Down To Freight

"I'll focus on a recent initiative that's been a long time in planning and execution. That initiative is the establishment implementation of a standard Canon warehouse management system across our entire distribution network. You can imagine the challenge of implementing a standard system across five different 3PLs and Canon facilities.

We recently completed implementation at all 12 DCs, and we continue to refine the system to meet our business needs.

Previously, we worked with a number of different warehouse management systems, from best-in-class to unique homemade solutions in some locations. We went out and selected a middle-market WMS software from a WMS provider. That was very scalable. We could scale it from 10-man operations to 100 people operations in our larger DCs."

– Dan Schultz, Senior Director, Canon USA

"We are very interested in how machines, without necessarily a lot of human intervention or minimal human intervention, can actually do this negotiation themselves to allocate who gets access to various spots within the center for loading and offloading.

In the maneuver, it is getting from the gate to that location safely and with respect to the limitations of any of the vehicles: their turning radius, their ability to back up and do particular kinds of maneuvers. It ensures that all of that happens efficiently and safely. That is our application that we're working on now.

It's this tight maneuver transaction, smart transaction between relatively autonomous trucks and other vehicles that ensures all the stuff gets moved as quickly as possible. It is subject to the urgency as dictated by the supply chain and by the ability of the individual entities that operate these machines to place a value on what it means to be first in line that day or to getting access to a specific loading or unloading zone."

- Dr. Karl Wunderlich, Director of Surface Transportation, Noblis

🚛 Are 3PLs worth investing in? 

🎧 In today's podcast episode, we're chatting with Muhammad Imran Tahir, Logistics Advisor for Aramco Americas. Join us now to learn about the benefits of 3PLs and more! 

“We've been in business for many years, and we would handle our own logistics from ground zero. When I say ground zero, meaning sourcing, trucking, packaging. We would do the whole nine yards to deliver what we have for our end-users, our customers. But for a period of time, we were not able to see the economies of scale that we could achieve by what we currently do as a practice versus what the market would be using. And here, we decided to go with a 3PL model and use the services of freight forwarders who are actually greater subject experts on the shipping requirements and trade lanes. And they collectively have better pricing strategies because they use volumes of a lot of other clientele that they have more bargaining power.”

🦾 API is the key!

How do you keep up in a world where there’s just tons of data, everything moves fast, and needs real-time updates? For Wayne Wayne Ellis, SVI’s VP of Supply Chain North American Operations, utilizing API was key in solving these issues and more! 

🎧 Listen to our podcast today to learn more about this exciting program.

“So the problem is there's a severe global shortage of many electronic components today, making it very difficult to find available inventory in the market. So we need real-time information from our suppliers so that we can review stock availability and pricing. And this project allows us to obtain information electronically in real-time, allowing us to better service the needs of our customers. So by utilizing API our system can communicate with our suppliers, allowing stock visibility, pricing comparison, and actually place POs directly with key suppliers without any human involvement.”

📍 What are the considerations for cross-dock network optimization that you should consider?

According to Ivan Hernandez, Director of Transportation, Operations and Procurement for Daimler Trucks North America, improving customer service and building relationships with partners are essential considerations when it comes to working on and leveraging solutions to cross-dock network optimization.

🎧 Listen to our podcast today to learn more!

“Major consideration, as I mentioned, is customer service. In this case, our plants. Second, we are a truck manufacturer. It was very important that through this process, we could keep the relationship with the carriers very close to Daimler. We didn’t want to hand this over to a logistic provider. We want to keep this very close to us in a sense, the carriers that move our freight are also our customers. That's why it was very important for us to keep that.

Another important element was to give them the strategic consideration of the location of those cross docks. We wanted to make sure that in this particular case in Mexico, we could keep control of the facility. So that as time goes on, we have that control so that we can choose based on the performance of the provider that should be running that facility. That was also one of the main topics.”

Is transitioning to new processes worth it❓

YES! Considering the current trends and other developments in the industry, it might just be the right time to check your process and how you manage logistics and costs. It's best to see if these and other aspects can be improved for better business development and customer experience. 

🎧 Listen to our podcast as we sit down with Candy Heien, Logistics and Trade Compliance Manager for Daikin Applied Americas. She shares with us her expertise and experience on process transitioning, its benefits, and more. 

“We are now utilizing a new TMS system to improve our ability to manage our logistics processes and costs. This transition also included integration from our Oracle ERP system into this new TMS solution that was provided by our 3PL partner. In which we share dimensions, weights, dock scheduling, appointments, appointment setting for our customers.”

What solutions are you putting in place to keep your supply chain agile?

With buying natural products, we rely on crops and if there's a drought in an area or locusts or something that affects the harvest, you have to predict it. 

Not only do I have a partnership with my suppliers, I have to have a very close partnership with my sales team.  Knowing what their customers are actually going to need and getting my resources in time is very important.

Sometimes it means pulling in supply earlier than I typically would have, because if I wait too long, it won't be available.

Adjusting my forecasting as much as I can, communicating with my suppliers, working closely with the sales team while making sure that they're getting the answers we need from our customers is key to our success.

-Grant Sackett, Supply Chain Manager, D.D. Williamson Colors

“The global logistics team is handling shipments on a truly global scale. We're moving everything from small parcels to complete rigs working with numerous carriers, lanes, modes, and service levels.

And we've automated the invoice processing and audit. So with greater visibility and control, we were able to reduce the number of carriers we use and better leverage our logistics spend to negotiate for improved pricing.

We also connected the TMS application with our existing back-office applications, providing a seamless end-to-end experience for our internal customers, but also for our external partners.”

-Heidi Lovstad

“Shippers tend to be data rich but information poor. Shippers have access today to more data than at any point in history. Because of the fact that their data sources tend to be disparate, meaning I've got data coming out of a purchase order management system, out of a warehouse management system, out of a transportation management system and then probably downstream in a freight audit payment solution.

What that means is that shippers tend to not have a way to pull out actionable insights and turn that data into information. So those disparate data sources mean there's no single source of truth.”

"We’re very environmentally focused. We have an environmental pillar as one of our strategic pillars.

We want to reduce the amount of paper being used in our operations. Right now, prior to this week, we printed two or three pages per order. And we had people manually picking orders and checking off the boxes making sure that the right products were picked and so forth. So we've gotten away from that.

We are reducing our paper usage down to zero with web order picking and packing."

-Tony Whyte, Group Director of Operations & Supply Chain, JackBlack