The lack of IT systems within the logistics department of TATCO Yemen Literature review

The lack of IT systems within the logistics department of TATCO Yemen - Literature review Example Tatco-Yemen is a branch of Abudawood Group,a diversified group of companies that operates in the Middle East,Europe and the United States.The company specializes in the professional management of assets in different sectors including trading,sales and delivery of commodities,real estate,education and training of staffs,and financial investment. The company’s logistics focuses on supplying various products to consumers, an area where it has registered significant successes in the recent past. However, due to the rapid growth and expansion of its consumer base, stark challenges in the company’s management of inventory continue to exist. Tatco grapples with multiple problems related with the lack of Information Technology systems within the logistics department; these include, delays in the arrival of hard copies of important documents like invoices, causing unnecessary delays in customs clearance. Moreover, cargoes remain in the Yemeni port for longer due to lack of stora ge; and wrong information about the date of product. These problems have proved to be costly to the company. The paper explores the challenges of lack of IT systems in Tatco’s logistics department. Generally, logistics is an all-encompassing aspect of business involving planning, controlling and organizing the movement of goods and services, communications, real-time facts and people from the one point to another (Slater, 2012). Most of successful companies such as Tatco have in place strong a logistical department that supports the movement of its various assets across the country. The main problem with Tatco, however, is that most of its logistics processes are not properly integrated and built around IT systems. Processes such as handling of the materials, storage, information, shipment, packaging and inventory still lag behind, with the old paper work methods still in place (Safadi, 2003). The company suffers from ineffective logistical support and as such geographical restructuring of unfinished products, and the cleared inventories have been largely unpredictable, leading to products delays and rising operational costs (Von Der Gracht, 2008). Farooquie and Nasir (2010) in dicated that in any organization, the logistics department is expected to deliver on everything related with logistics by ensuring that the processes are developed in line with the organizational objectives of cost reduction and maximization of efficiency. However, the lack of IT systems within the organization present grave challenges to the organization’s storage processes distribution of wares, warehousing, and transportation of goods (Raj, 2009).