Internal Logistics of building materials retailers in big Santarém – Para

Abstract

Internal Logistics is crucial and must be carefully worked into any organization, due to its comprehensiveness, impacting the global results. It deals with movement, storage, handling, layouting, identifying and addressing products. For it to work properly the existence of personnel responsible is required. We developed this research in major retailers of building materials in Santarém, Amazon, in order to observe the relationship that the theory has with the companies’ practices. This research wants to analyze how the internal logistics of the major retailers of building materials in Santarém in the year 2014 worked. Checking with the personnel responsible for the logistics areas in the surveyed firms how the internal logistics processes are conducted. A literature review followed by a field research with qualitative approach was used, standardized interviews were made and the responses were analyzed and organized. It is concluded that four of the five companies surveyed have a well-structured internal logistics, in which they use many of the concepts presented by the theorists and also make use of the experience gained by working in the field. However, the other company that participated, despite having a large structure, and being recognized by the media and its peers, does not make use of the concepts and appropriate tools for better management of internal logistics. Nowadays, decision-making methods of the companies should be carefully studied by analyzing the context, so there are fewer risks that could affect the company, in this scenario Internal Logistics has a fundamental role to play to decision-making, because if there is no proper planning, it may be inefficient, causing problems to the company as a whole.