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The 3PL Challenge
Third-party logistics (3PL) firms have a special need for solid relationships with a raft of partners. Even the largest lack the assets to service all of a customer’s logistics requirements. Menlo Logistics, based in Redwood City, Calif., counts among its clients some of the world’s leading retailers and manufacturers. Yet despite its affiliation with the CNF family of transportation companies, Menlo draws heavily on independent providers — truckers, warehouses, express carriers — to fill out its service offering.

Dyer says service reliability is taking on new urgency as companies cut safety stocks and standing inventory. It’s the carrier’s job to bridge the gap with service that is close to infallible. The consequences of failure used to be additional stocking and inventory costs; now they’re lost sales and plant shutdowns.

Access to information is just as important, Dyer says. Customers want better and easier access to data from carriers. They’re asking that inventory and shipment information be fed directly into their host systems, not through an intermediary. Understandably, carriers with less than stellar performance records might balk at such an idea.

Menlo’s own web site acts as the source of tracking and tracing information for the shipments of certain accounts. Eventually, that capability will be offered to the customer’s customer — the final receiver of goods. A test program already is under way, says Dyer.
Systems analysts see a trend away from best-of-breed solutions in favor of the integrated provider, and logistics is no exception. Dyer has noted an increase in the number of customers asking for a broader service offering, combining global, domestic and regional capabilities with expertise in information management. Vendors have no choice but to respond. “To be a leader of the pack,” says Dyer, “you have to do it.”

Matt Anderson, director of supply-chain solutions for Seattle-based Airborne Express, boils it all down to one word: visibility. The key, he says, is knowing where product is at all times, even if that means reaching out to carriers with disparate systems.

How a vendor like Airborne achieves that goal varies according to the customer. “There’s no one final answer,” says Anderson. Some have asked Airborne to participate in their total supply-chain visibility system. Others seek direct connectivity to their various carriers and partners in the chain. Calls for shipment monitoring range from basic tracking to “cash-to-cash” oversight of manufactured goods.

Fast-flowing information is crucial to a demand-driven supply chain, Anderson says. Retailers and manufacturers alike are bent on reacting faster to changes in consumer markets. Transportation providers are expected to do the same.

One solution lies in proactive tracking, which goes beyond reporting problems in the pipeline to heading them off before they disrupt a shipment. Through continuous “lifecycle scans” of its proprietary system, Airborne can correct late or stalled packages before the customer knows about it.

Like much of its competition, Airborne has broadened its service options, including time-definite delivery for residences and business-to-business ground delivery, the latter to debut in April of this year. Airborne claims to be one of the few providers to combine international freight forwarding with the U.S. domestic network, for faster movement of goods from foreign manufacturers.

Recent innovations stem from a growing awareness that improved visibility can cut cycle times, lower costs and lead to better service overall, says Debbie Hess, group marketing manager of Akron, Ohio-based Roadway Express. With the help of the internet, companies have gone from dreaming about such tools to demanding their implementation.

An early initiative by Roadway to bring a supply-chain perspective to the retail industry foundered because existing technology couldn’t support it. Now, says Hess, “there’s a renewed conversation and more energy around making things happen.”

The effort is advancing on two fronts: information tools and physical transportation. In the first instance, Roadway and others are working to improve the flow of data for everything from ordering to final payment. In the second, they are honing in on service that is both tailored and more reliable.

In the visibility department, customers are demanding daily exception reports; they want to know when a shipment is late or otherwise falling short of expectations. And they want better analytical tools on the back end. In that way, the same data can be used to achieve a historical perspective, highlighting carrier performance and product flow over the long term.

  
  
Reliability is taking on new urgency as companies cut safety stocks and standing inventory. It’s the carrier’s job to bridge the gap with service that is close to infallible.

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Through the internet, Roadway can offer value-added services to a wider customer base. EDI was better suited to larger companies, who could afford the investment and had the expertise needed to turn raw data into a diagnostic tool, says Hess.

Roadway’s new role entails more than just moving goods over the highway from one point to another. Today, says Hess, the trucker gets involved at an earlier stage. It could be asked to map out a complete distribution plan for a new product, tied to its nationwide network of trucks and terminals.

Roadway continues to fulfill its historical role as the chief point of personal contact with a manufacturer or distributor’s end customer. Along with the physical goods, it is often called upon to relay key information from the supplier. Says Hess: “We always have a minimum of two customers.”

What customers want most of all is state-of-the-art information technology, says Doug Foster, vice president of sales and marketing at the Redwood City, Calif., headquarters of Emery Worldwide. Carriers are being asked to perform complex cross-docking and merge-in-transit operations, domestically and internationally, in lieu of large inventories. Shipment information must keep up with the actual goods — or, in many cases, precede them.

Emery relays critical data, down to line-item visibility, through a mix of EDI and the internet. Standard EDI transaction sets can provide the necessary level of detail on many shipments, says Foster. Data frequency may range from exception alerts to advisories on the quarter hour.

On the physical side, Emery finds itself supplying a wider variety of services than its label of air express carrier would suggest. In addition to airfreight, it performs or arranges for trucking, ocean, customs clearance and cross-docking on a global scale. One customer brings into the U.S. large consolidated shipments from Mexico. Emery moves them into its logistics hub in Dayton, Ohio, then breaks them into smaller lots for multiple destinations. Previously, the work was performed at the customer’s own facility.

Emery has moved to cement relations with its sister companies in the CNF organization — Menlo and the Con-Way family of regional truckers. But it’s also looking for closer connections with outside providers, who fill in the gaps and might even supersede CNF partners if they do a better job of meeting customer requirements.

The future will find vendors performing an even greater mix of services, including component inspection and testing, as customers move closer to outsourcing all of their logistics functions, says Steve Ward, Emery’s director of business development for global logistics.

Con-Way Transportation Services, another unit of CNF, stands on its own as a collection of regional less-than-truckload providers. Based in Ann Arbor, Mich., it consists of separate operations in the U.S. Midwest, South, and West, as well as in Canada.

In recent years, the company has moved beyond an exclusively regional orientation to embrace several distinct levels of service — Con-Way NOW for expedited delivery, Con-Way Integrated Services for contract logistics, and Con-Way Business Solutions for consulting. The last and latest helps customers link their e-commerce programs to legacy systems. The overarching strategy fulfills customers’ needs for multiple service options, from standard LTL to rush shipments with satellite tracking and a 15-minute delivery window.

Con-Way’s newest initiative on the e-commerce side is a program to support sales on its customers’ web sites. Through links with more than 30 accounts, Con-Way supplies the underlying consumer with real-time information on shipment charges, transit time and mode. The link is transparent, meaning Con-Way’s name doesn’t appear on the screen. In addition, the direct customer of Con-Way — the web site’s operator — can submit to the carrier electronic bills of lading and notices for pickup.

Supported by the still-developing internet standard known as Extensible Markup Language (XML), Con-Way provides complete tracking and tracing capability, including for shipments that don’t pass through any of the customer’s physical facilities, says Ned Moritz, vice president of marketing.

Being customer-driven doesn’t mean waiting for the customer to request something before building it into a service menu. According to Moritz, Con-Way’s terminal facilities are built for the future. They typically feature more doors than are needed at the start. The up-front investment prevents handling delays down the line, when demand increases.

All logistics providers are zeroing in on e-commerce. Nippon Express U.S.A. is a New York City-based freight forwarder with its corporate parent in Japan. Recently it introduced ePelican, a service aimed at companies doing business over the internet, in the U.S. Customers electronically relay orders to Nippon Express, which prints out labels for each box at origin without the need for manual entry.

In the past, Nippon Express has largely limited its door-to-door service to the movement of goods between businesses, says Yuichi Nakagawa, IT solutions and sales manager. Now it is targeting the business-to-consumer market, fueled by the internet. It first entered that realm at the request of a major customer eight years ago, Nakagawa says.

ePelican offers U.S. shippers to Japan the advantage of going straight to the consumer, says Steven Concannon, director of strategic alliances with NEX Global Logistics, a Nippon Express subsidiary. Companies can realize significant savings through bypassing Japan’s massive and byzantine warehousing network, he says.

NEX debuted last April as a sales and marketing arm for the logistics services of Nippon Express. The unit develops alliances with independent carriers, both international and domestic. Its goal is to extend Nippon Express’s control from gateway ports to inland destinations. NEX is working with several U.S. domestic truckers so that customers can track their shipments throughout the pipeline, Concannon says. It already has such an arrangement with FedEx.

Nippon Express was a pioneer in the use of EDI communications with scheduled airlines, creating a system of alerts for late deliveries, Nakagawa says. Information flows by e-mail to the forwarder’s account managers, who take immediate action. For the most part, customers are not included in that particular loop. “They’re more interested in the solution,” says Concannon, “rather than the fact that there is a problem.”

An Equal Commitment
Companies want logistics providers that will match their own commitment to better service, on behalf of the ultimate buyer. In a bid to boost profits, sellers are extending the hours of their order departments. Carriers must respond with off-hour pickup and delivery options, says Pat Reed, executive vice president of operations with American Freightways in Harrison, Ark.

The need for flexibility in the workforce is paramount, says Reed. Carriers today must maintain 24-hour terminals and be prepared to handle freight at a moment’s notice. In response, American Freightways is staggering driver start times and changing the pattern of its linehaul service. With late evening or overnight operations, it can shave half a day off transit times.

Complicating matters is the chronic driver shortage. Many trucking companies can’t find enough drivers to run their equipment during the day, let alone the off hours. American Freightways has addressed the problem through an aggressive driver-training program that seeks talent from within on the loading docks. Following a course of in-house training, which might have cost $5,000 at an independent driving school, warehouse workers earn commercial drivers’ licenses and the flexibility to move behind the wheel when needed. The carrier plans to open additional driving schools throughout its service network.

Once on the road, drivers are subject to strict service requirements. The old demand for regular status reports has morphed into something more complex. American Freightways tracks on-time deliveries as well as the percentage of goods delivered before noon, intact and damage-free. What constitutes an “on-time” shipment is changing, too; customers today tolerate precious little margin of error. “If you’re not right on the dot,” says Reed, “you jump in line with 10 other carriers waiting to unload.”

  
  
Being customer-driven doesn’t mean waiting for the customer to request something before building it into a service menu.

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Van lines are rushing to join the customer-service bandwagon. “Our challenge is to be as technically current as our customers,” says Cliff Saxton, spokesman for United Van Lines. Based in Fenton, Missouri, with 11,000 agents worldwide, it claims the title of largest mover of household goods.

United has invested heavily in tracking capability over the internet. Up to now, van-line customers have had a tough time following the progress of their goods across country. A combination of the net and barcoding eventually will give them hour-by-hour reports, eliminating the black hole between origin and destination. “It’s gathering momentum as the technology becomes more prominent,” Saxton says.

Customer expectations have risen along with the availability of technology to fulfill them. Saxton doesn’t envision delivery windows narrowing — customers at the outset may still be given a target spanning several days — but information on actual arrival will become easy to obtain.

Carriers, too, will benefit, in the form of better route planning and more efficient use of capacity.

United has launched a commensurate effort at the top end of its service menu — high-value goods and trade-show exhibits.

Saxton says the carrier has increased its representation on the show floor, giving anxious customers better support close at hand. The bar is rising for a service that already had little room for mistakes.

In the world of freight consolidation, one kind of middleman is thriving due to the elimination of another. As manufacturers bypass costly and time-consuming distributors in favor of direct shipment to retailers, they rely more heavily on third parties that can perform a variety of value-added services. National Consolidation & Distribution, headquartered in Totowa, N.J., has taken on pick-and-pack responsibilities for time-definite service, says President Bob McKenna Jr.

National has extended its operating hours and now offers 24-hour dispatch capability. At the same time, it is helping customers to postpone delivery decisions until the last moment. Reduced-inventory strategies are prompting companies to reroute goods in transit, and transportation providers must be nimble enough to keep pace. National’s solution is to shorten the time it takes to move an order through the system, “so that the customer has more time to decide where it needs to put the product,” McKenna says.

Customers don’t necessarily want more information than before, he says — they just want it faster. National is no stranger to speed; its specialty is next-day service. For a major computer retailer, it delivers to every store, every day. It also runs an extensive cross-dock operation for perishable products such as fresh bread. Still, the internet is awakening all kinds of shippers to the possibility of faster and more responsive transport.

National’s history is a classic case of growing in line with customer requirements. Born four years ago as a cross-dock operation, it quickly added trucking, third-party logistics and international freight forwarding to its list of services. “We don’t compete as a common carrier on a price basis,” says McKenna. “We let our customers be the architect, and we are the contractor.”

Even the most gung-ho service provider will admit that shippers and carriers have a way to go before embracing long-term partnerships over the lure of discount pricing. For the most part, the customer-responsive supply chain is a developing concept. Although narrowing, there’s still a gap between customers’ wish lists and what they actually get.

“The time will come when people start realizing that ultimate success takes a different mindset,” says one transportation executive. “Someday, somebody will wake up and start believing all that rhetoric.”