Impact Of Shipment Marking On The Operational Efficiency For New Silk Road Logistics Processes

Operational conditions for handling e-commerce postal shipments from China are determined by internal regulations and rules of handling shipments from outside the European Union both from postal operators and the Customs Service, as well as by cooperation arrangements of these partners. The different objectives and functions of the partners in handling the flow of e-commerce goods from China also result in different needs for standardised identification of goods and cargo, affecting the performance and efficiency of operations. A key factor for the operational strategy is the efficient and reliable (on-time, error-free) handling of the mass stream of postal letters and small e-commerce shipments, as well as domestic and international palletised shipments, and the reduction of operational time for postal and customs handling. The lack of standardisation for cargo unit identification among logistics and transport partners handling rail deliveries from China to Europe makes it impossible to track the physical flow of logistics units with postal shipments, throughout the New Silk Road supply chain. Cross-border tracking on the basis of a postal item bag identifier, standardised only within postal organisations worldwide according to UPU codification, allows limited tracking of the status of a consignment only for recorded delivery and receipt events at postal links in the supply chain. The aim of this paper is to analyse the operational conditions for the application of standards and solutions in e-commerce goods handling in the processes of import from China to Poland within the New Silk Road and in transit to other EU countries. This paper contains the results of work carried out between 2019 and 2021 by the Lukasiewicz Research Network-Institute of Logistics and Warehousing, the Poznan School of Logistics in cooperation with GS1 Poland, Polish Post and Polish Customs Service.