Supply Chain Visibility Solution - Global Location Tracking and Monitoring

Background

As companies source more of their manufacturing overseas, their supply chain is becoming less and less visible.  In the past, companies have accepted this as a cost of doing business.  The technology to allow full visibility into an international supply chain was either unavailable or prohibitively expensive.

But as many companies have learned, the costs associated with poor visibility are high.  In fact, a study of 250 logistics professionals by AMR Research revealed that in-transit visibility and exception reporting ranked as the top 2 priorities among the majority of respondents.  A company that cannot track shipments throughout its supply chain ultimately suffers from a host of potential problems, including:

 

Stock outs Unhappy customers, lost sales
Excessive Inventory Wasted resources, increased expenses
Time and effort attempting to track shipments Wasted resources, increased expenses

As the use of Just in Time (JIT) delivery increases, companies regularly bet their customer relationships, their manufacturing schedules and their fiscal solvency on shipping schedules that are out of their control.  Ideally, a company wants to react immediately to a problem in its supply chain.  In order to do this, however, the company first has to be aware that the problem exists.  Unfortunately, for many companies shipping problems often become apparent days, weeks, or even months after they occur.  Transport between shipping docks remains the area that is hardest to observe and the hardest to control.  As a result, companies are forced to keep large inventory buffers as a partial solution to the problem of awareness.  Of course this creates a host of other problems including inventory carrying costs, obsolete goods and difficulty justifying new products introductions.

"Inventory stifles innovation… We need to replace inventory with information."

    –  Randy Mott, CIO Dell Computers

Market Need:  Dock-to-Dock Visibility

The challenge that faces senders, transporters, insurers, and receivers of goods is the need for timely, accurate, and complete information regarding the location, integrity, and safety of goods in transit from the shipping dock all the way to receiving dock.  Each party wants to be aware – the better they understand their current situation, the faster they can take corrective action for exceptions, and the better they can understand and solve systemic problems that might affect future shipments.  Furthermore, companies want to be able to access information on problem-free shipments as well – both to give them the peace of mind they deserve, and to insure they are not being needlessly distracted from other matters.

In addition, the increasing threat of global terrorism has made the security of international shipments more important than ever.  We must now protect ourselves from terrorists who may attempt to enter a container or replace the contents of a container (e.g. with nuclear, chemical or biological weapons).   Because of this, each shipment must be tracked for cargo tampering and have its manifest verified by Customs. 

“The message should be clear – if a business takes steps to secure its cargo against terrorism we will give it the 'fast lane' through the borders."

    – Robert C. Bonner, US Customs Commissioner