Visibility in multimodal maritime container transport chains - Logistics service providers' perspective

Nowadays, transparency and digitalization of actions in the whole supply chain are emphasized and firms are demanding visibility to better forecast, plan and control the flow of goods. The expectations towards fully real-time traceable cargo flow are high and logistics service providers are recommended to digitize their actions to stay in the highly competitive freight transport markets. When it comes to technology, it has been developed rapidly and can provide very sophisticated solutions to enhance visibility. Information flow is a key for visibility. Therefore, information and communication technology (ICT) is vital to enhance visibility. However, technology alone does not enable visibility. It requires collaboration with other involved actors in the transport chain. Multimodal maritime container transport chains are complex in a sense that they require deep collaboration in a form of IT-compatibility with vast number of players involved within the carriage of goods to enhance seamless and automatized exchange of information. It has been disclosed that the biggest logistics service providers have already been able to form such collaborative relationships with big shipping lines, for instance. Also, market leaders usually arrange the pre- and end-haulage of the transport with own assets and therefore information flow is advanced. However, freight transport industry is highly fragmented and majorly consists of small-sized firms. Margins in the freight transport markets are extremely low as customers do not see added value in freight transportation and therefore transportation is seen as an extra harmful cost for firms. Therefore, the idea of big IT-investments and integration of actions with other players is infeasible for some companies. In this study, visibility in multimodal maritime container transport chains is investigated in a wide sense by conducting semi-structured interviews among different-sized logistics service providers located in Finland. First, the current adoption of visibility is studied, the benefits of it are discussed and the barriers to adopt visibility are discussed. Furthermore, perceptions towards the importance of visibility as a service offering in the creation of competitive strategies are investigated

Information technology and performance management for build-to-order supply chains

En las siguientes líneas se plantea un artículo de reflexión que tiene en cuenta parte del marco teórico que sustenta la investigación titulada “Prácticas pedagógicas que promueven la competencia argumentativa escrita (CAE) en niños campesinos de los grados 4° y 5° del Centro Educativo Municipal La Caldera, Sede Principal de Pasto”, desarrollada en el año 2012. En él se contemplan los aportes de las ciencias del lenguaje y la comunicación, la teoría de la argumentación, la didáctica de la lengua escrita y los géneros discursivos, que dan cuenta de la necesidad de desarrollar la capacidad crítica en los estudiantes a través de la argumentación, lo cual implica transformar las prácticas pedagógicas para que se alejen de la transmisión de conocimientos y den paso a la comunicación, para que la palabra escrita sea apropiada de manera significativa

Electronic marketplace-to-marketplace alliances: emerging trends and strategic rationales

The electronic marketplace domain has recently witnessed the joining together of a number of previously independent marketplaces and the formation of collaborative alliances between others. This study seeks to determine the nature or type of cooperative arrangements or alliances that are currently being forged between electronic marketplaces, and the strategic rationale that is leading to this observed alliance formation. The findings of the study are based upon an examination of statements made to the press by marketplaces undertaking strategic alliances. This published data was supplemented with face-to-face interviews with managers at three relevant electronic marketplaces. Three distinct types of alliance are observed; the merger between previously separate marketplaces, the acquisition of one marketplace by another and the formation of an interoperability agreement between two marketplaces. Three rationales for alliance formation were observed: an increase in the number of buyers or suppliers in a given market sector that can access the marketplace (an increase in scale of operations), an increase in the breadth or depth of services that are offered to users of the marketplace (an increase in the scope of operations) and providing the ability to exchange information across multiple tiers of a supply chain. A broader discussion of the findings is given and suggestions for further research are made

Gnosis Freight: Harnessing Data and Low-Code to Shipping Container Visibility and Logistics

Gnosis Freight employs low-code/no-code development tools to provide container visibility information for shippers. The context for this particular case includes the U.S. supply chains that are still reeling from the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic. Shipping costs have sky-rocketed with shippers facing huge uncertainties as shipments are marooned on container ships or in container port yards. Accustomed to reliable pick-up and delivery forecasts at reasonable rates, supply chains find themselves burdened with unreliable delivery forecasts or the inability to track shipments. Gnosis Freight, by combining data from several sources, provides logistics and transportation managers with near real-time information on their shipments. Gnosis solutions engineers, armed with low-code and no-code development tools, are able to quickly install customer-tailored container visibility portals with little adverse effects on the customer’s existing work processes and data flows. The implementation speed of these edge development tools provides Gnosis Freight with a strategic advantage over competitive offerings that require major changes in a customer’s supply chain operations. But the company also faces issues with its own data supplier, giving students a specific make vs buy problem to analyze

TRACKING AND TRACING PORTAL FOR PROJECT LOGISTICS. A Review on the Interconnectivity of EDI, ERP and Cloud-based Systems

Tracking and tracing is becoming an essential factor for the success of project logistics. The safety and on-time arrival of shipments has become the primary concerns for manufacturing companies. The paper has introduced an overall approach to track and trace their deliveries from the starting point to the end-customer. Detail implementation of the whole solution will not be presented, yet each component in the system will be analyzed and discussed. Electronic Data Exchange (EDI) has been around for the last 30 years and is known for providing logistics companies a fast, reliable way to exchange information electronically. EDI, together with Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), are considered as one of the remarkable emerging technologies which play an important role in supply chain management tracking network. Although the implementation of EDI and ERP systems is not straight forward and not easy to established, many logistics companies are still seeing this as a vital factor which can help companies to establish a sustainable development, increase productivity and reduce costs. In this paper, the interconnectivity of EDI, ERP, and cloud-based systems in tracking and tracing portal will be analyzed in business perspective in order to define what benefits it could achieve for logistics and supply chain management tracking network. A case study of Logistics Tracking Network (LogTrack) project is presented and examined with the view to implement, evaluate and manage the interconnectivity of EDI, ERP, and cloud-based systems in a practical point of view. Information collected from this research project will be analyzed to provide a list of mapping attributes between these systems and used as a basic for the further development of tracking and tracing portal. The impacts and implications of such system for managing the business logistics are discussed and presented in conclusion.fi=Opinnäytetyö kokotekstinä PDF-muodossa.|en=Thesis fulltext in PDF format.|sv=Lärdomsprov tillgängligt som fulltext i PDF-format

A New Approach for Evaluating the Order Fulfillment Process Options of B2C Horizontal Portals Using DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis)

By using the traditional statistical or operations research methods for deciding the product-delivery logistics, the portal companies are not using their competitive advantages on being more e-enabled, informed and computationally able than their traditional counterparts. In this paper, we show some typical characteristics of the portals like their handling of a huge range of goods in terms of transactional values or volumes. Subsequently, we have identified three types of generic product-delivery logistics of the portals with various intermediate entities or trading partners. Then, a completely different approach using an extreme point method rather than the traditional central-tendency-based statistical methods has been suggested

Logistics’ place in the global administration of the product’s life cycle

If logistics can be considered an assembly of methods, functions, and ways used by a company with the purpose of giving clients the goods taken at a low price and in a period of time according to clients’ expectations, taking into consideration the quantities settled by contract, we can say that, in a company, the logistics functionality contributes to coordination the offer by requiring the lowest costs, based on some strategic and tactics plans as well as keeping qualitative relations between suppliers and clients. Logistics can be said to represent the optimization of the company’s both fundamental cycles: the cycle-client (from order to delivery) and the project-cycle (from conception to use). From this point of view, this is an essential component of both the strategy and the companies’ organization. Some companies in West Europe have moved or created new production plants in Centre and East Europe, mainly in the new member states of the European Union (NOKIA from Germany to Romania, RENAULT from France to Romania etc.). This is based on some detailed research on the importance that a functional logistics of industrial platforms has taking into consideration both raw materials and clients’ satisfaction, who, more often than not is far from the production place.client, distribution, performance, supplier, supply.

THE CHANGES ON THE FIELD OF LOGISTIC ACTIVITIES

If logistics can be considered an assembly of methods, functions, and ways used by a company with the purpose of giving clients the goods taken at a low price and in a period of time according to clients’ expectations, taking into consideration the quantities settled by contract, we can say that, in a company, the logistics functionality contributes to coordination the offer by requiring the lowest costs, based on some strategic and tactics plans as well as keeping qualitative relations between suppliers and clients. Logistics can be said to represent the optimization of the company’s both fundamental cycles: the cycle-client (from order to delivery) and the project-cycle (from conception to use). From this point of view, this is an essential component of both the strategy and the companies’ organization. Some companies in West Europe have moved or created new production plants in Centre and East Europe, mainly in the new member states of the European Union (NOKIA from Germany to Romania, RENAULT from France to Romania, etc). This is based on some detailed research on the importance that a functional logistics of industrial platforms has taking into consideration both raw materials and clients’ satisfaction, who, more often than not is far from the production place.planning, distribution, management, supply, market