A transportation management system (TMS) can give you one of the strongest ROIs of any supply chain management software – if you find the right one for your business. The trouble is, most TMS systems on the market now were designed to meet the needs of the industry 15-20 years ago. Consequently, these designs prevent […]

The logistics service provider (LSP) market landscape is undergoing a titanic shift. The traditional boundaries between brokers, carriers and 3PLs are blurring, particularly in the small- to mid-sized LSP market. Many of these companies are experiencing a blending of the time-honored functions that once separated these distinct service providers. Many of the larger companies, due […]

My previous two posts focused on the importance of constraints in TMS algorithms and the issues around executing the routing algorithm’s recommendations in a dynamic, real-world environment. These are two very challenging issues that a TMS must be able to address. Customer’s requirements are complex and unless you have spent years in the transportation industry […]

As a follow-up to my previous commentary, which focused on setting the playing field for transportation routing algorithms and the fact that these are not really “optimizations” but heuristic algorithms, as well as the fact that modeling the constraints is at least as important as getting a lower cost, I want to now shift the […]

I think it’s time we stopped using the word “optimization” in our transportation management conversations. I believe this because when we talk about optimization, we usually apply the term toward solving rating and routing problems. For example, “We have many separate orders going out on the same day, to many different locations. Let’s run it […]