Presented at the Third Logistics Congress, Singapore, 11-12-1997

Today's supply chain customers are demanding lower costs,  on-time deliveries and flexibility. To meet these demands, transportation and logistics providers must continue to squeeze value out of the supply chain ...while maintaining high levels of service.  Important source of trapped value can be unleashed by improving how we manage assets in real-time across the supply chain.

Example:
The diagram on the left depicts a hypothetical case where a shipment is destined to be unloaded from a container ship at port A, then transfered to an intermodal freight train bound for the shipment's destination.  The container ship is then scheduled to call at port B.

An event (in this instance, bad weather) forces the ship to circumvent port A, calling to port B instead. Containers may have to be unloaded at port B, then restowed on the ship because containers destined to Port B may lay below Port A containers on the ship.

When port A reopens for business, the containership may have to wait for a window because of all the other ships trying to get in. Special arrangements will need to be made to reschedule the container on a schedule freight train because capacity is limited and other delayed cargo is competing for the space as well.  Hundreds of dollars have been wasted, in delayed cargo, lost capacity, restowage, etc.

The "managed diverted route" diagram on the left shows how the diversion could have been handled if timely information were available to members of the supply chain.

Containers could have been unloaded at port B, and alternate ground transportation could have been arranged from Port B to the receiving location (by truck perhaps)

More efficient loading and unloading of the ship could have taken place, peak capacity demand could have been relieved for the railroad, peak container handling volumes would have been reduced at Port A when it reopened, and cargo may have been less delayed.

The diagram above shows the information flows that would be required in order to manage the diverted route. These information flows would be managed primarily between shipping lines and third party logistics managers, and coordinated by an information providing organization.

information clearinghouse
The logistics information clearinghouse could make information available on a subscription basis, for instance. Each participant could choose to receive all or some of ths information in real time based on a menu:

Participants would be able to determine their subscription through a web-based process, adjusting the information they wish to receive on a dynamic basis.

The Clearinghouse central processor would:

• Manage incoming streams of data

• Update status of existing shipments

• Compare to planned route

• Issue triggers - escalation flags

• Infer type of notification

• Determine subscribers

• Publish (E-mail / Narrowcast / EDI / Fax / Beeper / Phone)

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