visibility Archives

Savings Through Container Transport Planning

Transportation | By Gary M. Barraco • 12/05/2019

The use of standardized steel shipping containers, or intermodal containers, started late in the 1940s as commercial shipping operators started employing them for ocean carrier, truck, and rail transport. It wasn’t until 2005 when the International Maritime Office (IMO) established industry standards for more consistent loading, transporting, and unloading of goods in ports throughout the world, saving time and resources.

Regular, dry freight containers typically cost between $1750 and $2000 and are owned by either the shipping lines themselves or by a large number of operational and financial leasing companies. These are the costs of standard containers, but the sophisticated containers like reefers and tanks are costlier. For this reason, carriers want to have complete visibility into their container (and other equipment) status at all times.

Managing the flow of containers—empty or full—isn’t just a concern for ocean carriers. Visibility across the end-to-end supply chain can save money and headaches. However, the benefits are measurable. Utilizing container tracking tools as part of a holistic transportation management system (TMS) reduces operational costs by increasing asset visibility. Container tracking has become instrumental in providing real-time information on assets to prevent theft and loss of containers

From Cost to Revenue Center

An essential feature of the shipping container is that it is intermodal—goods packed in a container can travel on several different types of transport without being unpacked. This process equates to cost and efficiency savings, along with reductions in environmental impact and improved margins.

With the advancement in logistics technology, most companies always know the exact location of their cargo and can further notify their customers. But retrieving the container isn’t as straightforward. To maintain high levels of efficiency and cost savings, on-the-move containers should always be full. Once a load is delivered, the container should move to a new pick-up location (or locations) before returning to the port. This isn’t always possible for many reasons, but primarily, because load information needs to be made available to the transport community in close proximity that can move the empty containers and fill them up along the way to the port. Thus, reducing the expense of converting empty hauls into revenue-generating moves for trucking companies and carriers.

Ideally, containers should never sit empty; it should be considered a piece of equipment that must be used at all times. To do that, once a container is unloaded, logistics planners need to have an outbound load identified near the drop-off point. Repositioning begins immediately after a container has been unloaded to keep the cost of a non-operating container down. Yet, estimates show that at least 2.5 million containers are stored empty during any given time.

By leveraging technology, logistics teams can minimize the cost, effort and resources involved in container positioning. A container management platform facilitates tracking of containers that are ready to return to the port via message updates to trucking companies and logistics teams, providing a single view into their location and status. This application provides an efficient tracking system that becomes a revenue driver, not a cost center. Ocean carriers post empty container moves that are needed between depots at a set price and leverage the trucker network to balance container yard inventory. Truckers can also now benefit by accepting jobs to move containers that are posted by ocean carriers outside of contracted tendering. The overall results are lower demurrage, detention and lost container charges.

The Amazon of Container Management

Similar to the mammoth global e-commerce platform Amazon, supply chain management solution providers are now offering to connect the various commercial needs of the ocean carriers, shippers and trucking companies in the form of a virtual container yard. The online platform provides information about container availability at any location and when it is available to pick-up to retrieve a new load. The marketplace can be accessed by trucking companies for a fee, offering them a profit to pick-up the empty and return it to the carrier. Planners can then plot out other shippers with goods to move from the route along the way back to the port, or in close proximity.

The platform becomes a “clearinghouse” where detailed information is made available to satisfy the carrier’s need and line the pockets of trucking companies. During these times of escalating transportation costs, supply chain managers gain more insight into the container side of the operation and yield greater efficiencies to solve the empty container problem and trade imbalances.

Challenges Continue

Supply chains, and logistics, in particular, are going through challenging times considering the fluctuating volumes, rising technology costs and industry concerns like labor and regulations. However, we see shippers managed to adapt to this quickly changing transportation landscape through innovation, increased technology adoption and improved customer service. An end-to-end supply chain management solution, with all the capabilities of a robust TMS, is the best defense in a demanding environment.

Gary Barraco, Senior Director of Global Product Marketing, is responsible for developing strategic product marketing direction and presenting the E2open brand and solutions worldwide. As the platform evangelist, Gary develops and launches customer insights, go-to-market plans, product messaging and content, and field marketing tactics which establish E2open’s solutions as a standard in the Global Trade Management space. Previously, Gary was VP, Industry Development for ecVision for 9 years prior to its acquisition by Amber Road. He has 20 years of active military service where his primary specialty was providing marketing support to Army National Guard recruiting and retention operations in New Jersey. Gary received a BS from the State University of New York and is currently pursuing a Master’s degree at Moravian College.

Beware of Real-time Transportation Visibility “Big Hat, No Carrier”

Supply Chain Visibility | By Chris Jones • 09/12/2019

Real-time transportation visibility has become a powerful tool for shippers and logistics services providers (LSPs). Because the market is so hot, a number of transportation visibility vendors have entered the space and, to get attention, have made big claims about their tracking capabilities, which are misleading potential users. What we are seeing is a bad case of “Big Hat, No Cattle”. If you haven’t heard the term before, it’s an old Texas saying about making a big showing, but not having much substance behind it. In this case, it’s carriers, not cattle. Our work with customers shows that there are 5 key points that determine if a real-time shipment tracking solution provider can go beyond the “big hat” promises to successfully provide shipment visibility.

Theoretical versus actual

Getting real-time tracking information through ELDs is one of the most important ways to achieve good visibility, but it is also extremely misleading. A number of vendors are making claims to be connected to hundreds of thousands—if not millions—of carriers because of their ELD provider connections. It’s a theoretical statement that doesn’t describe how many actual carriers are tracking loads with the real-time visibility provider. Our analysis shows that only a fraction of the claimed connects are being actively used. Ask your real-time shipment tracking provider how many loads were actually tracked by each carrier over the last 12 months to get an accurate perspective on their actual network reach.

Small carrier/mobile strategy

An ELD only strategy will not effectively cover the transportation market. The carrier market is incredibly fragmented—there are almost 2 million small carriers (97% have less than 20 trucks) in the U.S. and many of them will not be using an ELD service that provides GPS tracking. In addition, in peak seasons, carriers contract smaller carriers to move freight on their behalf and these carriers are most likely not using the same ELD system. The only way to get to visibility from small carriers is via a mobile app, and drivers have to be coerced/incentivized to download and actively use it. To understand how effective a real-time visibility provider is with their small carrier coverage, look at their program for onboarding small carriers with mobile solutions. Do they have the resources and technology in their platform to facilitate small carrier mobile app adoption? You can also ask for their number of mobile app downloads and look at the app ratings on Google Play and Apple’s App Store. If, for example, the provider’s app only has 10 reviews then you know that hardly anyone is using it.

Understand modal tracking differences

Similar to the number of actual carriers being tracked, there is a lot of confusion being spread about the ability to provide real-time tracking across the transportation modes. Different transportation modes do not operate the same way and the tracking information has different characteristics depending on the mode. For example, real-time truck load mode tracking has had the greatest adoption because it is the easiest to track. There is only one truck involved with predefined pick-ups and drop-offs, so providing a real-time ETA is feasible over the life of the shipment. LTL, however, has multiple trucks involved and there are no predefined routes for the entire journey of the freight. In addition, the vast majority of carriers do not have the technology to provide shipment level tracking beyond status-based messages. Expecting to have the same granularity of tracking data in truck load and LTL is not reasonable. A blended tracking message approach is required to support multiple modes. To determine how well your real-time shipment tracking provider can address transportation modes beyond truckload, ask to see how they have integrated LTL, air, ocean, etc.-based milestone tracking into their real-time tracking platform and the scale of those modal networks.

Carrier/driver compliance

Nothing matters other than loads tracked, and it is not a given that carriers and drivers will track their loads. It is actually a never-ending battle to get them to do it. Tracking compliance needs to be built into the visibility platform to automate much of the load tendering, acceptance and tracking processes. In addition, there needs to be a team to measure carrier/driver performance and analyze processes and procedures to ensure that shippers or LSPs and carriers are consistently executing their part of the process. To drive compliance even higher, there should be incentive programs in place to motivate carrier and driver participation. Carrier compliance strategies and programs are incredibly important to drive and sustain value over time. Your real-time shipment tracking provider should be able to show you how they are combining technology and human interaction to keep carriers and drivers participating.

Customer engagement

The real-time visibility implementations with the greatest carrier adoption and sustained tracking performance have ongoing involvement from the customer. You will need to dedicate resources to consistently monitor and drive carrier participation. The real-time shipment tracking provider should be the expert in driving participation, but ultimately the carrier works for you, the customer, and will work to your level of expectations. The “carrot and stick” approach produces results but will require you to intervene with a number of your carriers over time as there are always a set of carriers that don’t do a good job providing visibility. This is something we have seen in our 20+ years of building real-time logistics messaging networks. Today’s technology has made it easier, but it hasn’t changed the human psyche. If you didn’t hear any of this from your real-time tracking solution provider, or they said that they had it all covered, you should be very concerned about the ultimate success of your implementation and the long-term value you will receive from it.

Real-time transportation visibility is changing how companies manage transportation and demonstrating the value that transportation information has to the supply chain and customers. However, vendor capabilities are also evolving, and it isn’t as easy as many of the vendors in the market are portraying to get to the value. Don’t get fooled by the big hat. Make sure to check how many large and small carriers actually use their solution consistently and if they have an effective program to maintain carrier compliance working together with you. How is your real-time transportation visibility program going? Let me know.

As Executive Vice President, Marketing and Services, Chris Jones (CJones@descartes.com) is primarily responsible for Descartes marketing activities and implementation of Descartes’ solutions. Chris has over 30 years of experience in the supply chain market, including the last 10 years as a part of the Descartes leadership team. Prior to Descartes, he has held a variety of senior management positions in other organizations including: Senior Vice President at The Aberdeen Group’s Value Chain Research division, Executive Vice President of Marketing and Corporate Development for SynQuest and Vice President and Research Director for Enterprise Resource Planning Solutions at The Gartner Group and Associate Director Operations & Technology for Kraft Foods.

The TMS Outlook

Transportation Management Systems | By Chris Cunnane • 08/14/2019

I recently wrapped up my Transportation Management Systems market study which looks at the total size of the market, the forecasted growth through 2023, and the leading suppliers across a number of categories including industry, region, and customer size. The study includes a holistic view of the TMS outlook. A TMS helps companies move freight from origin to destination efficiently, reliably, and cost-effectively. Transportation management systems include 2 types of solutions. Planning and execution is focused on freight moves involving a carrier. The complete process would include procurement, creation of a route guide, planning and optimization, electronic communication with carriers, visibility and exception management, freight audit, and performance management. Many solutions don’t support the end-to-end process described here. For classification purposes, if the solution includes a route guide, planning optimization, and electronic tendering/acceptance execution, it is included in this category.

Fleet Management involves freight moves with transportation assets owned by the company. The complete process would include routing and optimization; visibility and exception management; transportation asset management; and performance management. Many solutions don’t support the end-to-end process described here. For classification purposes, any solution that includes routing plus any of the other modules listed above will be deemed a fleet management solution.

I was recently interviewed by ARC Advisory Group’s Allen Avery to take a deeper look into the TMS outlook for the foreseeable future and identify some of the larger trends in the TMS market. The full interview is below.

TMS Outlook – Trends

One of the biggest questions that comes up is around the key trends that are driving companies to explore transportation management systems. The primary reason companies buy a transportation management system is for freight savings. These freight savings can be attributed to simulation and network design, load consolidation and lower cost mode selections, and multi-stop route optimization. But few companies would buy a TMS if it would lead to declining service levels. A TMS maintains the service levels by understanding the origin to destination lead times and using that as a constraint during the optimization run.

Second, the freight spend required to invest in a TMS solution is lower than ever. Historically, if a company did not have over $20 million in freight spend, purchasing a TMS was out of the question. The emergence of SaaS solutions, and less sophisticated on-premise applications, has reduced that number significantly. Now, essentially companies of all sizes can afford a TMS.

Third, companies are debating whether to bring their transportation management in-house with a TMS or outsource to a managed services provider. The freight savings and service improvements associated with TMS are quite similar to MTS arrangements. The key question here is how much control companies want over the planning and execution processes.

TMS Outlook – Growth Drivers

Another question that comes up a lot looks at the underlying factors that are driving growth in the TMS market. First, TMS has a significant ROI. Planning & execution solutions can significantly reduce freight costs while improving service levels. In our most recent TMS ROI survey, average savings from implementing a TMS in the first year was 8 percent. While we have not done an ROI survey on fleet management solutions, our case studies also show better fleet utilization and service from these solutions.

E-commerce continues to grow at double digit rates, while traditional retail is growing at less than the rate of inflation. Fleet management solutions, when tightly integrated with an ecommerce site, help companies achieve promised delivery dates while minimizing costs. Planning & execution solutions include parcel solutions, which is widely used to support ecommerce.

Finally, SaaS solutions are driving tremendous growth in the market. These solutions require significantly lower upfront costs and is therefore less risky. This is leading to increased growth in sales to smaller shippers and carriers. The majority of TMS providers are making the move to SaaS deployments.

There are also a number of key trends that I recently highlighted in an article about trends to watch in the TMS market. Specifically, companies are keeping a keen eye on visibility tools, especially as it relates to providing more accurate ETAs. Artificial intelligence and machine learning are also becoming a core part of the TMS landscape, as companies try to learn about constraints that impact their transportation activities. And finally, IoT is gaining a lot of traction especially when it comes to manage assets on the move.

Final Thought

The TMS market is poised for growth for a variety of reasons. There are a number of key trends that are driving companies to explore TMS, such as the need to lower freight costs, lower freight spend requirements, and deciding on whether to outsource or bring the operations in-house. There are also a number of market drivers fueling the growth, such as the robust ROI associated with TMS, the expansion of e-commerce and omni-channel operations, and the surge in SaaS solutions. Suppliers will continue to monitor a number of trends that customers are interested in, including visibility solutions, artificial intelligence, and IoT.

More than a TMS: Optimizing with Visibility-Driven Workflows

Guest Commentary | By JP Wiggins • 08/07/2018

When we think about visibility and tracking in our daily lives, our consumer mindset probably turns on and we think of online ordering. We’re concerned with questions like, “Where’s my stuff?” or “What time can I expect my order to be delivered?” In a B2C environment, visibility is about tracking.

But in B2B, it’s so much more. Visibility covers the technology and tools you use for supply chain management. It’s about amassing data from all sources with intelligence and workflow to react in-line. How do you do that efficiently and in a timely way? How do you translate all of that intelligence into action?

A Surprising Answer

Having visibility into your own logistics, as well as offering visibility to your customers, is complex in the B2B world. It’s all about supply chain management, which encompasses:

Customer service management
Transportation/warehouse execution
Exception notification
Carrier/mode analysis
Location load/unload performance
Profitably by service/product

Visibility in these areas is more than just an understanding of what’s happened; it’s about taking action before small issues become big problems. Visibility is the “so what?” of your transportation data.

Translating and communicating everything that’s happening is a tall order for any supply chain software, but the answer to the problem may surprise you because it’s often overlooked: A modern, highly configurable transportation management system (TMS) that can act like a transportation control tower for your operations.

New Heights of Visibility

With so many logistical considerations to track, a TMS that helps you optimize with visibility-driven workflows will push you to new levels of optimization. With the right architecture, a TMS can integrate and manage different data types flowing in from multiple systems, shippers, carriers, mobile applications, financial systems, emails and portals. Now, you have a single point that provides full visibility into the flow of data and the tools to act on the data in order to achieve:

In-line process improvements
Automated exception management that lessens the need for manual intervention
Proactive, advanced notification of issues
Intelligent workflow creations that drive carrier management
The creation of operational data for visibility

How does it work?

A TMS that acts like a transportation control tower can enable an intelligent “rally point” that brings together different sources, translates that data and automates or presents actions as appropriate. For example, it can relate and communicate many-to-many relationships, such as orders to shipments. When a customer asks, “Where’s the truck?” they don’t really care where the truck is; they want to know when they’re getting their freight. The TMS answers that inquiry at the order level because it has the power (backed by the intelligence of your TMS) to slice and dice the information many different ways.

Another example of the benefits of a TMS with visibility-driven workflows is when a carrier arrives on time but didn’t get in to the dock. As a result, your customer sends you a detention charge. With the power of a TMS that’s acting as your transportation control tower, you can flag that as an exception and fight the detention automatically. The extraordinary visibility into your operations opens up new opportunities for efficiency and automation like never before.

Integration is key

Data aggregation and communication are impossible if you can’t translate the data coming in. A TMS with visibility-driven workflows can read and translate vastly different data types and put them into the same format from which you can take action. This includes SOAP and REST transactions, API, EDI, CSV, X12 and others. With the ability to integrate with so many systems, your TMS enables you to meet your customers where they’re at, rather than force them to do extra work to fill the gap of your technology’s limitations. It’s also a far more cost-effective approach, as you have the ability to leverage what exists, rather than rip and replace with a solution.

Set Yourself Apart

In an industry where many services can appear commoditized, a TMS with visibility-driven workflows transforms the way you gather and translate intelligence so that you have a powerful tool that’s shareable with your customers and sets your services apart. Increase your opportunities for new efficiencies; meet each of your customers’ unique requirements with the ability to dissect data in myriad ways; and increase your own profitability with deeper insights, faster reaction times and better-informed decisions that impact your margins.

JP Wiggins is co-founder and vice president of logistics at 3Gtms, a global provider of Tier 1 transportation management software. There, he manages channels and partnerships. Previously, JP was co-founder and senior vice president of logistics for Global Logistics Technologies (G-Log); co-founder and vice president of product management at dx/dt; and vice president of logistics at Weseley Software.

BASF Uses Real-time Visibility to Drive Supply Chain Excellence

Chemical Industry | By Steve Banker • 04/30/2018

BASF uses real-time visibility to improve their service capabilities. They implemented a solution from MacroPoint, a Descartes company, to improve their delivery reliability as well as improve the productivity of the transportation providers they use to service the North American market. But implementing great technology is not enough. Getting the most out of software also requires dealing with both internal and partner cultural issues and improving processes. According to Bill Wehrle, the Director of Supply Chain for isocyanates and inorganics in BASF’s Monomers strategic business unit, the journey that BASF has been on to improve their supply chain’s reliability started eight years ago.

Mr. Wehrle spoke at Descartes’ user conference Evolution in March. BASF Corporation, a chemical company headquartered in Florham Park, New Jersey, is the North American affiliate of BASF SE, of Germany. BASF has more than 17,500 employees in North America and has sales of over $16 billion.

Eight years ago, Mr. Wehrle was talking to one of his colleagues, David Bazzetta, about the problems they faced surrounding their bulk trucking shipments. He admitted that the problems they were facing with late deliveries and unhappy customers were mirrored by the frustrations their truck carriers were having surrounding route optimization and poor asset utilization. He further recognized that these large carriers were serving multiple chemical companies. Mr. Wehrle and Mr. Bazzetta decided to create a “Bulk Trucking Symposium” and invited some of their largest bulk trucking partners to the inaugural event.

The goal was to get to the root of shipper behaviors causing problems for carriers, as well as carrier processes causing problems for the shippers. The first symposium brainstorming meeting took place in April 2010, and participants used Post It notes to identify carrier/shipper win/win scenarios. They then posted the notes on a board to create various optimization projects.

BASF Uses Real-time Visibility — Bulk Trucking Symposium Brainstorming Session

But identifying problems is not enough. You must execute on those ideas. BASF’s “Symposium Methodology” for bulk trucking optimization is a year-long cycle which begins every year in April with a large Symposium attended by BASF’s bulk trucking partners, and multiple departments within BASF. At the annual Symposium, current issues are discussed, opportunities are identified and prioritized, and project teams are created to tackle the opportunities in the ensuing year. Quarterly face-to-face review meetings are held with key project team leaders in to chart the progress through the year. This regular review process has been the key to making the Symposium Methodology a sustainable process. Additional, “carrier collaboration meetings” are held periodically throughout the year with key Terminal Managers so that that day-to-day challenges can be identified and remedied at the grassroots level.

BASF recently conducted its 9^th Annual Bulk Trucking Symposium in early April. The first Symposium in 2010 included 4 of BASF’s trucking partners; it has now grown to 22 companies participating at Symposium. One of the key outcomes of the Symposium is the comradery that has developed among the trucking companies, and their joint willingness to optimize processes to serve BASF’s customers. As an example, Mr. Wehrle related the example of a large storm in the Gulf Coast about six years ago which caused widespread power outages near their plant operations in Geismar, Louisiana. One of BASF’s trucking partners completely lost power to their terminal. Because of the “community” that has been developed among the Symposium participants, and in the spirit of servicing BASF’s customers, another trucking company immediately offered a large generator to their competitor that lost power! This cooperation is totally attributed to the Symposium and the common goal of optimizing service to BASF’s customers.

At a symposium that occurred four years ago, the problem of proactively notifying customers of impending late deliveries was discussed, as many customers experienced late deliveries and BASF was unable to advise them in advance. The idea of GPS tracking was raised; It was pointed out that if Amazon can provide shipment visibility to their customers, BASF should be able to do the same. A BASF project team searched for a company that could provide a web-based solution that could provide visibility to truck locations, ETAs, as well as a graphical interface with green/yellow/red mapping for easy visibility to quickly identify issues with shipments. The key design feature BASF was looking for was automated email alerts to identify late shipments IN ADVANCE of the expected arrival time such that customers could be proactively notified.

The search eventually led to MacroPoint; Their system had every feature the project team was looking for. Initially the BASF project team faced internal challenges with connecting BASF’s shipping tender information to MacroPoint. But once those issues were resolved, the solution was quickly implemented! BASF calls their MacroPoint solution “BASF DataTRACK”, as is provides insight into shipment data as well as GPS tracking information. This solution is operated by BASF’s Bulk Command Center which is run by Transplace, a provider of managed transportation services with a strong presence in the Chemical industry.

Today, over 300 employees in BASF and over 30 customers at 45 ship-to locations utilize DataTRACK. The MacroPoint technology automatically generates off-schedule email alerts when it detects a truck is behind schedule, and these email alerts are sent directly to multiple BASF employees, and several customer employees, including the unloading department.

The DataTRACK solution can overlay weather as well as traffic maps on top of the GPS tracking, and “this gives us the ability to see the bigger picture,” Mr. Wehrle said. “During last year’s hurricane season we were able to see closed roads ahead of a truck’s intended route and proactively notify customers. MacroPoint’s geo-fencing technology has also been utilized to resolve carrier demurrage and detention issues due to the time stamped arrival and departure times.

“Just knowing that a load is going to be late isn’t good enough,” Mr. Wehrle explained. BASF has layered a reporting tool on top of the real-time data to produce delivery reliability reports. These analytics separate “controllable” delays from “uncontrollable” delays that carriers cannot be held accountable for. Next steps may include developing analytics for hours of service, equipment breakdowns, and event monitoring.

The Bulk Trucking Symposium is utilized to generate continuous improvement projects between BASF and their carriers. Now the data from MacroPoint allows them to identify challenges at their loading and customer unloading operations, and work on joint optimized solutions. “From a continuous improvement perspective,” Mr. Wehrle stated, “we are at the tip of the iceberg.”

Since the inception of this project with MacroPoint, the DataTRACK solution has expanded to include BASF’s largest bulk trucking providers. It is also now utilized by the BASF Bulk Command Center to track shipments for eight additional SBUs in BASF. Expansion of the solution to monitor dry bulk and full truckload shipments is being explored.

Bill Gates and the Digital Supply Chain

Logistics Service Providers | By Steve Banker • 07/17/2017

We are moving from the buzzword “Internet of Things” (IoT) to the term “digitization.” As a supply chain professional, the digitization I’m most interested in is the “digital supply chain.” The concept of the digital supply chain encompasses IoT, but also includes the idea that sensor data needs to be leveraged in applications that take that sensor data, turn it into actionable tasks that are embedded in the right process step that can be executed by the right person.

Using sensor data in real-time is nothing new in logistics. In the logistics space, for example, we’ve been taking RF scans and using that data to improve warehouse processes since at least 1975 when McHugh Freeman, an early warehouse management system supplier, began business. And the use of GPS in Internet enabled fleet routing and tracking solutions has existed since the turn of the century.

But in a larger sense, we are only scratching the surface of what is possible with a digital supply chain. As is often the case, Bill Gates got there in his thinking some years before the rest of us.

As I was considering these issues … a new concept popped into my head: ‘the digital nervous system’ … A digital nervous system consists of the digital processes that enable a company to perceive and react to its environment, to sense competitor challenges and customer needs, and to organize timely responses … Bill Gates, Business at the Speed of Light (2000)

While we’ve had elements of a digital supply chain for quite some time, in this more holistic sense of a digital nervous system, we are only beginning to scratch the surface. A nervous system can take our sensory inputs – sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell – and a person can react either instantly or more thoughtfully to what is happening around them. While a WMS is a digital supply chain application, it has a limited scope in how it is using sensor data. It certainly does not react in the holistic way that a nervous system does.

There has been an explosion of new sensor data available to be used to create digital supply chains.

We are using, or learning to use, SNEW data – social media, news, event, and weather data – and real-time data to improve our supply chain capabilities in the areas of risk management (see Next Generation Supply Chain Risk Management, A Case Study or General Motors’ Approach to Supply Chain Resiliency), supply chain planning (JDA’s Exciting New Product Strategy), and supply chain asset management (Predictive Intelligence Comes to the Logistics Industry).

The supply chain has historically relied heavily on EDI messaging, which is far from a real-time messaging mechanism. Now I am coming across several young companies which provide much more timely supply chain data, across a much larger spectrum of issues, than EDI covers. A few examples include: 10-4 Systems, FourKites, MacroPoint, Resilinc, riskmethods, StormGeo, and Transvoyant.

Leading logistics service providers are using these technologies and proprietary development to create cutting edge control tower visibility. C.H. Robinson TMC’s Navisphere, DHL’s Connected View, and Ryder’s RyderShare all have these kinds of real-time control tower visibility platforms in place.

This is a topic that will be covered at ARC’s February Forum in Orlando. The theme this year is “Digitizing and Securing Industry, Infrastructure, and Cities.” That is some time out, but I mention it now because I’ve been tasked with putting together two tracks on the Digital Supply Chain and it is not too early for me to begin searching for panelists. I will be circling back and writing about this topic in a month or two. So, if you have any thoughts on this topic, please feel free to drop me a line at sbanker@arcweb.com.

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