The impact of innovations on performance of Singapore's logistics firms (food sector)

• Main Author: Ong, Wei Ting
• Other Authors: School of Civil and Environmental Engineering
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2018
• Subjects: DRNTU::Business::Management::Logistics
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/75577
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

The logistics landscape has changed over the years. Globalisation and competition are driving logistics players to leverage on innovations in order to be more efficient. As the regional logistics hub, Singapore is on her way to build a knowledge-intensive economy through innovations, in order to deal with her inherent challenges and the competition externally. This project aims to explore the impact of innovations on logistics firms, by analysing its impact on the performance on Singapore firms, through online research, conducting survey and interviews with industry players. Findings-5 findings can be extracted from this study. Firstly, logistics in general is technologically driven and most logistics process these days are supported by the application of technologies. This is the same for Singapore logistics firms. However, survey also revealed that IT innovation are complement by other innovations like processes and equipment. Secondly, firms’ rationale of innovations is to satisfy customer needs. Survey shows that the impact of innovations brings in benefits such as improved company image and improved financial performance equally, other than increased customer satisfaction. Thirdly, interview findings showed that even though Singapore is moving ahead with innovations, there is a view that Singapore is still lagging behind some bigger economies. Fourthly, interviews with some big companies in Singapore revealed that innovations generally have a good impact on company’s performance, in terms of operational productivity, securing market share and help companies to remain competitive. Some innovations are also beneficial in alleviating problem of land scarcity and tight labour market situation in Singapore. Finally in food logistics, innovations can help to enhance internal operations and mitigate food logistical issues like food safety and food wastage. An analysis performed on Mandai Link Logistics, a cold chain food logistics provider in Singapore, showed that applications of innovations generally have positive impacts in most of the performance categories under the Balanced Scorecard framework.