Global Cargo Monitoring / Cargo Tracking / Supply Chain Intelligence

Attached a picture of a container, which was exposed to a shock of 20G while in transport. Thanks to real-time cargo monitoring, the shipper immediately was able to assess the impact on its cargo and make decisions on - continuing the trip, and/or  - reorder cargo in a new container - inspect container - claims handling - proactively inform client The real-time monitoring also allows to precisely identify - location of incident, - time, - custody, and a historical analysis on how often such incidents happen(ed), where and in whose custody. All this information allows to mitigate future risk, reduce insurance premium and capital cost.

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/dec/10/silk-railway-freight-train-from-china-pulls-into-madrid The longest rail link in the world and the first direct link between China and Spain is up and running after a train from Yiwu in coastal China completed its maiden journey of 8,111 miles to Madrid. En route it passed through Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus, Poland, Germany and France before arriving at the Abroñigal freight terminal in Madrid. The railway has been dubbed the “21st-century Silk Road” by Li Qiang, the governor of Zhejiang province, where Yiwu is located. Its route is longer than the Trans-Siberian railway and the Orient Express. The first train was met by the mayor of Madrid, Ana Botella, and Spain’s minister of public works, Ana Pastor. It consisted of 30 containers carrying 1,400 tonnes of cargo – mostly toys, stationery and other items for sale over Christmas across Europe. According to China’s ambassador to Spain, Zhu Banzao, it will return laden with win

The news called it a historic agreement, when U.S. President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping announced in a historic climate change deal, that both countries would curb their greenhouse gas emissions over the next two decades. The agreement will give confidence to both companies and investors to support clean energy investment and technological innovation that will ensure the necessary capacity to meet or exceed the stated targets. The idea and the objective is not new, but the agreement sends a powerful signal to the business community, which is pushing more forcefully for coordinated policies and clear market signals to deal with climate change. For example: Nike’s environmental goal for logistics and transportation is to achieve a 30% reduction in carbon emissions by 2020. This is a pretty aggressive goal taking into account a growing business. The US-China agreement may supports Nike’s (and other companies’) strategic decision and hopefully encourages m

If you were a bakery around the next corner, you would be selling your bread or sandwiches just over the counter. You will see and talk to the person just in front of you and you would immediately get the money for your product sold. You know the buyer, you trust him because you immediately get the money and there is not much risk involved. If you were an exporter/seller and your buyer is thousands of kilometers away, the situation may look different. Each party tries to reduce its risk. The buyer might tell you, that he will not pay any invoice before he has not received the product in good quality. And you might tell the buyer, that you will not ship anything, before you have not received the money. Banks address this dilemma with supply chain/trade-financing, a financial service that has been invented already several hundred years ago. You, as the seller, don’t want your foreign receivables sitting out there for months doing nothing. It is your working capital and therefo

A transportation management system (TMS) helps companies move freight from origin to destination efficiently, reliably, and cost effectively. In a TMS survey, ARC found that respondents indicated freight savings of approximately 6 percent with the use of a TMS application. TMS achieve these savings based on process enforcement, visibility, analytics, and optimization. Whereas process enforcement and optimization are based on visibility and analytics – any visibility benefits or any analytics functionality is only as good as the data quality and the currentness of data processed. Capgemini also indicates, that the demand for global visibility is increasing and that shippers want to know where everything is located across the entire supply chain at any given point. Shippers today are still challenged by disparate systems, an obstacle no serious global shipper can afford. The conclusion is: real-time data is key in order to achieve visibility, analytics, optimization and process

Nestlé has implemented a cost-effective solution for real-time monitoring of thousands of container movements around the globe each year. The system has significantly increased supply chain visibility bringing a number of operational, strategic and financial benefits. IGD SupplyChainAnalysis

Forget about Siri! Talking to your iPhone is certainly cool. But you still have to tell Siri what you want and what Siri has to look for. Wouldn’t it be great, if your phone would anticipate, what you want to ask and give you the answer before you have even asked for? The same probably the case with supply chain managers. It is certainly cool to “talk” to the ERP system and get the system do the planning, the ordering, the invoicing, …. But like with my iPhone – every day I manually have to turn on the silent mode, when I go to bed, or I have to turn on the airplane mode when entering the airplane, or turn on/off Bluetooth for my headset in the office. I want these things to happen automatically, so I don’t have to worry about them anymore. Likewise the supply chain manager: He most likely would also appreciate, if certain actions would happen automatically and he did not have to worry about. So – how to make the supply chain read your mind? My answer to this

A few weeks ago, we published a sad story in our blog about refugees discovered in Morocco. Now, another such sad story got published by BBC (see below). Real-time cargo monitoring could not only safe live but also prevent gangs from their brutal trade with human lives. **** http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-28817688 BBC News -  16 August 2014 A man has died after 35 people - including children - were found in a shipping container at Tilbury Docks. The survivors - believed to be from the Indian subcontinent - are said to be recovering "fairly quickly in most cases" at nearby hospitals. They were discovered after a freighter arrived from Zeebrugge, Belgium at about 06:00 BST and was being unloaded. Essex Police have launched a homicide investigation and officers are being assisted by their Belgian counterparts. Supt Trevor Roe said staff at the docks were alerted to the container by "screaming and banging" from inside. He said about 50