

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Introduction
The fish and seafood supply chains have witnessed large expansions over
the last decade. They represent the largest segment of food supply chains
and the highly internationally traded food products (Glavee-Geo & Engelseth
2018). The complexity of the supply chain, a large volume of traded food
commodities and unsatisfied market demand might lead to food fraud that is
easy to be done and difficult to be detected (Pahl 2018).
Broadbill Swordfish are migratory fish that are found in the Atlantic, Indian
and Pacific Oceans. They live in the warm water, then move into cooler
waters for feeding in the summer in Australia, than they return to the tropical
water in the winter. They live in depths of 550 meters underwater. Swordfish
steaks are oily with a meaty texture and sweet taste.Australian Fisheries
Management Authority (AFMA) manages catches of the swordfish according
to the maximum allowed catch limit. The weight of fish that commercial
fisher can catch is restricted and they should record their catches. In
Australia, broadbill Swordfish are eligible to be caught along both the east
and west coasts(AFMA 2019; Swordfish (SWO) 2015).
The current high competitive environment enforced organizations to depend
on information and communication technologies (ICTs) for achieving their
desired goals, survival and success. ICT enables transparency in the flow of
materials and products. E-logistics utilizes ICT, e-commerce internet of
things (IoT), big data and cloud computing. E-logistics increases the
efficiency of the operations enhances the information quality and supports
strategic planning (Wang & Pettit 2016).
The following section analyses the Australian swordfish logistics, applications
of e-logistics and logistics plan to improve its performance against the Seven
Rights (7Rs).
First: Assessment of logistics and E-logistics Swordfish industry
1.1 Australian Swordfish logistics
The Swordfish fishery in Australia is young that does not indicate the
seasonal differences in catch rates. Despite this, catch rates are higher
between August and December compared to the rest of the year. Swordfish
witnesses a rapid increase in catches and entry of new fishers, the matter
that threatens the sustainable catch levels without the timely information
made available to the AFMA management. AFMA should obtain information

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about the community age at maturity, longevity and stock to be able to
constantly decide the sustainable level of fishing of Swordfish(AFMA 2017).
1.2 Logistics activities
Logistics management involves managing the movement of materials
through the supply chain and its storage. Logistics in seafood is the process
of managing products flow from the producer, through the supply chain
operations until it reaches the final user. The main goal of logistics is to
integrate ordering, manufacturing, sales and distribution. It is a complicated
process for its seasonality and uncertain production volume that varies
according to natural events.
1.3 Logistics key activities
Logistics key activities could be discussed with an application on the seafood
industry in Australia according to Arul (2015),Tsang et al. (2018), Marchesini
& Alcantara (2016),Audy et al. (2012) and Department of Primary Industries
(2017).
 Customer service: The logistic activities are mainly concerned with
customer satisfaction. The marketing activities seek profit maximization
in the long-run through the customer by ensuring effective physical
distribution. Products should be delivered at the right time and frequency.
Also, improving customer service by maintaining effective warehousing
and assuring the optimum level of inventory.
 Traffic, inward and outward transportation: They delivers material
from the suppliers to the warehouse. It takes several types, like road, rail
or air. It is important for organizations to find the best transportation,
routeandmeat the safety and legal requirements, deliver supplies on time
and at an adequate cost. Outward transport is responsible for delivering
materials from the organization to the customer.
 Inventory control: Inventory control is very important, it sets the
inventory policies and involves the materials that should be stored,
investment, customer care, levels of stock, sizes of orders and timing. The
seasonality of seafood products represents a big challenge to this activity.
 Order processing: Itenables the delivered materials tofulfill to the
requirements of the order, inspects them for damage and sorts them.
Seafood products are critical because they need to be ordered on a daily
basis and in some cases more than once per day.
 Distribution communication:The materials' physical flow corresponds
to the information flowthat links the supply chain parts, moving
information about products, customer needs, materials, problems, levels
of service, cost and stock levels.

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1.4 Logistics support activities
 Warehousing and storage: Warehousing function is to move the
material to storages and keep them safe when they are picked for
processing. Seafood requires to be kept at a certain temperature to keep
them healthy. Materials should be available for delivery when needed,
kept safe in refrigerated cool stores to maintain product quality.
 Material handling: Material handling is responsible for moving the
materials across various operations within the firm. It follows the
movement of the materialfrom an operation to the other and materials
movement between stores and the location where they are required.
 Purchasing: Purchasing involves conducting an agreement with the
supplier, negotiating the specifications needed and arranging the
insurance payments. Purchasing has gained a strategic position in
contemporary organizations for its role in maintaining effective
relationships with the upstream activities.
 Packaging: Packaging picks materials from stores, wraps them and
makes them ready to be delivered to the customer at the desired
location.
 Plant and warehouse: Logistics should be placed in the best location for
implementing its related activities. It is also related to the facilities that
affect the overall supply chain design.
 Return goods handling, salvage and scrap:In case that the delivered
material has a problem, they are returned to the organization. Some
materials cannot be used again. They are called reverse logistics.
 Information maintenance: Information maintenance refers to data
collection, storage, analysis and control across all of the logistics
activities. This information is essential for planning and control
 Quality standards: Seafood products should not be treated as
commodities that could be bought and sold depending only on price.
Quality assurance increases the consumers' confidence in the reliability of
the product every time they purchase it. The quality standardization
process should start from the customers' needs and continues across the
supply chain stages
 Traceability: Traceability should be implemented to ensure seafood
safety and track the areas of consumer marketing. Traceability is
conducted throughout all of the production stages.
 Processing and distribution: Traceability should indicate that materials
movements are traceable at any point in the supply chain for one step
backward and one step forward.Seafood processing activities should

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extend to identify the source of all raw materials, additives, added
ingredients and packaging.
1.5 Definition of e-logistics
The term e-logistics or electronic logistics are internet-enabled logistics. The
term e-logistics alsoreflects e-business or e-commerce logistics. E-logistics is
considered a supportive delivery process that acts to fulfill online orders. It
could also involve the use of information and communication technology
(ICT) to enable activities implementation. E-logistics could be defined to
represent the online business to customer (B2C)or business to business
(B2B) contextthat utilizes ICT to manage information flows across the supply
chains. Organizations are in high need for digital data and information
management and flow throughout the supply chain. Many organizations are
still not capable of fully utilizing the ICT (Wang & Pettit 2016).
1.5.1Impeding ICT in logistics management
Information communication technology (ICT) has to be integratedfor fulfilling
the SCM aim that enables heterogeneous firms'activities to collaborate and
integrate into one network thatsupportsthe production practices. Operations
are supported by information on a daily basis and the quality of information
is important for providingquality products, like the sales negotiations.
Electronically networked communication channels act to be enablers for
implementing effective and complex communications.The cost reduction of
using IT-based integrated supply chains influenced the organizations to
utilize ICT services.The logistics service provider (LSP) and the buyer or the
exporter relationship represents the interdependent relationship between
the two partners. Most of the seafood consumer markets are located in
areas far from its origin. Therefore, the existence of efficient seafood
logistics is very important for supplying seafood products to the importing
markets. Fresh seafood requires developments in the quality across the
supply chain.The LSPs are essential to the global seafood industry and the
Swordfish logistics. These activities are becoming strategically
interconnected in a way that maximized the value of the products (Glavee-
Geo & Engelseth 2018).
1.5.2 Internet of Things (IoT)
The IoT was introduced to facilitate the logistics management. Despite the
importance of IoT, many organizations failed to approach it. The challenges
that organizations face in dealing with the IoT are due to the
objectsdiversity.The IoT represents an intelligent network that works
basically with the internet to be able to transfer timely information. Also, it is
capable of managing products depending on advancedtechnologies,
including radio frequency identification (RFID), infrared sensor, global

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positioningsystem and laser scanner. These new technologies, like the RFID
is being applied in the SCM for many years. RFID helps in increasing the
logistic efficiency, decreases the delivery time and eliminates the product
waste. For example, the logistics manager can collect product information
automatically, like the stock volume and number of products on shelf the
matter that indicates the demand level of the tracked product. Accordingly,
it links the logistic process, reduces the transportation time and
productlosses due to the long transportation. The linkage between IoT and
these technologies, like the RFID proves to increase the manufacturing
efficiency. The use of RFID in Swordfish supply chain is preferable and can
reduce wastage.RFID can tag and builda security layer that enables it to
connect the tags with other nodes across the supply chain resulting from this
in secure communication with RFID tags in IoT(Yan 2017).
1.5.3 E-commerce and logistics
Logistics and supply chain management (LSCM) is highly influenced by the
development and success of E-commerce. E-commerce LSCM has a
significant role in modern logistics. E-commercelogistics consists of 3
phases;the first phase is the delivery of goods from the manufacturing
facility to the distribution centers (DCs) or the warehouses. In the second
phase, orders are fulfilled at E-commerce DCs by being sorted, picked, and
packed. The third phase witnesses orders delivery of from DCs to the end
customers on a timely basis.In supply chains, E-commerce LSCM adopts the
B2B transactions that involve raw materials.
1.5.4 Logistics models and supporting techniques for E-commerce
LSCM
 Self-support model: Many firmsdecide to build their network of logistics
due to its high importance for the quality of logisticsservice. E-commerce
faces difficulties in distribution and after-sales service that requires
continuous improvement. It is difficult for an individual supply chain
member to contribute to all of the supply chain operations, therefore,
managing logistics from storage to distribution. The E-commerce logistics
service should consider the country as a whole or even the world(Wei &
Nan 2015).
 Outsourcing model: Outsourcing is also an important model in
logisticsE-commerce. It enables the organization to save costs that could
have been invested in managing resources and concentrates on its core
business activities. It enables organizations to increase their
competitiveness and decrease fixed assets investments in warehouses,
fleets, informationsystemsand procurement logistics. The matter that

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increases the capital turnover rate. Despite this, outsourcing has
disadvantages, represented in the lack of control over the entire logistics.
Moreover, the third-party logistics (TPL) might fail in fulfilling the
consumers' requirements. Accordingly, some organizations refuse to
outsource their logistics in order to manage the whole
process(Banomyong & Supatn 2011).
 Supporting techniques: E-commerce logistics requires the support of e-
commerce system,warehouse management system (WMS) and
transportation management system (TMS). The organization that seeks to
implement e-commerce business should have a online system connected
to the internet. The onlinetrading systems enable customers to search for
different merchandise. The WMS is highly supportive tothe E-commerce
logistics. It is essential for its function of the real-timeinventory visibility.
The RFID and Electronic Product Code (EPC) network are highly
contributed to the B2B E-commerce supply chainmanagement. Moreover,
the transportation activities are very important that some companies tend
to outsource. The TMS is able to support e-commerce logistics in big data
management, processing and mining that builds technology-based smart
TMS (Yu et al. 2017).
1.6 Cloud computing
The advancements in the web-based technologies resulted in cloud
computing, it is also called "on-demand". Cloud computing enables
organizations to have a computer power and software applications over the
internet. They are not required to purchase hardware or software and install
them on their own PCs. The Public cloud allows them greater flexibility that
enables all organizations sizes for the various prices schemes that suites the
budget of every organization according to its transaction volume ‘pay as you
go’. The private cloud offers the same options to individual tenant and it is
mainly used by organizations seeking enhanced security. The hybrid cloud
offers a combination of the options provided through the public and private
cloud. The e-logistics applications supported by web-based technologies and
cloud computing single window systems. They are used to integrate logistics
systems, like port community systems that integrate and manage multiple
stakeholders(Marston et al. 2011).
1.7 Social media
The diffusion of social media is a digital platform that enables people to
interact, share information and ideas across networks and communities.
Social media witnesses an increasing use by business in communicating
external stakeholders, including customers, suppliers and the public at large.
It is also used for internal communication with employees. Using social

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media effectively is able to improve the organization image and presence.
Also, it is beneficial for the logistics industry; it helps in creating B2B and B2C
communities by strengthening organizations relationships with both
suppliers and customers. Also, it supports the integration between supply
chins in the form of supply networks. For example, the RFID could be
integrated with Twitter in order to detect the movements of materials and
products throughout the supply chain. Social media facilitates the
development of new relationships, allows knowledge exchange and
generates collective intelligence, enables collaborative work and fosters
innovation (Wang & Pettit 2016).
The Swordfish supply chain is considered among the processed food supply
chain management (PFSCM). Processed food undergoes across some value
addition. In the beginning, it goes through chopping, cleaning and packaging,
then, it is converted into the desired process. The third phase is processing
into the final form to be traded (Mahajan, Garg & Sharma 2017). Following
this, the logistics should meet the customer demand and deliver value to
him. This could be achieved through efficiency, effectiveness and
differentiation. Effectiveness is the logistics management capability to attain
the expected goals, for example, to fulfill the customer needs by marinating
available stock, improving ordering processing time, providing product
warranty and offering after sales services(Azmi et al. 2017).
1.8 Fisheries: A balance of benefits and environmental impacts
Fisheries are essential to developing the coastal communities; they
represent their only source of income. Fisheries have many benefits
represented in their contribution to the economic development and creating
a provision of a high source of protein for feeding people worldwide. More
than 1bn. people rely only on seafood, while the population growth will make
people more dependent on seafood, the matter that will increase its
production(Berube et al. 2015).
1.9 Swordfish fishing fleet
The Swordfish fleet started in 1993 and continued to increase rapidly until it
reached its peak in 2003. It consists of 103 vessels from 9 countries,
including Sword fish fishery of western Australia, Spain and fishing in the
Atlantic Ocean. The piracy attacks caused damages to the fleet that lost 30%
of its number (Moreno & Herrera 2013).
Swordfish processing and packaging technology have developed rapidly.
Shifts in consumer preferences of the processed seafood and the changes in
the fisheries industry resulted in more intensive and geography concentrated
global supply chain, which is also vertically integrated. Large retailers control
the growth of the distribution channels in the international level. Fisheries

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supply chains are expected to continue to be globalized. The increasing
share of exported fishery production represents 39%(FAO 2012)
Second: E-logistics plan to improve Swordfish industry performance
against the seven rights (7Rs)
2.1 The five ‘megatrends’ to influence the industry competitiveness
over the next 20 years
The Fisheries Research and Development Corporation (FRDC) of Australia's
devoted to investment in research, development and extension (RD&E).
FRDC cooperates with other organizations that have the required skills to
implement various activities. It devotes its efforts towards the end users and
markets through the investment and R&D to commercialization and
balancing the needs of various stakeholders(FRDC 2019).
The 2015–20 RD&E plan seeks to facilitate the achieved results across
several areas, implement changes and ensure continuous
improvement(FRDC 2015). It identified five ‘megatrends’ to influence the
industry competitiveness over the next 20 years, they are as follows:
• A hungrier world: The increasing number of population growth will
influence the global demand towards more food consumption.
• A wealthier world: The emerging new middle-income class is expected to
increase food consumption.
• Choosy customers: Data about consumers' preferences will provide
expectations for health, food sustainability.
• Transformative technologies: Development in the digital technology
will cause changes to the way food processing.
• A bumpier ride: Globalization will change the type of risk for industries.
2.2 The 7Rs of e-logistics application on Swordfish industry in
Australia
The 7Rs of logistics are the right product, right customer, right quantity, right
condition, right place, right time and right cost. The proposed strategy for e-
logistics sword ship will be conducted according to Wang & Pettit (2016),
FRDC (2018), FRDC (2017), Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (2012)
and AFMA (2017), as follows:
 Right product: Implementing Swordfish e-logistics is not about just using
technology. It is about relational configuration, technological integration.
Swordfish fishery activities are seasonal and require the products to be
fresh. Therefore the agile strategy will allow fresh products in the market.

10
 Right customer: Companies operating in Swordfish logistics should
develop a well-articulated e-logistics strategy in order to drive their
performance by exploiting new business opportunities through innovation
and product development to serve customers better. At the national level,
organizations, including FRDC, government bodies and import companies
within the global supply chain are required to trace complex issues to
facilitate information flow and information integration to be used by all of
the involved parties. The e-logistics capability either built at micro-level,
between organizations, at macro/regional levels or country level should
consider value generation from the consumer perspective that tends to be
more dependent on protein in the following years. Consumer preferences
could easily be known through the communication over the social media
channels and create propositions.
 Right quantity: It will be delivered by building the appropriate
capability, then imped the ICT solutions within the logistics management.
The Swordfish logistics require good estimations of information about the
quantity needed by consumers and the capacity of fisheries delivery to be
able to meet the consumer expectations.
 Right condition: Companies operating in the seafood industry should
prepare the right conditions for cooling the transportation vehicles or
freezing it according to the processing conditions. Data integration is very
important in determining the product position, levels and demand.
 Right place: E-logistics enables companies to get order-related
information, production level, transportation schedule and the
movements of vehicles and their locations.
 Right time: Getting the right data at the right time is very important to
enable Swordfish production companies, suppliers and distributors to take
the right decision. The speed of information sharing across the same
organization and across organizations that optimizes the logistics
processes.
 Right cost: E-logistics is capable of fulfilling the customers’ needs at a
very low cost. Conducting an agile strategy enables cost reduction in the
season of fishing Swordfish.
Conclusions
E-logistics is considered a supportive delivery process that acts to fulfill
online orders. It could also involve the use of information and communication
technology (ICT) to support activities implementation. Many organizations
are still not capable of fully utilizing the ICT.

11
The Swordfish fishery in Australia is young that does not indicate the
seasonal differences in catch rates. Despite this, catch rates are higher
between August and December compared to the rest of the year. Logistics
and supply chain management (LSCM) is highly influenced by the
development and success of E-commerce. E-commerce LSCM has a
significant role in modern logistics. The LSPs are essential to the global
seafood industry and the Swordfish logistics. These activities are becoming
strategically interconnected in a way that maximized the value of the
products. The use of RFID in Swordfish supply chain is preferable and can
reduce wastage. Swordfish processing and packaging technology have
developed rapidly. Shifts in consumer preferences of the processed seafood
and the changes in the fisheries industry resulted in more intensive and
geography concentrated global supply chain, which is also vertically
integrated. Large retailers control the growth of the distribution channels in
the international level.
Implementing Swordfish e-logistics is not about just using technology, it
involves relational configuration, technological connectivity and process
integration. E-logistics enables companies to get order-related information,
production level, transportation schedule and the movements of vehicles and
their locations. It is capable of fulfilling the customers’ needs at a very low
cost. Conducting an agile strategy enables cost reduction in the season of
fishing Swordfish.

12
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