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Please tell us about your transportation management needs.
What is your approach to communicating with Carriers and gaining shipment visibility?
We use faxes and phones to tender and get status. We use EDI to tender and get status. We have supplemented EDI with the web communication for tendering and to gain visibility into freight movements. We do self-service appointments, have full, automated visibility into freight movements, and have a performance and event management framework to monitor and measure our carriers.
What is your approach to Procuring Transportation Services?
We do infrequent, manual bids for transportation and take a cost-based approach to evaluating and selecting carriers. We utilize a core carrier program. We use web-based procurement tools for multi-round bidding on cost and capacity on a structured, periodic basis. We use online procurement tools and use bid optimization to do on-demand collaborative capacity planning and procurement with carriers.
What is your approach to carrier capacity planning?
We do very little, if any capacity planning. We utilize a core carrier program that could include a partial private or dedicated fleet which allows us to ensure better capacity availability. Capacity needs are forecasted using shipment history in an attempt to reserve capacity and take advantage of volume pricing. We have strong relationships with our carriers, and through continuous forecasting and collaboration, we can ensure capacity ahead of time as customer demand changes.
What is your approach to transportation planning and optimization?
Our process is manual, decentralized, and involves "planning" for primarily single shipments. Our process is still manual, but we do use some technology to do order consolidation and/or rating; we also use a static routing guide. Our planning is centralized, and we use a TMS system to do batch optimization. We use a real-time, adaptive approach to planning and execution that seeks to "repair" the plan as the environment changes.
How do you manage inbound freight?
Inbound freight is mostly prepaid and we have little to no visibility. Inbound freight is prepaid but it is confirmed by ASN’s. Inbound freight is collect, and we use a static routing guide and/or Inbound suppliers send faxes or call for routing instructions. We do on-line, inbound order collaboration with our suppliers, using a real-time routing; this whole process is wrapped in an event management framework to detect and resolve problems and provide inbound visibility.
How deeply do you integrate transportation functions into your other operational systems or with trading partners?
We don’t. We communicate internally via the phone or e-mail as required. We send out proactive emails or reports on status and measurement of our transportation operations. We integrate to ERP systems, to the warehouse or order management system, and to the dock so operations can be coordinated in some fashion internally. We collaborate with our suppliers, provide regular updates to the data warehouse, and have an exception management layer that communicates exceptions to us and our trading partners.
What is your approach to managing and utilizing a total landed cost methodology when planning your overall network?
We don’t factor in the effects of freight costs into our decisions such as where to build new facilities, what suppliers to use, or where to manufacture and store our goods. Freight costs are audited post-delivery for domestic operations only. We use freight cost as a driver to determine decisions domestically like with who to outsource production and/or storage to. We do global, strategic network design using advanced modeling tools to understand the global impacts of freight costs on all major supply chain structure decisions that need to be made.
I would like Manugistics to follow up with me regarding Transportation solutions.
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