Trucking Technology Report - Aug. 10
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Both the online report and e-mail are sponsored by @Track Communications, a supplier of wireless communications and dispatch services.
Today's Technology Headlines:
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Verizon Talks Drag On As Strike Continues
Verizon Communications managers are having trou-ble dealing with an increasing backlog of telephone requests as the strike of 87,200 of its workers moves into its fifth day.
Verizon suggested that customers delay requests for new service and use Internet phone directories. Severe thunderstorms in Verizon's service area have hindered repairs. The company also has had to deal with damage to thousands of phone lines caused by vandals.
Associated Press (08/10/00); Toppo, Gred
Warehouses Unplugged To Cut Costs, Boost Accuracy
Warehouses are going wireless in an attempt to lower labor costs, raise inventory management and shipping accu-racy, and improve real-time data access and supply chain visibility. BICCGeneral warehouses have been transformed from a label-driven environment to a radio-frequency-driven culture by eliminating the need to add labels to each carton.Because warehouse workers can use a wireless device to determine the exact location of any carton, labels are no longer needed to identify a given shipment. This process has improved accuracy and sped the processing time from three days to 20 minutes.
Other wireless warehouses, such those run by as fashion products seller and distributor Fossil, are finding that wireless systems allow for easier employee training because the tracking devices provide guidance.
Wireless employees also have more freedom of movement. "You can move people to the project instead of moving the project to your people," says Fossil director of operations Robert Wilson. Connecting real-time business metrics and sta-tistics to handheld warehouse devices may not be too far away, in addition to enabling work-team conference calls on data-oriented mobile phones.
Consumer Goods Technology (08/00) Vol. 9, No. 6, P. 10; Davis, Kit
Patent Received On Wireless Property Tracking
Midlands Advanced Business Sciences has been granted its second patent for wireless systems that track people and property. The technology can be applied to tracking property en route from one location to another.Omaha World-Herald (08/08/00) P. 12
Eastman's Shipchem.com Strategy Explored
After searching in vain for an online logistics service that met its needs, Eastman Chemical founded ShipChem.com in partnership with Global Logistics Technologies Inc., and to demonstrate its faith in the venture, Eastman outsourced all its global logistics to ShipChem.com earlier this year.ShipChem.com expects to handle a weekly volume of 5,000 shipments by the close of next year's first quarter, and the venture is seeking business and investments from other chemical companies and alliances with other online marketplaces. Barry Dale, president and COO of ShipChem.com, believes that it will be worth-while to let other chemical companies enjoy the advantages Eastman has drawn from the ShipChem.com venture, because it is thought "that this technology will fundamentally change the landscape of logistics so that it will become commoditized."
Dale says that when Eastman was looking at other online logistics marketplaces, it found that the sites "are not executing shipments," but merely matching sellers to buyers better. Eastman wanted a site that could handle global, multi-leg operations with real-time tracking and tracing and the ability to use all transportation modes.
Traffic World (08/07/00) Vol. 263, No. 6, P. 21; Cottrill, Ken
Major Retailers Back B2B Protocol
The Global Commerce Initiative (GCI) hopes to excise waste from the supply chains of consumer goods companies with the Global Commerce Internet Protocol, a set of standards designed to streamline the flow of data between organizations.This initiative is intended to provide continuity among the many online business-to-business exchanges rising in the industry, including Transora, World Wide Retail Exchange, GlobalNetXchange, and CPGmarket. "I think everyone recognizes that if [standards are not developed and adopted] quickly there will be a mess" as the many separate exchanges develop their own standards, said Ralph Drayer, vice president of efficient consumer response at Proctor & Gamble.
GCI, whose members include Carrefour, Federated Department Stores, Home Depot, Sears Roebuck, Wal-Mart and Johnson & Johnson, collaborated with the Electronic Business XML (ebXML) group and the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) to develop an XML-based transaction standard. As of Aug. 1, GCI members were free to begin proof-of-concept testing with the intention of adopting the protocol as soon as possible.
InfoWorld.com (08/04/00); Grygo, Eugene
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