"The Development Of The OBC Product And Its Operation Strategies Throughout The Supply Chain."

In2012, Rhenus Logistics China Ltd. decided to implement the Hand Carry as a regular part of its portfolio of services. The reason for the introduction of this logistics product was its perceived demand in Asia. For instance, a meeting with DHL’s "same day" department head in Asia revealed that only for this specific service, DHL’s revenues amount to approximately60million USD p.a. Further evidences of the potential importance of the Hand Carry service came from South East Asia, where Rhenus’ Malaysian offices serve the successful company "Royale Asia" for the customs clearance of their hand carry deliveries, which provide Rhenus with approximately20,000USD per month. Furthermore, momentarily DHL, as well as other global logistics providers such as CEVA, Panalpina, and UPS delegate all or most of their Hand Carry inquiries to other medium or small logistics or "Hand-Carry-only" companies. In turn, the latter rely completely on the provision of this service for their sustainability. Different from the largest logistics providers, Rhenus, a middle-large sized logistics company has the potential to provide this service on its own without having to rely on it as a strictly necessary source of income like the smallest providers do. These and other factors demonstrate the relevance that establishing a functional Hand Carry network within the Rhenus world would have. Nevertheless, currently only Rhenus Asia is involved in the operational support for Hand Carry, and only "Rhenus’ greater China’s" headquarter in Shanghai is involved in the actual development of this service. This means that Rhenus Hand Carry "RHC" does not receive any operational support in the delivery of this service from Rhenus Europe, Rhenus CIS, or any other global location. This results having to work through agents, which increase the costs, and transit times; and consequently also the rates provided for RHC’s customers. Additionally, lack of coverage in main HC markets such as Mexico and Brazil, and the underdeveloped brand awareness of Rhenus, added to the lack of marketing efforts in Asia provide for further challenges in the development of this service. Taking this into consideration, Rhenus Asia should involve its European counterparts, establish a working information sharing system, place representatives in main HC destinations, and invest in an effective marketing campaign to capture the attention of the Chinese market.