3PLS\\\ >> 24


deploying data,


Issue 5 2019 - FBJNA


popping in battery packs.”


Putting it together


All that data also needs to be integrated; C-suiters say. They agree that without a strategy for collecting and


huge


capital expenditures in technological architecture and infrastructure won’t do much good. “How are you going to pull


it all together?” Allen says. “If you don’t integrate that data into your execution system, your value proposition tends


“Data is the most broadly disruptive solution right now.”


-- Andy Moses, Penske Logistics.


overbooked market by about 25% just by using carriers that were already inbound to that marketplace.” At Werner Enterprises, President


Senior Vice and


CIO Nathan Johnson shares an anecdote involving a rail carrier facing an “intermodal direct-dispatch operational challenge”—in short, a need to increase products’ velocity between train and truck. “We deployed a lot of the


“Those types of technologies are ready now that have a critical payback.”


-- Gary Allen, Ryder Supply Chain Solutions.


latest buzzword technology,” he says, such as a “major IoT player,” as well as building an application programming interface, or API; providing mobility solutions directly to drivers; and using sensors to track movement and delivery. “We were actually able


to diminish. If you deploy a robot in a warehouse, and it’s not integrated, how do you do your wave planning or how do you send your tasks out to the warehouse?” Here’s an illustration


from Barber, who describes a Transplace customer overwhelmed with an end-of- quarter surge in shipments. Leveraging 3.5 years’ worth


of network data, he says: “We deployed the model and were able to decrease their reliance on the spot market in that


to achieve 100% digital automation,” Werner says. “We had a 90-day window to pull all of that together, which was extremely aggressive.”


Changing expectations


Logistics providers, from 3PLs to freight forwarders, say they’re aggressively pursuing digitization not so much because of e-commerce itself but because of consumers’ changing expectations—perhaps in part from their online experience. “We are becoming the touch point between a customer and


“The insights the technology provides allows the right decision


to be made for a returned product at every step in the process.” -- Rob Iaria, C.H. Robinson.


the store where they are buying their products,” says John Stikes, Director, Innovation & E-Commerce, Americas Region, at DB Schenker. “Instead of having to create a


customer experience in a retail outlet, we are helping to create that customer experience both through the digitalized supply chain and when the consumer


with visibility and transparency, has become a supply-chain- digitization mantra. “It’s around speed and flexibility,


which I think e-commerce, Amazon, all those things, are factors around why you have to move quicker in a far nimbler environment,” Ryder’s Allen says. Johnson echoes others who that while


say e-commerce


receives their purchase,” he says. As he and others also point


out, that experience extends to shoppers who return their purchases. A February 2019 Shopify blog


calls returns “the new normal,” with 89% of consumers having returned an online purchase within the last three years. Return deliveries will cost $550 billion by 2020, up more than 75% from four years before, the blog says, citing Statista. “Twenty years ago, returns


used to be the nemesis of everything that we ever did,” Johnson says. “You couldn’t plan for them necessarily. There wasn’t a good flow in the reverse logistics world.” Now, though, he sees what he


calls a more mature supply chain with technologically advanced mechanisms that


growing exponentially. One-two punch


All that helps offset what C.H. Robinson’s Rob Iaria sees as returns’ one-two punch for retailers: mitigating losses while also keeping the customer. “Having a technology in place


that makes returns frictionless is key to solving both of these challenges,” says


Iaria, the


company’s Director, Last Mile Services. Like all the other companies


here, C.H. Robinson offers an array of digital products, namely Navisphere, which facilitates that “frictionless experience.” “The insights the technology


provides allows the right decision to be made for a returned product at every step in the process,” he says. Developing technology that


makes such instantaneous decision-making has become something of a logisticians’ brass ring—every company aims to be, in a word, nimble. The term, along


The implementation of robotics throughout a Ryder-managed warehouse produce a 25% increase in productivity and 20% operating savings, simply by reducing travel time in the warehouse, which can account for 30% of an employee’s shift. (Ryder Photo.)


likewise are


continues to demand aggressive investment in and attention to digitization, data is still data, albeit information that’s moving at lightning speeds and in ginormous volumes. “I’ll say truly we’re building


on what we’ve been doing for decades,” he says. “We’ve been using data to manage logistics. It’s been an analog world, whereas now it’s going full digital, and we have the ability to leverage compute power.” At the same time, companies, especially legacy 3PLs, also


25


“We were able to achieve 100% digital automation.” – Nathan Johnson, Werner Enterprises.


the handling and maintenance, supporting customers in daily supply-chain management.“


New collaboration


Technology can’t fix “existing information gaps and missing data availability,”


the


spokesperson says, but requires a “new dimension of collaboration between partners and suppliers based on full digital connectivity.” The spokesperson cites yet


another new connective tissue in


the digitization corpus—


blockchain, which Moses at Penske also calls “broadly transformative.” For one thing, Kuehne + Nagel says, blockchain requires


“We are becoming the touch point between a customer and the store where they are buying their products.” -- John Stikes, DB Schenker.


exploit their experience—even as much as a centuries’ worth of data. Take Kuehne + Nagel, for instance, which has been in business since 1890. “The industry knowledge of


Kuehne + Nagel combined with its insights into markets and global trade flows lead to unique market intelligence,” a spokesperson says.


and implement


“People develop, design, solutions and


new services and take care of


proprietary data.” Secondly, because the


technology operates on a network of computers that chains together blocks of what’s generally described as an immutable ledger, the spokesperson notes that blockchain mitigates challenges involving so-called “infosec”—or information security. “The use of blockchain


technology facilitates secure data exchange between the various partners, eliminating the need for additional communication channels—and helps to overcome trust and data security issues,” Kuehne + Nagel says. Summing up digitization’s


long-term impact on the supply chain, DB Schenker’s Stikes says: “The real disruption is coming


an “open and cooperative approach among equal partners, where everyone still owns his


from the insights we gain from the massive amount of data being generated. As we all continue to generate more and more data, the real winners will be the ones who can act on these insights faster and in more meaningful ways.”


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