Improving agility to beat supply chain chaos

When it comes to supply chains, improving agility isn’t a nice to have, it’s an essential requirement.

Innovative freight technologies are developed and designed to deliver better efficiencies, higher profitability, and improved safety and sustainability for shippers, receivers, 3PL operators, and customers. Every system is perfectly designed to get results.

The visibility of supply chains in the public eye has increased significantly - newspapers haven’t been short of a supply chain story for the last couple of years and likely have plenty more to write about. Supply chains continue to be under pressure post-Covid-19, while shipment costs continue to rise and there are increasing demands for sustainable technology solutions.

Previous attempts to connect the supply chain have failed for multiple reasons: Too rigid a solution, not enough buy-in, fear of collaboration, tech owned by a physical operator, and overall weak incentive mechanism.

Supply chain chaos

Supply chain chaos is now normal, where companies are under pressure to keep up with the rampant inflation and rising energy costs. Despite advancements in technology, much of the supply chain remains fragmented and managed with spreadsheets and email. High levels of inefficiency remain with loading factors at only 60% and empty runs at 30%, and the average profit margins of 100 top haulers are down to 2%.

Against this background, customer expectations are increasing greatly and relentlessly. Both individuals and businesses expect to get goods faster, more flexibly, and – in the case of consumers – at low or zero delivery cost.

Manufacturing is becoming more and more customized, leading to SKU proliferation, which is good for consumers but hard work for the logistics operations. There’s a fertile environment for high-growth SME manufacturers, importers, distributors, and retailers that wrestle with traditional solutions and demand innovative solutions and high agility from their supply chains.

The innovation game

An acute and growing pressure to deliver a better service at an ever-lower cost creates significant demand for end-to-end supply chain operational solutions with a maximum degree of flexibility, automation and collaboration. Elimination of unproductive journeys has the potential to deliver 20% cost savings and 25% CO2 reduction for collaborative shipments.

Stowga monitors local governments’ initiatives on freight transportation around the world. The government of NSW recently issued the Future Transport Technology Roadmap 2021- 2024 and will deliver a major uplift in technology to facilitate more efficient operations across the road and rail freight network and help strengthen the economy.

We will deliver real-world benefits across all stakeholders and provide Governments across the globe with an Air traffic Control type functionality for urban/public areas giving near real-time visibility of shipments through the whole freight movement network, combined with performance tracking of logistics operators across a variety of dimensions e.g. vehicles used (types, emissions, etc.), effective load at every leg of the route, actual contribution to air pollution, and road and parking congestion.

To achieve this it is essential to identify and capture opportunities to improve supply chain management, customer service delivery, transport, and warehouse management systems, truckload utilization, visibility of asset movements, and operational performance.

As part of the project, Stowga is looking to work with stakeholders across the supply chain including manufacturers, retailers, logistics providers and government organisations. If you’d like to find out more about the project and see how you can be part of an industry changing project, please email flox@stowga.com.