农产品物流外文翻译.doc

毕业论文外文翻译（一）论文题目：国外发展农产品物流的成功经验及其对浙江的启示外文题目： Logistics &the National Economy 出 处： International Journal of Physical Distribution & LogisticsManagement 作 者： MCB UP Ltd 原 文：Logistics &the National EconomyIntroduceLogistics has always been a central and essential feature of all economic activity and yet paradoxically it is only in recent years that it has come to receive serious attention from either the business or academic world. One very obvious reason for this neglect is that, whilst the functions that comprise the logistics task are individually recognised, the concept of logistics as an integrative activity in business has only really developed within the last 20 years.What is logistics? It can be variously defined, but expressed at its simplest it is:The process of strategically managing the movement and storage of materials, parts, and finished inventory from suppliers, through the firm on to customers.Logistics is thus concerned with the management of the physical flow which begins with sources of supply and ends at the point of consumption. It is therefore clearly much wider in its reach than simply a concern with the movement of finished goods a commonly held view of physical distribution. In the logistics scheme of things we are just as much concerned with plant and depot location, inventory levels, materials management and information systems as we are with transport.One of the features of the logistics concept which is its greatest attraction whilst simultaneously being the greatest drawback to its widespread adoption in industry so far is that it places the emphasis on integrating activities that traditionally have been located in different functions of the business. Thus in many companies responsibility for, say, inventory on the one hand and transport on the other may be vested in the production function and the distribution function respectively, and decisions on one will often be made without regard for the other. The logistics viewpoint however forces the decision-taker to recognise the connections between the component elements of the materials flow system indeed it encourages comprehensive systems thinking rather than functional tunnel vision.It is interesting to trace the evolution of thought in the logistics activity and then to assess its importance for business today.As early as 1915, writing from that other place Harvard Business School Arch Shaw took a view of the logistics activity which was radically far-sighted. He said:The relations between the activities of demand creation and physical supply . . .illustrate the existence of the two principles of interdependence and balance.Failure to co-ordinate any one of these activities with its group-fellows and also with those in the other group, or undue emphasis or outlay put upon any one of these activities, is certain to upset the equilibrium of forces which means efficient distribution. . . The physical distribution of the goods is a problem distinct from the creation of demand . . . Not a few worthy failures in distribution campaigns have been due to such a lack of co-ordination between demand creation and physical supply . . .Instead of being a subsequent problem, this question of supply must be met and answered before the work of distribution begins.This view of logistics as a bridge between demand creation and physical supply is still as valid today as it was when first expressed 65 years ago. However no matter how basic and fundamental this idea was, very little attention seems to have been paid to it and indeed in 1962 one of the gurus of Management, Peter Drucker, writing in Fortune magazine said:Physical distribution is todays frontier in business. It is the one area where managerial results of great magnitude can be achieved. And it is still largely unexplored territory.There are signs however that management consciousness of the importance of logistics is growing. The last ten years have seen a major upsurge in interest in this area in the UK and the rest of Western Europe. We are still some way behind the United States in our acceptance of the logistics concept, a situation that is reflected perhaps in the fact that there is only one Chair in Marketing Logistics in Western Europe and that is here at Cranfield, compared with more than 50 in the United States.A number of factors have contributed to the growth of interest in logistics in management. One of these is that inevitably as companies seek out areas for productivity improvement they are forced to confront the major source of corporate costs represented by distribution. Production and marketing have both been subjected to scrutiny by academic commentators and the more efficiency-conscious companies. Now it is the turn of the materials flow system that binds production and marketing to receive similar examination. Giving increased urgency to this examination is the growth of costs of movement and storage. Energy crises have had a direct impact upon transport costs and soaring interest rates have made the costs of holding stocks into a major expense. Beyond this the vast proliferation in the size of most companies product ranges has meant that the total stock-holding investment of these companies has increased dramatically. When one considers that a company such as Birds Eye ten years ago offered a range of 213 items whereas now it has a total range of 531 items then it can be appreciated just how important a factor in the corporate balance sheet inventory now is. Changes in the channels of distribution have themselves forced many manufacturers and distributors to take a fresh look at their distribution systems. Grocery retailing in this country is a prominent example of how power in the marketing channel has dramatically changed hands. Twenty-three years ago there were 150,000 retail grocery outlets, today there are only 68,000. Clearly the size of these outlets in physical and turnover terms has increased considerably and so too has the centralization of retail buying power. For example Tesco and Sainsbury together account for 25 per cent of the UK sales of groceries. The impact that this has had on manufacturers and in particular on their distribution systems has been far reaching. Similar changes in channel relationships have occurred in many other industries too.The combination of all these factors has brought the distribution problem into sharp focus. In particular, awareness is growing both of the impact of logistics upon corporate profitability and, underlying this, its impact upon the national economy.Logistics and the National EconomyLogistics pervades almost every facet of economic activity. It provides the basic network whereby our everyday life is supported. This was demonstrated by the crisis brought to the nation by the transport strike of 1979 when all too clearly we saw the effects of a disturbance to the logistics system. Until then few people outside distribution probably ever thought of the central importance to the working of the economy of an efficient distribution system.It is easy to underestimate the scope of the logistics activity in the UK economy.Taking a broad definition of logistics-related functions within the economy and including all the distributive trades, a recent study has estimated that 29 per cent of the UK working population are employed in a logistics-related job. The same study also estimated that the total cost to the national economy of logistics in 1976 was 35 billion, or 32.5 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product. These costs included the cost of holding stock (excluding stock appreciation), storage, materials handling and transport.Other studies have confirmed this order of magnitude of costs. So in terms of cost alone logistics activities account for a massive part of the national expenditure.Clearly any productivity improvement that could be achieved in any part of the logistics system would release resources for use elsewhere in the economy. A study recently commissioned by the National Council of Physical Distribution Management in the USA suggested that effective productivity improvement programmes in logistics could lead to reductions of between ten and 20 per cent in total corporate costs. The evidence suggests that such savings are potentially available in this country; in some cases the savings could be considerably higher.It must not be thought however that the logistics activity is merely a cost to the nation and as such the only desirable course of action is to reduce it. On the contrary, logistics is a positive contributor to national wealth. It facilitates the economic process and in many ways it is the engine that drives that process.For example, one important way in which the logistics process affects the national economy is through delivery performance in export markets. Much evidence has been assembled, for instance that contained in a recent survey by the Council of British Chambers of Commerce in Europe, strongly suggesting that a major reason for our declining export performance is our seeming inability as a nation to deliver on time. In many markets our products have no inbuilt technical or quality advantage over foreign competition and thus if delivery service is perceived to be inferior the sale is easily lost. There are countless stories, many of them unfortunately true, about the failure of British manufacturing companies to pay sufficient regard to the overseas distribution network. We can only hazard a guess as to how many more British Leyland vehicles could have been sold in the United States if the distributive network for vehicles and spares had matched that of Volkswagen or Datsun.And yet it has not always been this way. It is most instructive, I feel, to look back to the massive economic development that was under way in this country two hundred years ago and to note the vital role played in our industrial revolution by the development of appropriate and efficient distribution networks.Logistics and the Industrial RevolutionIn the short space of time approximately bounded by the years 1760 and 1830 a transformation of the whole way of life of Britain took place. That this period has come to be universally known as the Industrial Revolution is easily understandable when it is recalled that industrial activity was metamorphosised within a lifetime from a scattered series of domestic processes into a highly concentrated, mechanised, factory and urban-based industry. This period is perhaps best remembered for the world-changing developments in the iron and steel manufacturing processes, in textile machinery, in steam power and in engineering. It is also a period remembered for the creative genius of people like Richard Arkwright, James Watt, Matthew Boulton and the Darbys. However it can fairly be claimed that none of this dramatic and rapid change from a largely agrarian and cottage industry country to a highly industrialised and trade-oriented nation could have happened without an equivalent revolution in the distributive process. Here the names of Telford, Brindley, McAdam and, later, Stephenson and Brunei represent the great developments that were made to link the place of production with the point of consumption.Prior to the mid-eighteenth century, transport throughout Britain was difficult, time-consuming and uncertain. Most roads were little more than dirt-tracks and most of the countrys distribution was accomplished by trains of pack horses following ancient tracks and crossing rivers by means of narrow bridges. The coming of the turnpike system changed the whole nature of the road network. Whilst the first of the turnpikes, administered by a local trust of worthies and entrepreneurs, can be found as early as 1706, it was not until the second half of the century that their number grew substantially.The expansion of trade and industry meant that improved means had to be found for moving goods over a much greater distance. The new methods of production meant that markets had to be found over a much wider area; hence the need for more effective distribution systems. As every new Trust set up to establish a turnpike required an Act of Parliament it is possible to infer the onset of industrialization from the great increase in such legislation in the second half of the eighteenth century. Betwen 1750 and 1770 there were more than twice as many Turnpike Acts as in the whole of the previous 50 years and most significantly the increased rate of road building was most noticeable in the new manufacturing districts of the Midlands.These new roads substantially reduced travelling time. In the 1750s for example, a stage-coach took ten days to reach Edinburgh from London; by the second decade of the nineteenth century the same journey took under three. The qualities of these roads and bridges engineered by people like Telford and McAdam were of a standard that was unknown in the rest of the world and their effects were profound.译 文：物流和国民经济引言物流一直都是所有经济活动的中心和重要环节，但矛盾的是只有在近几年里才受到商业和学术界的重视。它被忽视的一个很显而易见的原因是，仅仅在过去的20年中，物流的概念才作为一个综合性的商业活动得到真正的发展，同时由物流作业构成的功能才被单独承认。什么是物流？它可以有不同的定义，但是最简单的是：原材料、零部件和制成品库存从供应者到公司，再到消费者的运输和储存的战略管理过程。物流与始于原材料供应，终于消费的实物流管理息息相关，因此很显然比简单的关注于制成品运输所涉及的要广泛的多这是大多数人对于物流所持有的观点。在物流方案的事情上，跟运输一样，我们只关注工厂和仓库的位置、库存水平、材料管理和信息系统。物流概念的特点之一是其强大的吸引力,同时也成为它最大的缺点，目前为止，它被广泛应用在工业上，它把重点放在一些传统上有不同商业功能的集成活动上。因此很多公司要对此负责，比如说，存货是一方面，运输是另一方面，可能被分别归到生产函数和分配函数名下，并且做关于一个的决定的时候常常没有考虑到另一个。然而物流观点迫使决策者认识到材料流体系中各环节间的联系事实上它鼓励全面的系统思维而不是只注重功能的井蛙之见。回溯关于物流活动的思考演变，然后其今天对于商业的重要性是有趣的。早在1915年，其他地方的著作哈佛商学院Arch Shaw对物流活动的看法从根本上来说是有远见的。他说：“需求创造和实物供应活动之间的关系说明存在着相互依存和平衡两个原则。未能协调组员和其他组的成员活动，或者过分强调或经费支出在任何一个活动上，必然打破优化配置的力的平衡。商品的实物分布是一个有别于创造需求的问题由于需求创造和实物供应之间缺乏协调，导致了在配送活动中不少有价值的失败在配送工作开始之前，供应问题必须得到满足和回复，而不是作为一个后续问题。这种物流作为需求创造和实物供应之间的桥梁的观点在今天依然和65年前一样有效。然而无论这个概念多么基本，也很少被注意到，正如1962年的管理大师Peter Drucker在“财富”杂志说上：物流是今天的前沿业务。在这个领域能够实现高水平的管理结果，并且这在很大程度上仍是一个未被开发的领域。然而，有迹象表明，物流管理意识的重要性逐渐增长。过去的十年里，可以看到英国和西欧的其他国家在这一领域的兴趣剧增。在对物流概念的接受方面，我们仍远远落后于美国，有一种情况可以体现，可能实际上只有一把椅子在西欧的克兰菲尔德的市场运销，而与之相比，美国有超过50把。许多因素促使对物流管理的兴趣增长。其中之一是，由于企业寻找地区来提高生产力从而使他们被迫面对以配送为代表的企业成本的主要来源。生产和销售都受到学术评论员和更高效率的企业的审查。现在，轮到材料流系统约束生产和销售来接受同样的检验。运输和储存的成本的增加给检验增添了紧迫感。能源危机对运输成本有直接影响，利率的飙升使得持有股票的成本成为主要的开支。除此之外，多数企业的产品范围的大量扩张意味着对这些公司总的持股投资突破性的增加。当一个人认为像Birds Eye这样的公司十年前提供213种项目，而现在总共有531种，那么就可以体会到库存如今在企业的资产负债表中是一个多么重要的因素。分销渠道的改变迫使很多制造商和分销商重新审视他们的分销系统。这个国家的杂货零售业是一个典型的例子，它展现了权力在市场渠道中是如何戏剧性地转手的。23年前这里有150000个杂货零售点，现在只有68000个。显然这些销售点的规模和营业额大幅增加，使得零售的购买力也比较集中。例如Tesco和Sainsbury的杂货销售共占了英国的25%，这对制造商特别是他们的分销系统具有深远的影响。渠道方面同样的改变也发生在许多其他的国家。所有这些因素的结合使分销问题变得越来越尖锐。特别是，物流对企业盈利能力的影响和在这个基础上对国家经济的影响这两种意识日益增强。物流和国民经济物流贯穿经济活动的方方面面，它提供了支撑我们日常生活的基础网络。1979年的运输罢工给国家带来的危机已经证明了这一点，让我们看到了物流系统的忧虑。直到那时分销外的人才意识到一个有