Reducing Empty Miles- best way to reduce Carbon Footprint

Here is a very interesting presentation by David Leifsson on how Coca Cola reduced carbon footprint in Iceland.

 

Who should pay for visibility in supply chain?

Everyone agrees that visibility in supply chain helps to reduce overall costs and make supply chains more reliable.

But who will foot the bill?

An auto manufacturer mandates that all vehicles should be fitted with GPS. But who will pay for installation and maintenance of the same? Typically a transport partner is expected to do the job.

But who benefits MOST from this visibility- Transporter, Supplier or Auto Manufacturer? the answer is fairly obvious-- Auto Manufacturer is the biggest beneficiary.

Thus, the principle should be that one who benefits most pays most. In fact, the HUB who attracts goods to itself or distributes from its locations has a much larger stake in visibility.

A dealer is interested in delivery of say 20 cars at a time- but Auto maker needs to track 1000s of cars for delivery. The benefits from knowledge of any delay or issues or actual delivery are much more to Auto Maker than anyone else.

 

Visibility in Supply Chain

In supply Chain “Visibility” means to have knowledge of where is your inventory or assets (Fleet) at any given time.

Providing end-end visibility or real time information to all the stakeholder is one of the most important metric or Key Performance Indicator (KPI) in defining the service level of a logistics provider.

But most of the logistics and SCM player concentrate on capitalizing more on their core competencies of managing end to end to supply chain activities and ignore information flow across the value chain.

The only way to drive better visibility is to invest in technology infrastructure. Logistics and SCM players thus, need to tie up with technology partners who can help them to store, manage, communicate and analyze necessary information.

These technology partners can thus provide 24/7/365 days real time information to all stake holders. Some of the best tools of managing information flow are as follows:

• Online portals to track consignments: This provides  partners to be aware about the status of their shipment and plan their further actions in a better way.
• Auto emails and SMS: Alerts are sent via emails and SMS to inform interested partners about various events .
• Two way SMS: User can send consignment note number and SMS comes with consignment status, it shows GPS location on Google Maps if the vehicle is GPS enabled.
• Send and receive PODs (Proof of Delivery): Sending and receiving PODs is just a matter of second and thus the entire billing process can be carried out in much lesser time as compared to physical transfer of POD.
• GPS Systems: GPS devices help to track current location of the consignment and also predicts its dynamic ETA (Expected Time of Arrival) which again helps stakeholders in better planning
• Android Devices: Android applications to track status of consignments and check location of vehicles on maps will now become the most used tool  to provide supply chain visibility as android devices have now become a part and parcel of almost every individuals life
• CRM Tool: To enhance customer relationship in the best possible way

It’s the era of real-time and accurate information that drives the logistics organizations and is thus a challenge for all stakeholders to exploit the benefit of the information provided by technology partners and augment their bottom lines. Technology partners like WebXpress will thus, make your journey easy.

Visibility in logistics will see more involvement of IT in coming years; no customer wants its consignment to be out of sight at any point of time.

E-POD can save transporter Rs. 1 crore every year !!

E-POD is Electronically Scanned copy of Proof of Delivery (POD). In India, POD is a physical paper where customer stamps his acknowledgement of receipts of goods. In case of any problem- same is mentioned on the paper as well.

Billing department of customer requires a copy or original of POD to be attached to each invoice. They use the same to audit the transaction and approve invoice.

Many transporter are trying to introduce a concept of e-POD where a scanned copy of POD is made available to a shipper online. This requires that POD can be scanned at delivery location. With advent of mobile devices, it is also now possible to take a photo of POD and send over network.

Many people see e-POD as a tool to help customers. But as we will see below- it has much more benefits to transporter than customers.

Here is how-

In absence of e-POD, a trucker is dependent on driver/ broker/ delivery branch to get the POD physical copy. What does he use POD for? He checks the details of delivery and ensures there are no adverse comments.

He then clears such a booking as CLEAN and bills the customer. But he can not bill customer every day so he waits till billing cycle arrives and then generates a bill.

Now the paper system has a problem that PODs do not arrive in time or get missed or need to be manually searched and checked and mapped to correct customer etc.

Once you have e-POD, it can be audited easily online without paper to arrive. Also, approved transactions can be parked separately awaiting billing. Problem transactions can be identified and interaction with delivery branch/ broker/ customer can start to get full facts.

This way, we are ready for billing much before bill cycle date. We then just press a button and bill is ready!! Chances of rejection go down as proper audit was done for all transactions.

This seemingly simple concept can cut down 15 to 30 days from working capital cycle.

For a company with 100 Cr turnover that is savings of almost 10 L per month or Rs. 1 cr a year on working capital interest cost alone !!