Manufacturing & Logistics IT - March 2018

MARCH 2018

The European magazine promoting the effective use of IT in supply chain applications

Special Technology Report: TRANSPORTATION MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS

Interview: SOUTHCO

Also in this issue: Fast and accurate proof of delivery

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CONTENTS Manufacturing and Logistics IT March 2018 The European magazine promoting the effective use of IT in supply chain applications

Interview 5

Editor: Ed Holden

Southco

Special Technology Report 9

Contributors:

Transportation Management Systems

Simon Lewington, Systems Assurance Michael Beck, inet-logistics Philip Jarrett, BEC (Systems Integration) Ltd. Mohit Paul, BluJay Solutions

Manufacturing 18

Systems Assurance: Staying ahead in a changing world

Dave Renshaw, OBS Logistics

Gartner: Security and risk management leaders need to take a balanced approach to tackling

Maarten Hemmes, CarPal

a new class of vulnerabilities

Tony Hughes, Huthwaite International Antony Bourne, IFS

Supply Chain Management Publisher: Dean Taylor

22

Labeyrie Fine Foods improves forecast accuracy and optimises its supply chain with DynaSys Frost & Sullivan recognises Telit as a Customer Value Leader for its broad portfolio of

Designer: First Sight Graphics Ltd, www.firstsightgraphics.com

IIoT-driven offerings Uniserve Group: Supply chain professionals recognised with a work-based degree solution

Production: Carolyn Pither

Transportation Management

Circulation: Carole Chiesa

26

TimoCom: Women in logistics – a success story TimoCom: Assigning digital orders is easy

IT Manager: Ian Curtis

inet-logistics: 4 key factors to optimise your logistics operations realising savings of

Accounts: Sarah Schofield

BEC (Systems Integration) Ltd: Fast and accurate proof of delivery

up to 20% BluJay Solutions: TMS and visibility: giving customers the insight they want OBS Logistics: Stop losing customers with the help of transport management software

Published by: B2B Publishing Ltd PO Box 3575, Barnet, Herts, EN5 9QD UK Tel: +44 (0) 1707 664200 Email (publishing): info@logisticsit.com Email (editorial): editor@ibcpub.com

CarPal: Modernising the future of last-mile delivery through smart tech

Warehouse Management 38

innovate to accommodate

Printed by: First Sight Graphics Ltd, www.firstsightgraphics.com No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publishers.

No liability is accepted for any action arising from the contents of this publication; readers are advised to check any manufacturer’s or supplier’s claim for products. The publishers do not endorse opinions expressed in any article by an outside contributor.

While every care is taken over photographs and illustrations, which are returned when requested, no liability can be assumed by the publishers for the loss of such materials.

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Automatic Identification & Data Capture/Mobile Computing 40

VDC Research: Mobile applications removing informational borders and facilitating communication within healthcare New DS5100 laser scanner from Datalogic: performance in any operating conditions Gartner: Worldwide device shipments will increase by 2.1% in 2018 Worldpay: Tipping point for ‘tap and go’ as mobile payments top £975 million

Printing & Labelling

ISSN:1463-1172

4

Huthwaite International: The rise of artificial intelligence – Why the logistics sector needs to

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IFS: Three game-changers for the manufacturing industry in 2018

Southco

Interview

Secure future Manufa Manufacturing M f ctu t ri ring & Logi Logistics gisti tics IT spoke with Tobi T bi Parker,r the manufacturing To services manager for access hardware solutions provider, Southco, about how a vibrant and dynamic IT regime helps to leverage major business and operational advantage for the company.

S

outhco has built an extensive portfolio of access hardware solutions, through innovation and strategic acquisition. The companyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s offerings include over 25,000 standard catalogue products and more than 50,000 custom products that have been created to meet customers' design needs. In order to meet the ever-changing needs of customers, Southco has built and invested in a strong portfolio of technical sales, marketing, engineering and manufacturing operations throughout the world. As well as providing a wide range of off-the-shelf solutions, Southco also offers a custom service whereby any specific customer specifications can be catered for.

Wide customer scope Southco serves customers in a wide range of industry sectors; including: aerospace, automotive, off-highway, construction,

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commercial vehicles, computers, consumer electronics, enclosures, enterprise hardware, industrial hardware, industrial equipment, marines, transportation, medical, networking and telecommunications. The companyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s main UK hub is in Worcester, with an additional facility located in Farnham, Surrey.

Southco also runs three manufacturing facilities in the US, including its main headquarters situated in Concordville, Pennsylvania. Additionally, it runs a number of other manufacturing hubs throughout the world; including China and India.

Design Tobi Parker is Southcoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s manufacturing services manager in Worcester, with responsibilities for ensuring the manufacturing equipment is fully functional and fit for purpose around the clock. He also oversees the activities of the companyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s manufacturing engineers and maintenance,

tool room and building services teams.

Parker spoke about Southcoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s core IT estate and the benefits it affords the company,

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frontrunner for our requirements. It became quickly apparent that not only could we use the system to monitor a production machine on a shop-by-shop basis, it could also open up a lot of opportunities in areas such as production control, production planning and documentation. Parker explained that Southco’s implementation of the Mattec system has evolved considerably over the past decade. “There have naturally been a series of functionality upgrades over the years, which have further enhanced the benefits of the system for us. One of the core enduring benefits for us, however, has been the fact that it is all based on an SQL Server.

This allows us to do a lot of interaction with Excel for reporting purposes etc.”

ERP and more beginning at the design stage. “We use NX for Design as our primary package for product design work,” he said. “NX is used throughout the business; for both ‘hand off’type items as well as custom solutions. The software is used globally within the business and authorised parties can access the system’s CAD data relating to any particular part they want to interrogate. This runs all the way through the design process; from design engineers to manufacturing engineers who wish to access parts to help design and tooling activities and so on.”

execution varied greatly from person to person, and as a result we were seeing a variety of parts coming off the machines in different conditions and in different failure modes. Therefore, we looked for a single reliable unified system that could allow us to quickly identify if a machine was running away from process and highlight how to tackle those issues effectively.

“After surveying the market in depth, our feeling was that Mattec was the clear

Southco’s ERP system of choice is SAP. “When we first installed the Mattec system we were also using a production control package called CIMx,” explained Parker.

“This was replaced seven years ago by SAP as a global rollout. Because of our in-house IT knowledge in terms of report writing etc. we were able to develop an interface that allowed us to take information out of our business system in terms of production orders and do some work on this in a third-

Manufacturing execution Leading on to the production stage, Parker explained that NX is fully integrated within Southco’s manufacturing execution system, Epicor Mattec MES. “This system was first installed some ten years ago,” Parker pointed out. “When we first started looking for a suitable MES, we primarily sought a software solution that could monitor our injection moulding processes. At that time, some of our technicians were running their own programs. For example, the technician working shift A might load a disk for a certain application; then the technician for shift B might load another system. So, the way things were done in terms of manufacturing

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Southco

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there are for integrating with those activities, Southco needs to undergo extensive testing to ensure everything functions well and as possible. “To this purpose, these software upgrades are undertaken in a special testing environment that is essentially a mirror of our production server,” said Parker. “So, we do the upgrade and all the tests across all our interfaces. Then, once we are happy that everything is going to work seamlessly in the production environment we then upgrade our actual production server.” Parker made the point that all of Southco’s IT systems are onpremise; although SAP is hosted off-site by a third-party company. The Mattec system is hosted locally in each of Southco’s facilities globally.

Warehouse management party Excel sheet. However, we later managed to automate that process and push the information into our Mattec system to allow us to present the workloads electronically for each workstation on the shopfloor. This allowed us to move work away from job cards and tickets and lots of paperbased operations. Indeed, apart from the use of labels that need to be affixed to boxes, our Worcester site now runs a completely paperless regime.”

Demand planning Demand forecasting and planning functionality is another part of SAP that offers major benefits to Southco. “This capability drives production demand across the shopfloor and that information is pushed into Mattec,” Parker pointed out. “This is something that is now done automatically at SQL level; we don't need an interface anymore as the data is directly imported into and exported from SAP – so the two systems are now much more closely streamlined in terms of linkage. The SQL scripts for this purpose were developed mainly by a senior member of our IT team, Tony Ryder, about six years ago. Tony, who unfortunately passed away two months ago, did a lot of internal development work on the Mattec

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system working alongside myself and Epicor engineers. The interface with SAP was largely done by Tony alone.”

Upgrades In terms of Mattec, Parker explained that the company’s own IT team, together with engineers from Epicor, recently completed some test upgrades to the application, with a view to going live with the upgrades shortly.

“The main change within the latest version of the MES is the move to web interfaces,” he explained. “The web format just makes the whole upgrade process a lot easier. You don't have to update lots of clients on your shopfloor. We have something in the region of 70 to 80 PCs on the shopfloor, but with the new web interfaces we just have to upgrade our server and then by default all of our clients are upgraded.”

Parker added that the Mattec system is fairly straightforward to upgrade; however, the way it interacts with all of the different manufacturing technologies across the shopfloor varies. Also, with the company’s label printing and barcode scanning solutions needing to talk to the company’s Mitsubishi PLC or talk to the Arburg injection moulding machine and the various options

For warehouse automation tasks, Southco relies on a Diamond Phoenix software package and carousel system. SAP pushes the picks down into Diamond Phoenix which then drives the carousel system to aid picking for Southco’s European distribution centre. “The Diamond Phoenix carousel system is 22 years old now, but still continues to work as well as ever,” remarked Parker.

For the weighing and counting of parts, Southco uses Telemecanique scales and a Mettler Toledo system for part weighing. The company links the Mettler system to a PLC control box with HMI. Southco has also developed an aeroproof tearing system (EPTS), which has dramatically improved count accuracy, as Parker explained: “We used to count 10 parts, weigh 10 parts and then tear the scales and move the volume across. Our parts can vary in size quite dramatically, but many are quite small and produced in high volume. So, we encountered a number of counting issues on the manual count map during the tearing process. There were quite a few ‘soft errors’ where we would pack incorrect counts within a customer’s box of parts. A customer might, for example, receive a box of 10,000 components and it would be three short.

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Printing and labelling With regard to printing and labelling, the box labels used to produce barcodes and to manage inventory are driven by SAP. “When we have finished a box or movement transaction, a barcode label is generated; this is then scanned to confirm an action has been completed,” explained Parker. “In terms of production, if we need to produce small barcode labels to be fixed to individual parts this has traditionally been driven through the Mattec system. However, we are currently in the process of moving this into SAP.”

Because of this constraint, Southco developed the EPTS to take the average piece weight of every part. Then, as it counts the part it looks for any weight variation between each part until it is satisfied that it has seen the correct variation. The system then authorises the transfer of all the parts into the box ready for dispatch to the customer. “There has been a lot of software development over the past 18 months to get that accurate,” said Parker, “but since we implemented this system we have seen zero soft errors for incorrect part counts.

Basically, that has been completely eliminated as an issue.”

Scanning In terms of barcode scanning, Southco uses a number of mobile Mitsubishi devices installed with Southco’s own software developed to capture weigh counts and average piece weights. “Each device is linked to an SQL database and every time a weigh count is done it records the average piece weight, quantity, operator, lot number

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and part number,” explained Parker. “This information is then fed into an SQL database, so if we encounter any issues in the future we can easily go back to interrogate the system to find out who weighed the parts, what the count was and so on.”

Industrial automation and business intelligence For industrial automation and business intelligence purposes, Southco relies on Kepware. “We use Kepware extensively across the shopfloor to allow us to capture production-related data,” said Parker. “Over the past six years we have developed a lot of in-house knowledge around report writing within the SQL database. From SQL, we can extract all the information we need from any front-end reporting device.” Parker added that Southco uses Excel extensively because it is very easy for end-users to manipulate the data they have been given if they wish to or cross-reference it with other data to enhance the information that they personally require.

Parker added that the company can do direct part marking when required. “Some customers may specifically want a part number, code or batch number etched onto the part so it can't be removed and so it can provide complete lot traceability. In some cases, we will record that test data if some validation is required for load tests. This tends to be something that is done most frequently for customers in the automotive parts sector. This information is recorded in the Mattec system and held for the lifetime of the product.”

Front office and dispatch For sales and support interaction with customers, Southco uses a Salesforce CRM package, and for product dispatch relies on DHL. As well as customer orders, the CRM application also tracks and traces the logistics side of the business that is actioned by DHL.

Industry 4.0 In terms of IT deployment and enhancement, Parker explained that one of Southco’s current key focuses moving forward is Industry 4.0, and the greater levels of connectivity and communication between software, man and machine that is now available. “One thing’s for sure, we never stand still as a business and are always keen to explore new technology and what it has to offer us,” he concluded.

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Transportation Management Systems

Special Technology Report

Driving innovation Manufa Manufacturing M f ctu t ri ring & Logistics Logi gisti tics IT spoke to a number of experts e perts from the vendor and analyst ex communities about recent trends and ongoing areas of development within the world of Transportation Management Systems. he Transportation Management

T

will accelerate innovation. For example, he

omnichannel distribution are compelling

System (TMS) space continues to

points out that TMS provider JDA recently

shippers to consider TMS as part of their

develop at a rapid pace, and

signed a multi-year collaboration with the

overall Supply Chain Management (SCM)

many of the more recent

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

strategy.”

enhancements and innovations

to focus on joint research. JDA and MIT

will be surveyed in this report. To begin,

collaborated to leverage expertise in

Sriram Venkatraman, senior consultant

intelligent edge technologies such as

Different priorities

mobility, Frost & Sullivan, briefly revisits what

analytics, machine learning (ML), Artificial

Bart De Muynck, research director, Gartner,

the TMS landscape has looked like in recent

Intelligence (AI) and Internet of Things (IoT) to

reflects that transportation can be a highly

times. “Over the years, traditional Transport

create new approaches to cognitive supply

varied displine. “It might involve

Management Systems have primarily

chain.

manufacturers shipping products to one

comprised Operations Planning,

location and then shipping them

Transportation Intelligence, Tactical Planning,

In terms of key drivers for development within

internationally to another location, or it might

Procurement, Carrier Sourcing, Execution,

the TMS marketplace, Venkatraman cites e-

involve retailers importing goods from Asia

Freight Bill Auditing and Settlement along with

commerce (complexities from truck capacity

and then selling them in their stores in Europe

Reporting and Analytics capabilities,” he

optimisation to last-mile delivery), increasing

or the US,” he said. “Carriers, shippers and

pointed out, adding: “In the digital era, Frost

adoption in APAC, technology affordability,

third-part logistics companies (3PLs) all have

& Sullivan believes that supply chain solution

easier implementations and globalisation for

different priorities in terms of the type of

providers must continuously innovate their

retailers and logistics companies are some of

transportation management technology they

product portfolio with edge technologies to

the key drivers. He added that globalisation

require. In terms of the vendors themselves,

digitally transform supply chain and remain

will continue to open new markets to SMBs;

some focus their solutions on particularly

competitive.”

allowing them to work with global suppliers

industries.”

and customers. “Vendor innovation combined According to Venkatraman, partnerships and

with solutions that fit the smaller shipper’s

De Muynck added that, in Europe, the

collaborations between technology

budget will accelerate the adoption in APAC

transportation industry is a little different to the

companies, institutes and solution providers

region,” he said. “E-commerce and

US; the US still being the biggest market for

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Bart De Muynck, research director,

Transportation Management Systems

transportation tr

about all these remote sensing devices and

technologies. “This te

Internet of Things (IoT) all the way through to

Partner network

means that many m

tracking things and the introduction of

Bryan Ball, VP & group director – global

companies are c

external data such as weather and route

supply management practices, Aberdeen

giving more of the g

availability and all these other inputs now for

Group, makes the point that within the TMS

optimisation and o

transportation management systems, the

and TMO (Transport Management

planning p

idea of the ecosystem starts to make more

Optimisation) user space, most of the larger

responsibilities to the re

sense. It’s just not about simply using a

companies utilise some level of TMS either

carriers rather than c

routing optimisation tool anymore; it’s

themselves or they have a very close partner

w wanting to do

increasingly becoming part of something

network that they work through to schedule

planning and p

bigger. It helps that these systems are now

and optimise freight rates across the board.

optimisation on their o

available in the Cloud because this is a more

“This network arrangement can be like a

side,” he said. s

facile architecture than the on-premise

clearinghouse – showing where freight is

alternative.”

available or where there are opportunities with

One of the things De Muynck continues to see

empty trailers, who has refrigerated trucks

is that an increasing number of TMS or TES

Vernon makes the point that transportation

available and so on,” he said. “However,

(Transportation Execution Systems) are now

management solutions – like WMS and ERP –

some companies still don’t use TMS or TMO;

Cloud-based solutions; some of them being

are basically execution systems. “However,

they still use their traditional purchasing

multi-tenant Cloud-based systems. “While

over the top of this can be added

systems to manage and control what they

there are large levels of adoption within large

functionality such as Big Data and Data

spend on their freight. But, of course, this way

companies we are also seeing more and

Science in order to get a better routing

of working is unlikely to offer the optimisation

more small and medium-size businesses

optimisation algorithm and enhanced results

benefits that a TMS could provide.”

adopting the systems too,” he said.

from this. This data could, for example, relate

“Interestingly, the largest TMS product in the

to weather conditions or other external data

So TMS and TMO essentially covers the

world is probably also one of the least known

factors. You don’t really want your

scheduling and movement of goods. The

– Ascend TMS by InMotion Global. This

transportation management system to try to

second key discipline is of course the

solution currently has around 11,000 to

make sense of all these patterns; let your

management of the fleet. This is where

12,000 customers, both SMEs and Enterprise

data science layer or your Big Data layer

solutions such as telematics can play a

companies. This really shows that it’s no

offer recommendations. Then, you can take

critical role. As Ball points out, the term ‘fleet’

longer a technology used only by companies

these recommendations to your TMS, put

can refer to everything from assets, drivers,

that ship billions of products worth hundreds

them into your workflow and act on them.”

even ocean cargo and containers. “Looking at

In terms of key drivers for change, Vernon

is no doubt that because of security,

dollars in freight using this type of technology.

cited the Electronic Logging Device (ELD)

commitment or even receipt of goods

So, this market has changed quite a bit in

mandate recently introduced to track driving

companies want to know the exact position or

recent times.”

time. “This has really opened things up to

location of goods that are inbound from a

of millions of dollars in freight. We even see companies today who spend just 1 million

the fleet in the wider sense of the word, there

the extent that people are now saying if we

standpoint of those that are procuring, and on

Joe Vernon, digital supply chain strategic

are going to have a telematics-type device

the outbound side for those who are shipping.

advisor, Capgemini, points to a couple of big

within the equipment let’s track everything –

In terms of fleet management from a driver

conversations currently taking place within

from a predictive maintenance perspective,

perspective, you can track the movement of

the transportation management solutions

let’s monitor the performance of the engine,

goods, idle time of the physical assets, the

arena. “Telematics and remote sensing the

and let’s monitor how the driver handles the

time spent waiting which could make you

driver and of the trailer is currently a key

equipment. For example, you could look for

realise you need dock scheduling solution to

theme,” he said. “Also, there has been

hard braking, improper cornering, whether

minimise the downtime. Also, as part of a TMS

continued movement to the SaaS model. For

the truck has been idling for a long time and

suite many of them have an optimisation

example, Oracle’s OTM is now a SaaS

whether there is excessive vibration that

package that maximises the cubic-foot

(Software as a Service) model in the Cloud

could lead to damage of the vehicle etc. So

utilisation of the asset – for example, a

for the first time. As users start moving to the

now you are talking about installing optics

company with 10% of their fleet of 20 trucks

Cloud and SasS they start to think about

and sensors inside of the truck. This is the

sitting idle for a couple of days can be

themselves as being part of a supply chain

world of IoT. I really do think this new

expensive.”

ecosystem rather than just operating within a

legislation has opened up all of these

standalone transportation system. In terms of

possibilities and got people thinking about

Returning to GPS and tracking, Ball explains

being part of an ecosystem, if you think

the whole driver-truck environment.”

that tracking has expanded into many other

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Transportation Management Systems

Special Technology Report

areas apart from drivers and assets. These

Added to this, Briggs made the point that

data is constantly

areas include mileage, telemetrics coming off

general improvements in systems used by

increasing and

the engine, the rotating parts. “It can be very

B2C delivery businesses have raised

declining prices for

much like an aircraft in terms of thinking about

awareness of potential customer services

processing and

when the most convenient time would be to

experience improvements, as staff grow

persisting this data

schedule maintenance downtime, rotating the

accustomed to the way couriers inform them

in the Cloud are

tyres, doing an oil change or whatever else

of private deliveries to their homes – the DPD

making so-called Big

might be required at the service level,” he

(Direct Parcel Distribution) effect. “This is

Data applications

said. “Fleet tracking solutions can also keep

leading more and more transportation

highly attractive.”

the logs up to date automatically – on the

companies to demand new functionality to

drivers in terms of their downtime, where

proactively inform consignees of delivery

Gunnar Gburek,

they’ve been and the mileage they’ve done.

progress through automated messaging and

head of business

There is also a safety and legal compliance

ETA updates to the customer whilst vehicles

affairs, TimoCom,

element here; because of the recently

are on the road,” said Briggs. “There is a

considers that

introduced ELD legislation in Canada, the US

growing need to add customer services

process optimisation for the entire supply

and across the borders, freight companies

managers as stakeholders when identifying

chain has a huge impact in terms of efficiency

literally have to have a fleet tracking solution

new systems, where previously the primary

and competitive ability. “We want to offer our

online and readily accessible at all times so

stakeholders may have been focused towards

users a transport platform that allows them to

up-to-date logs can be shown when required.

transport managers.”

process transport orders smartly, safely, and

Joe Vernon, digital supply chain strategic advisor,

easily,” he said. “That means: with help from

In this way you remain legally protected.”

our intelligent applications, business partners

The Cloud model

can find simpler and faster ways to ensure

Challenges

Michael Beck, product evangelist, inet,

optimal use of resources. This includes

Andrew Briggs, technical director, BEC

believes that since collaboration and

interfaces like TC Connect. We use TC

(Systems Integration) Ltd., believes the main

communication are the key-requirements for a

Connect to connect the customer’s transport

current challenges within the TMS space are:

TMS today, being based on Cloud technology

management system to our transport platform

Improve productivity, plug revenue leakage,

is a must. “We are glad to see the previous

at their request. The biggest advantage of this

security, the importance of first-time delivery, the

borders of data silos and monolithic

interface is that freight offers – assuming they

ability to facilitate rapid change and improved

applications fall,” he said. “In this way, data

cannot be assigned internally – can be

total cost of ownership (TCO).

can be shared and used to build applications

transferred directly onto the transport platform

that can react to changes and exceptions

from the customer’s own system with one

Considering some of the key drivers for change,

quickly even during a shipment being

simple click, and thus offered to over 127,000

Briggs added that transport businesses that

executed.”

users. This allows freight to be assigned quickly and efficiently. The second very

have been using rugged handheld devices for years face a change in the available supported

Taking this a step further, Beck maintains that

effective and practical interface is that to our

operating systems from Windows CE to Android.

this data must be enriched selectively with

tracking solution: the solution is already

“This has driven a much broader re-think of

specific information to allow for predicting

connected to over 230 different telematics

current, often bespoke applications,” he said.

events. “An important technology in this

service providers. Not only that, if needed you

“Whereas a simple hardware refresh might

context are APIs (Application Programming

can display several vehicles with different

previously have been an option, now entire

Interfaces),” he explained. “They make it

telematics systems on only one map. We

application suites are a

possible to access specific information

recently started offering our users an interface

being reviewed for b

quickly (such as traffic or weather information)

that also allows access to GPS locations in

replacement and upre

without having to build, populate or maintain a

our transport platform via third-party

to-date functionality. to

whole data pool individually.”

applications.”

Android, a whole suite A

Beck believes the key driver for changes in

In terms of drivers for change, Gburek made

of consumer devices o

how we think about developing software

the point that Industry 4.0, digitalisation, and

now contend with n

solutions is clearly the rise of social media.

its use to increase efficiency and improve

rugged devices for ru u

“People have changed the way they think

service continue to be essential for meeting

both BYOD and direct b

about and share their data in their private life,

requirements from our TimoCom users.

provision by the p

and this is gradually influencing their

business.” b

expectations towards business applications,”

Dave Renshaw, CEO of OBS Logistics, made

he said. “Due to this, the amount of available

the point that when the company supplies

With the move to W

Sriram Venkatraman, senior consultant mobility,

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Bryan Ball, VP & group director – global supply management practices,

Transportation Management Systems

WMS solutions to W

integrated across hundreds of different

supply chain is under is exacerbated even

customers these c

partner systems. “This means that these

further by the challenging regulatory

days it finds that it is d

systems can handle information on a much

environment brought about by Brexit.

generally replacing g

larger number of shipments, locations and

Businesses are realising that they need to

another WMS. a

vehicles,” he explained. “This new strategy

rethink their strategies to remain competitive

However, on the TMS H

goes beyond automation. Businesses can

in this unpredictable environment.”

sside when OBS

strategically create value and enable

Logistics provides a L

profitable growth in new and existing markets

According to Paul, smaller companies in

new system for a n

by optimising supply chain performance.”

particular need to offer ‘value-added’ services on top of their regular services. “Just

c customer it is more often than not o

Paul also pointed out that using a single multi-

transporting crates will no longer enable these

installing the first in

tenant software platform, the global trade

smaller businesses to retain market share in

TMS that the T

network allows businesses to integrate

this increasingly customer-centric world,” he

customer has used. c

multiple partners and aggregate data, while

said. “To achieve this, businesses require

“We often find that before the installation of a

maintaining security for all connected parties.

better visibility into the supply chain, to

TMS many logistics companies would have

“The improved access to capacity means that

enhance the customer experience, cut costs

relied on white boards or spreadsheets,”

supply chain managers can explore new

and streamline processes. As a result,

explained Renshaw.

opportunities during capacity constraints,” he

companies need to embrace the new

said. “The global trade network holds

technology on offer to reach these goals and

Renshaw added that, traditionally,

thousands of carriers, forwarders and 3PLs

drive future growth.”

transportation solutions were mainly employed

who are already connected and readily

to deal with the dispatching of goods from the

available with all of their information available

warehouse – often with very little lead time

for use. This also increases speed and agility,

Integration

and not a great deal of time to get organised

as companies can quickly choose a new

What are some of the key developments and

in terms of requirements related to logistics.

supplier or explore an alternative market

discussion points concerning the relationship

“There wasn’t a great deal of efficiency with

instantly.”

between the more field-based transportation

that sort of model,” he said. “However, what

management systems and the back-office

we are seeing more prevalently now in terms

Paul explained that this connected network

systems they integrate with? Beck believes

of WMS and TMS integration, and with our

provides built-in, end-to-end visibility and

the key change lies in the communication

own total product for logistics, is that the

embedded analytics can help supply chain

between back-end systems and TMS. “In the

demand is getting into transport and it’s the

managers to respond proactively in real time

past, we struggled with master data

plan that’s driving the warehouse process. So,

to any disruptions. “This offers the opportunity

availability and various EDI formats due to

the picking operation, the marshalling and

to scan the entire network for cost-saving

asynchronous communication,” he said.

dispatching is done to preplanned loads.”

opportunities, meaning businesses can truly

“Now APIs allow to quickly connect systems

optimise their supply chain,” he remarked.

synchronously making master data alignment

“With Brexit on the horizon and trade laws

(e.g. for addresses) obsolete since

Speed, efficiency and visibility

causing concerns, a global trade network

integrated communication allows for real-

model can also help by connecting all

time information exchange. This in turn

Mohit Paul, SVP EMEA, BluJay Solutions,

compliance software with transportation

facilitates the integration of the back-office

believes speed, efficiency and visibility are

software for seamless movement of products,

systems and thus all

key factors in today’s competitive logistics

therefore providing a friction-free border.”

supply chain

industry. “Greater connectivity across the

members on our

supply chain will allow businesses to achieve

With regard to drivers for change, Paul

central Cloud-based

these goals,” he said. “A global trade network

reflects that in this digital age, customers now

platform.”

model, where companies are connected with

expect an extremely high level of service from

hundreds of partners around the world, offers

supply chain providers. “Customers demand

Briggs points to

this connectivity and is therefore a key

easy access to information about a product’s

increases in specific

innovation in the application of transportation

location, its status and its date of delivery,” he

data transferred, the

management computing solutions.”

said. “The ‘Amazon effect’ has truly disrupted

volume of

the industry, as companies that are unable to

transactions,

Paul added that the growth of worldwide

provide real-time updates on request are at

frequency of data

networks of logistics companies means that

risk of falling behind competitors and losing

transfer between

transportation management software can be

customer confidence. The pressure the

integrated systems.

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Michael Beck, product evangelist,

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Transportation Management Systems

Special Technology Report

And what have been A

integrate with other best of breed solutions;

businesses with better insight into how the

the subsequent th

including telematics. We offer a very open set

supply chain is performing from end-to-end,

benefit b

of API interfaces, which enables us to bring

so they can anticipate and prevent problems,

improvements for the im

some of the well-known applications in a

quickly respond to any issues that do arise,

user in light of these u

supporting capacity alongside our transport

and plan better for the future,” he stressed.

developments? d

backbone. This covers dynamic optimisation

“What’s more, as partner-to-partner sharing

Maarten Hemmes, M

and planning – Paragon or PTV for example –

increases, with transparent processes

founder & CEO, fo

and also in the execution for telematics,

ensuring that all parties have access to the

CarPal, made the C

vehicle tracking and electronic ePOD. While

information they need, businesses will be able

p point that in last-mile

we have our own ePOD we also work with

to drive efficiency and results across the

logistics, open lo

Microlise who provide telematics and their

whole supply chain. The adoption of new

ssystems such as

SmartPOD. Additionally, we secure a lot of

transportation management software can help

SaaS delivery S

lead generation through our strong

fully synchronise various supply chain

management software manages to empower ma

relationship with TomTom. TomTom’s back-

operations, from procurement to

companies to bridge the gap between

end Webfleet solution is well-established and

transportation, making for a deeply

customers and operations through visibility,

provides vehicle tracking, and navigation with

interconnected and optimised supply chain

transparency and the ability to plan, manage

the TomTom head units combined.”

ecosystem.”

Andy Briggs, technical director,

and modify delivery workflows live. “As a Cloud-based solution, such a platform is built

Renshaw said customers like this type of open-

to offer information in real time through an

stance service because, with such a wide

Legislation

intuitive dashboard, which typically allows

portfolio of solutions to choose from, the user is

Have changes in transportation legislation

teams to monitor jobs and drivers live on a

more likely to secure an ideal fit for their

(either locally or globally) influenced the

sleek dashboard,” he said. “Staying in the

particular needs with regard to warehousing

development of Transportation Management

loop with accurate alerts and ETAs ultimately

and logistics. He added that another

systems over the past year or so?

helps team identify bottlenecks and easily

advantage of this type of service is that if a

Venkatraman pointed out that with increasing

solve them before they escalate. For end

customer has already made a commitment to,

changes with regard to technology, legal

users, being able to use an open system will

for example, a routing and scheduling

regulations to tighten security are constantly

considerably help them save time and cut

company they want to be able to make use of

evolving. “Vendors should be able to

down on cost while maximising their daily

that system without having to replace it.

accommodate these regulatory changes in

performance.”

the system as quickly as possible to prevent Paul explains that with Cloud-based solutions,

cyber-attacks, changing privacy rules and

Beck considers that increased availability of

supply chain companies can get real-time

data breach,” he said. “TMS solution

native Cloud solutions and their flexibility and

access to information throughout the logistics

providers must constantly monitor the

scalability have allowed a more synchronous

ecosystem, which they can then share across

evolving regulations from National Highway

approach to interfaces. He added that this in

the organisation. “This improved efficiency

Traffic Safety (NHTSA), European Union

turn increases usability significantly because

offers a streamlined system, making for faster

Agency for Network and Information Security

end-users do not have to wait for data

delivery and an optimised service,” he said.

(ENISA) and data privacy rules in various

alignment or batch jobs and thus enjoy faster

“The greater visibility supplied from this

countries across the supply chain.”

response times and easier real-time

software means that businesses can offer

collaboration.

faster delivery, with greater flexibility in delivery types, such as selecting timeslots,

Security and confidentiality

Renshaw reflected that OBS Logistics has

click-and-collect, and same-day delivery. This

Are there any remaining security &

been fortunate over the years to have worked

therefore gives businesses the capacity to

confidentiality concerns at the more ‘mobile’

within the 3PL market. “This has driven us

offer customers a more personalised and

end of the transportation management

down the avenue of having a total solution

consultative service, thereby meeting the

solutions space? Beck explained that, in the

rather than simply offering either a WMS or

needs of the demanding modern customer.”

case of inet, the company developed a Cloud

TMS,” he said. “Indeed, we’re winning more

TMS from day one. “Hence, a mobile device

and more business because of it because an

is just another user interface to us and is

increasing number of people are recognising

Better end-to-end insight

validated and checked against the same

the benefits of choosing a totally integrated

Paul added that logistics companies need to

high-security quality assurance processes as

solution encompassing TMS, WMS, delivery

ensure that they are supported by their TMS

our desktop web interfaces,” he said.

management with mobile ePOD and supply

provider to meet these high expectations.

chain tracking, as well as having the ability to

“TMS partners must be able to supply

www.logisticsit.com

Briggs made the point that with the imminent

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Transportation Management Systems

approach of GDPR legislation, companies are

the world or you want to sell in all these

companies, drive the creation of the largest

evaluating what permission they need to

regions there aren’t many vendors who can

carrier community, provide networks and

secure from customers to gather and retain

really offer that other than company such as

possibilities to connect and reuse. Our

their name and signature for proof of delivery,

Oracle, SAP, JDA and Descartes. BluJay is

strategic focus in the coming year is to enable

as well as reviewing data retention and

becoming a much larger global vendor as

a transparent and meaningful platform to

security for existing and new systems.

well.”

excel our customers’ business.”

De Muynck also made the point that not every

Renshaw believes one of the key

Differentiation

vendor is comfortable working in any industry.

differentiators for OBS Logistics is the fact

What are some of the current key areas of

“Healthcare is different to retail, retail is

that the company offers more than just TMS.

differentiation within the TMS marketplace?

different automotive, automotive is different to

“We also offer WMS and delivery

Venkatraman cites investment in R&D, the

construction and so on,” he said. “So,

management all through a single application,”

accelerated focus on Cloud TMS offerings,

depending on your particular industry you

he explained. “This is attracting a lot of

solid functional support for the needs of 3PL

might want to look at specific vendors’

interest because some TMS applications

and freight brokerage, globalisation, quicker

solutions because they might just focus on,

focus purely on planning, and some focus on

implementation timeframes, deployment

say, four or five industries. There are very few

the last mile of the delivery only whereas we

models, partner collaboration and the use of

companies – and again it’s typically the larger

are able to cover everything from collection to

intelligent technologies such as machine

vendors – who really have a footprint of TMS

final delivery.”

learning, IOT, AI etc. to accelerate supply

customers across all the different industries.”

chain innovations. “Frost & Sullivan believes

Renshaw added that some solutions are

that although functionality advancements can

Continuing the differentiation theme, Vernon

suitable for home transport and some are

be a differentiator, it is not the only criteria to

comments that it has been no small move for

suitable for sub-contract work, whereas OBS

evaluate a vendor,” he clarified. “TMS

leading vendors such as Oracle to move to

Logistics can cater for both. He also made the

customers must analyse the organisational

Cloud and SasS and to understand that this is

point that some systems focus very much on

needs with vendor capabilities such as

how more and more users want their TMS

vehicle management, while some just focus on

market presence, pricing, customer

functionality delivered. However, he added

visibility. “So, the big differentiator for us is we

experience, operational competence etc.

that things can get tricky from a security and

have a total solution spanning everything from

before selecting the vendor.”

control perspective. “You have a TMS and

order receipt, planning, execution, picking in

you want to plug into all these external

the warehouse (if required) and collection to

De Muynck considers that the differentiation

sensing devices and external data feeds such

final delivery – and covering home transport

question really depends on who the target

as web content and social media. This can

and sub-contract,” he said.

end-users are. “Many end-users don’t have a

create a lot of overheads for you from a

lot of complex requirements,” he said. “They

security and connectivity perspective – it

Renshaw also explained that as well as being

have a lot of choice and there is not that

makes it a lot easier to pass that over to your

an in-demand solutions provider in the world

much differentiation between the vendors.

software vendor. Cloud solution vendors have

of third-party logistics, OBS Logistics is

However, if you look at the vendor community

one solution for security that they can apply

increasingly seeing its systems being used for

as a whole the big differentiation is in terms of

across multiple customers instead of you

in-house logistics operations as well.

what can they support from a geographical

have to buy it and manage yourself. I think

Moreover, he pointed out that when OBS

perspective. For example, there are vendors

that type of benefit is driving a lot of

Logistics competes for a contract it generally

who only serve maybe one country or a few

adoption.”

competes with companies that pull together a solution from multiple vendors rather than

countries, then we c s see some that are across Europe or a across North a

Beck considers that there are many ways to

America for example.

A

compare the functionality of a TMS. “We are

T Then we see a much

convinced that it is also important to look

s smaller group of

beyond functionality and to understand the

Challenges of network growth and market volatility

vendors who truly are v

company’s vision in order to gain a more

What do some of our vendor commentators

global vendors. If you g

holistic insight into their future viability,” he

consider to be one or two of their flagship

a are a global

said. “At inet, we strongly believe in our vision

application success stories within the

c company looking for

of ‘creating a collaborative world’. Thus, we

transportation management arena? inet

o one solution across

aim to strengthen bonds with other

presents AGCO as an example of one of the

m more regional –

Mohit Paul, SVP EMEA,

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offering a fully integrated package

Looking beyond functionality

March 2018

themselves.

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Transportation Management Systems

Special Technology Report

company’s customer c

on the position of a truck belonging to a short-

adapt to the changing landscape to serve

ssuccess stories. The

term transport partner with a different

their customers better. It needs to layer a

internationally in

telematics provider into your own transport

technological solution on top of its existing

operating o

management system? The large freight

services in order to cater to the last-mile

manufacturer of m

forwarder and ELVIS-member, Spedition

space in Asia Pacific. More specifically, the

agricultural a

Schwarz, approached TimoCom with that very

company needs smart routing algorithms that

equipment was e

question. Together with the internationally

will ease the stress in daily operations of on-

ssearching for a

active IT specialist Arvato Systems, TimoCom

demand deliveries. To enter the last-mile

Logistics 4.0 solution L

developed an interface to meet the

space, the company decided to work with an

to address its

company’s needs. This interface allows

integrated solution and an experienced team

decentralised d

TimoCom customers to receive and process

that helps the company to enable same-day

logistics structure. lo

GPS information from transport service

delivery. The solution provided is creating

Network growth and N

providers they have hired whenever they

optimal routes with a given set of criteria;

market volatility posed constant challenges on co

need to. Moreover, other systems can access

including number of locations, items to deliver

AGCO’s inbound logistics. With the inet TMS,

the GPS data and retrieve it in a unified

and vehicle capacity. It also benefits from

1500 suppliers and more than 70 carriers

format. This increased service quality and

Smart Routing: the goal is to create a

were connected to inet’s Cloud-based

customer satisfaction for transport orders.

sustainable same-day delivery solution that

platform throughout Europe. On-time delivery

Thanks to the GPS interface, Spedition

enables the company to fulfil orders by using

performance and process compliance were

Schwarz can automatically see if a transport

a routing system that ensures each resource

increased by 10% and 15% respectively, and

partner has been delayed and inform its

has as many locations as possible while

carbon emissions reduced by 14%. The total

customer directly. Considering that there are

delivering on time and driving the most

costs of the European operations were cut by

up to 100 trucks hired by Spedition Schwarz

efficient route.

28%, therefore soon afterwards the solution

via TimoCom’s transport platform every day,

was rolled out to the US and China.

the interface saves the company a lot of time

Maarten Hemmes, founder & CEO,

and keeps it fully informed.

Logistics in healthcare OBS Logistics’ CALIDUS TMS plays a large

Streamlined systems

To use the interface, customers simply require

part in the success of DHL Supply Chain’s

Trust Forwarding, one of Scandinavia’s top

the tracking solution available free of charge to

daily operations within the healthcare logistics

freight forwarders and a division of SAS

all TimoCom users. Even smaller companies

marketplace. DHL Supply Chain users include

Cargo Group A/S. The company selected

can thus use the tool to increase their

Janssen Cilag, Smiths Portex, GSK, Roche,

BluJay’s Global Trade Network to increase its

competitive edge. Other interested customers

Bayer, Boehringer Ingleheim and Pfizer. The

business efficiency, run cost control in-house,

now also have access to the TimoCom GPS

outsourcing of logistics services is playing an

and improve its integration with partners and

interface. For the transport industry, this

increasingly important role in the life sciences

customers. After decades of using a manual

means that even short-term transport

and healthcare industry. With its extensive

on-premise system, BluJay supplied Trust

relationships can be automatically and digitally

industry knowledge, certified facilities and

Forwarding with an integrated, Cloud-based

tracked using the interface. In turn, this helps

processes, DHL Supply Chain offers flexible

TMS platform to bring the company into the

both business partners to achieve higher

solutions that comply with all legal

future. With BluJay’s TMS platform, Trust was

transparency, quality and security.

requirements.

able to streamline its transportation The strict regulations and quality standards of

management systems, ensuring that it could

the life sciences and

costs with greater transparency and interact

Sustainable same-day delivery solution

with partners no matter where in the world

CarPal’s SaaS last-mile delivery platform puts

are taken very

they were based. The Cloud solution was

emphasis on customisation, automation and

seriously by DHL.

easy to implement and had proven results,

visibility through smart features that help

Nigel Underwood,

with a high capacity for integration with

operations managers gain efficiency and

CIO, DHL Supply

external stakeholders, giving Trust the

scalability for their business. One case

Chain, said of the

confidence that its systems would be up and

example is a large logistics company for

CALIDUS solution:

running as soon as possible.

which CarPal implemented changes through

“The Warehouse

tech. The global logistics company aims to

Management System

generate orders automatically, manage its

healthcare market

innovate and expand its business offerings to

is a key component

Increased service quality

include same-day delivery. In order to gain

of our Healthcare

How do you automatically transfer information

competitive edge, the company needs to

solution set, which

www.logisticsit.com

Gunnar Gburek, head of business affairs,

IT

MANUFACTURING

March 2018

&LOGISTICS

15

Special Technology Report

Transportation Management Systems

we are continuing to w

then leave you to make the choice. Then, a

may come up with ideas and ways to further

develop and d

further step would involve automation; instead

optimise your process that you had never

enhance in our bid to e

of a human making the decision based on the

thought of before. This type of sophistication

become the leading b

prescriptive analytics, the system itself could

is going to happen.”

global supplier of g

make the decision – the process becomes

innovative supply in

automated.”

Ball also considers that block chain is going to have increasing impact on movement of

chain solutions.” Paul c White, IS director W

Vernon comments that in the world of supply

goods, settlement of transactions and moving

healthcare, added: h

chain analytics, AI and routing optimisation,

through global networks. First, he believes

“T capabilities of “The

modern transportation management do a

block chain will get more traction on domestic

the system are a th

good job on the whole. However, be believes

networks were things can be controlled better.

great fit for the g

there is a way to enhance this functionality

demands of the d

with machine learning, pattern recognition,

Venkatraman believes the uberisation of

healthcare sector. This combined with GAMP

fraud analysis and things that are available

freight, end-to-end supply chain visibility

validation provides us with a competitive

now in the data science world. “There are

resulting in shorter lead times and lower

edge across all our target markets including

now valuable ways to enhance what a TMS

costs, digitisation and implementation of Big

pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and

can offer as far as value is concerned. So,

Data & Analytics will be key product

consumer healthcare. We count 9 of 10 global

outputs can be taken from, say, route

differentiators in the market. Hemmes

pharma companies as system users, along

optimisation, and applying machine learning

maintains that innovation is the key to success

with leading organisations in each of the other

against this to try to learn from it and then

and growth, and sees new developments

sectors.” Ben Gilkes, head of IS for healthcare

return results back to the TMS so that the

arising that will have the power to change

& technology at DHL, commented: “We were

recommendation results can be put into the

how logistics will function on a day-to-day

pioneers in validating logistics systems for

workflow, hopefully resulting in an improved

basis. In 2018, Hemmes foresees delivery

healthcare companies and it certainly helped

outcome. This model is getting traction and

management gaining more traction through

to be working with professionals like OBS. A

will expand. One of the reasons it will expand

automation, digitalisation and personalisation.

true partnership.”

is because these trailer and shipment

In his view, some key trends are:

movements and that asset management of

•

Dave Renshaw, CEO,

the fleet all fit together nicely. This will

The ‘control tower’ concept – taking full ownership of your operations through

Future developments

especially impact in a positive way on people

What might be the next key developments

who own their own fleet. So, again, it’s what’s

within the TMS and related solutions

happening out there in the AI world across

in-house and public fleets to better

marketplace for in the near future? Besides

multiple industries. It has a very attractive and

manage the increase of order volume

what is happening inside the systems from an

straightforward business case path for

execution perspective, De Muynck thinks

transportation management and it’s already

some of the developments we will continue to

started and will continue to grow.”

visibility and control.

•

The ‘hybrid fleet’ model – democratising

during peak seasons.

•

Predictive analytics – planning operations in advance by having easy access to rich data

see evolve will revolve around analytics. “We •

have advanced from typical business

AI & Machine Learning – using

intelligence and dashboards to what we call

Additional insights

sophisticated algorithms to fast-track

predictive analytics where we can take all that

Ball reiterates that we have seen major

processes and become more efficient as

data and make predictions based on history

advances in GPS and telematics and concurs

a business.

or based on the current information as well as

with Vernon that we are now starting to see AI

bring in lots of other system information,” he

added to this technology space, offering a

Hemmes’ predictions for the next coming

said. “One of the next big steps we will see

number of additional potential insights. “You

years include the following:

over the next few years will be the further

might find, for example, that shipping out of

move towards prescriptive analytics. Not only

Shanghai in the afternoon results in more

will the systems be able to say what is going

damage than if you were to ship out of

collect data from your system and use it

to happen, they will also be based on learning

Shanghai in the morning. Or it could be the

to optimise and grow your operations.

and what you’re doing. So, they could say

case that it is better to take the northern route

“With DAAS, companies will be able to

based on what has happened these are the

at this time of the year because the seas are

access real-time data streams and use

three alternatives we suggest, this will be the

more choppy on the southern route. Or it

the information to create comprehensive

impact of the customer, this will be the impact

might become known that a company using

reports that serve as a base for

on you the shipper, this will be the impact on

different types of equipment incures less

optimisation,” he said. “This means more

the carrier, these are the cost options and

insurance costs than you do. The point is you

control over the business through

16

IT

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1. Data-as-a-Service – Leveraging DAAS to

www.logisticsit.com sttic

Transportation Management Systems

Special Technology Report

actionable reports and more decision-

Transport Order, which allows for digital

Responding to Brexit

completion of transport orders. “Over the

Renshaw explained that OBS Logistics has

course of this year, we will be adding new

looked at what might be the impact on its

helpful features to the program,” he

will allow companies to take advantage of

solutions due to Brexit. “We see that there will

explained. “Our users can look forward,

urban warehouse spaces to have easy

be a lot more import-export,” he said, “and

among other things, to individual customer

access to products for fast deliveries.

because of the breadth of our solution we are

statistics on their own transactions, digital

“This is where companies can tap on

looking to be able to offer what could be

administration of all transport orders

crowdsourced warehouses and ‘rent’

described as a terminal operation-type

regardless of whether the client is already

space from other existing networks that

solution. At a port ships are arriving,

using TimoCom or is not yet a customer, and

have strategic locations,” explained

containers are being unloaded and goods are

e-mail notifications regarding lucrative

Hemmes. “The value proposition for

being taken to a warehouse. As a logistics

transport requests. These updates optimise

shared warehousing is that you don’t have

company you might be managing a transport

requests for transport and fulfilment of

to run out of space during the peak

operation that is doing the collections,

transport orders via TC Transport Order -

volume periods, but also don’t need to

scheduling the deliveries and maybe

perfectly in line with efficient process

pay for excess space during lax periods.”

scheduling the returnable containers into the

optimisation.”

making power.”

2. Shared warehousing – The gig economy

yard before they are re-loaded onto the ship.

So, OBS Logistics is looking to combine our

Beck foresees the movement from monolithic

Democratising fleets to accurately utilise

yard management capability with our WMS

applications to more granular Cloud-based

resources and maintain a high fulfilment

and transport planning and scheduling

micro services delivered via SaaS models. He

rate. “The idea of tapping on a hybrid feet

capability to be able to operate at these sites;

believes this will have a major impact on the

means you need to take into

providing a total solution that can be offered

TMS industry. Secondly, Beck anticipates that

consideration planning your internal

as a managed service, together with customs-

human-based decision making will decrease

operations and delivery teams to

related functionality for clearance and so on.

as AI and machine learning advance rapidly –

determine the distribution of the resources

So, transportation will be a part of what is an

for example, with regard to route and network

to minimise cost and maximise fulfilment

import-export terminal operation.”

optimisation. Lastly, Beck comments that real-

3. Crowdsourcing public fleets –

time collaboration across the globe poses a

rate for you daily deliveries,” Hemmes pointed out. “The purpose behind this

Paul reflects that enough is never enough in

new challenge that could be called ‘the

scenario is that even complex delivery

our modern world. “As technology continues

globalisation of data’. “Vendors increasingly

operations can be streamlined. Smart

to develop, customer expectations will only

have to think of how to make their data, not

algorithm would help companies crunch

increase,” he said. “Our modern society is

just their application work globally,” he said.

all the data and factor in things like

always looking for faster and better

“That raises questions like: How do you create

capacity, weight, volume, and priority

operations. With this in mind, a TMS that can

good, real-time data in a supply chain

status. This would result in an automated

keep up with this pace of change is integral.

network that spans across different time

and sustainable resource allocation ran at

BluJay’s Global Trade Network supplies the

zones and regulatory jurisdictions?”

the most optimal rate.”

resilience needed for that crucial competitive advantage.” Paul added that Cloud

Briggs cites apps developed for Android;

computing eliminates the high upfront costs

Slicing and dicing

therefore, people using consumer devices.

that used to come with on-premise logistics

In terms of changing end-user requirements,

However, he adds that consumer devices do

solutions. “Fast and clear ROI allows

Beck makes the point that with the rise of

not support barcode scanners. “Phone

businesses to plan better for the future,” he

micro services, mobile phones and Cloud-

cameras are not good to capture barcodes;

said. “The Cloud has made it possible for

based services, end-users already require

especially if we are faced with doing a lot of

business of all sizes to tap into technology

functions to be easily accessible online,

scanning in poor lighting,” he said, adding:

that can streamline their supply chains and

customisable, integrated with existing

“Microsoft exited the market – so all

boost visibility. Over the coming year, as

operations and in fast or in real time.

development platforms are likely to remain

Brexit negotiations continue to rumble on and

However, in the near future, Beck believes

Android (and to a lesser extent IOS).” In

customer demand grows yet more intense,

these requirements will extend to data itself.

terms of further changes with regard to end-

businesses will need an adaptable TMS with

“If you think of analytics for instance, users

user requirements over the coming year or

proven results to provide long-lasting,

will not just accept retrospective metrics and

two, Briggs points to the DPD (Dynamic

sustainable benefits.”

analytics but ask for real-time data that allow

with partners – and taking ad hoc card

Gburek reminded us that last summer

need it,” he said.

payments.

TimoCom launched its newest application, TC

Parcel Distribution) effect – keeping in touch

www.logisticsit.com sttic

them to slice and dice the information as they

IT

MANUFACTURING

March 2018

&LOGISTICS

17

\\\ Manufacturing \\\

Opinion

63(20&83,73-8in a changing world Our forthcoming departure from the EU may throw us some challenges. However, Simon Lewington managing director of Systems Assurance, isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t worried. He argues that with the right investment in IT there is plenty of opportunity for UK manufacturing to flourish. have been looking positive. The UK economy

themselves as pioneers, sadly only 17% of manufacturers say the same. i

grew more strongly than expected in the final

Over the years, weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve been closely involved in

quarter of 2017, putting the estimated calendar year growth at 1.8%. ii Official

the IT decision making process of many of

figures also show that British factories

our manufacturing clients and understand the

notched up the longest run of expansion for at

pressures the sector is under to maximise

least two decades, with December seeing

output and reduce costs. The short-term value

producers of investment goods experience

of investing in IT infrastructure and software

the sharpest increase in orders since 1994. iii

upgrades can be hard to measure, which is why they have frequently been pushed to the

By developing a digital transformation

bottom of the pile.

strategy now, not only will manufacturers be laying the right foundations for resiliency, but

2*408 7$20&640 8 (8-7%7/4'20&83 -2&263/861305+41*362408561367&(804$"8046 40/(8$2//8*30)+3.6)17158#78/3(20&86,7 12&,68+4)0-3624058+4181752/270.("8#)686,7( .4)/-83/548#78.173620&838173/8.363/(568+41 &14$6,84%7186,7807 68+7$8(7315! 8

With the advent of Industrie 4.0, things could

they could also be creating a real catalyst for

be about to change dramatically. UK

growth over the next few years. Technologies

Manufacturers will need to reassess their

will open up a whole new opportunity to

investment plans if they are to stay

broaden product offerings, find new routes to

competitive in a marketplace which is not just

market and even expand geographical sales

going to be shifting because of smart

reach.

technologies, but also because of our ver the past 25 years weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve

O

changing status in the EU.

Companies that continually invest in IT not

certainly seen technology

only attract more talented employees, but by

come a long way. Back in

giving workers access to tools that improve

1992 when I founded Systems Assurance we were wholly

Digital Transformation will be the key to success

making they also stand to eliminate wasted time and unnecessary resource. Technology

dependent on phone and fax for communication. Our invoices were sent by

productivity, collaboration and decision

Despite the nervousness over Brexit, things

can also change the perception of everyone

post and our CRM was a simple Rolodex. In fact, one of our first digital transformation projects was transferring all our contacts into a simple database.

Fast forward to today and everything we do is automated. Our office has become paper free and our processes have been streamlined so that theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re as efficient as possible. As a technology company weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve always been ahead of the curve, but as a key supplier of IT to some of the UKâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s largest manufacturers we are also acutely aware of how the manufacturing sector as a whole has lagged behind. In 2016, a report from the Confederation of British Industry warned that the UK may be facing a digital divide with only half (55%) of â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;pioneerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; firms adopting digital technologies and processes. And

4*'3027586,368.40620)3//(820%7568208 8046840/(836613.68*417863/7067-87*'/4(775"8#)6 #(8&2%20&8$41 71583..7558648644/586,3682*'14%78'14-).62%26("8.4//3#4136240830-7.252408*3 20&86,7(83/5485630-86487/2*203678$3567-862*7830-8)007.75531(81754)1.7!8

whilst 70% of the technology sector classify

18

IT

MANUFACTURING

&LOGISTICS

March 2018

www.logisticsit.com

Opinion

\\\ Manufacturing \\\

E-Commerce Development After virtualising a clientâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ecommerce platform, it was found that many of their suppliers were using their own APIs to communicate events such as despatch notifications. Systems Assurance decided that an ultra â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;lightweightâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; fast HTTP browser was needed that would be capable of processing multiple supplier API requests and so built an API abstraction layer. After testing several browsers, it was found that each carried issues with frequent execution failures, speed issues and browser crashes. Systems Assurance created its own browser that could handle these API requests using Microsoft technologies. Ultimately, Systems Assurance was able to meet the required benchmarks

++2.23/8+2&)17583/5485,4$86,368 12625,8+3.6412758046.,7-8)'86,78/40&75681)084+ 7 '3052408+418368/735686$48-7.3-75"8$26,8 7.7*#71857720&8'14-).71584+820%756*706 &44-587 '71270.786,785,31'756820.17357820841-7158520.78 !

and ensure the process would start up quickly and shut down cleanly. This greatly improved the speed and handling of supplier API calls, leading to efficiency improvements and a better customer experience.

in the supply chain from distributor to end

a large engineering company in South

user, creating much better experience for the

Yorkshire. The company had specific ideas

partner and the buyer alike. This in turn

about how it wanted the portal to function

creates trust, loyalty and the likelihood of

which fell outside the remit of any standard

repeat purchase and recommendation.

document sharing and management application. Systems Assurance undertook the project to develop and customise the

Recent Projects

companyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Microsoft SharePoint application and later further developed the bespoke

Microsoft SharePoint Development

SharePoint platform to deliver a global digital

One of our client solution projects was to

signage solution in multiple languages to its

deliver an Intranet Communications Portal for

25 offices across the world.

Certified Silver Microsoft partner (567*58 55)130.7825838.7162+27-8 2/%71 2.1454+68'316071!8 58$7//83584++7120&86,7 70621785)26784+8 2.1454+68'14-).65 20./)-20&8 ++2.78 8*2&1362405 86,7 .4*'30(83/548-7%7/4'58#75'4 7 54/)62405830-8)0-7163 758.4*'/7 '14 7.658+4186,21-8'3162758$,717846,71 '14%2-71583178)03#/78648.1736786,7 3''14'12367854/)624058648*36.,86,721 ./27065 8#)5207558077-5!

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i

http://www.cbi.org.uk/news/digital-divide-among-uk-business-is-holding-back-the-economy/

ii

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/uk-economic-growth-2017-q4-final-quarter-ons-officenational-statistics-a8178991.html

iii

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/pa/article-5135991/Manufacturing-activity-four-year-high-drivendomestic-demand-exports.html

www.logisticsit.com sttic

IT

MANUFACTURING

March 2018

&LOGISTICS

19

\\\ Manufacturing \\\

Insight

7.)126(830-8125 8*303&7*7068/73-715 need to take a balanced approach to tackling a new class of vulnerabilities Security and risk management leaders must take a pragmatic and risk-based approach to the ongoing threats posed by an entirely new class of vulnerabilities, according to Gartner.

‘Spectre’ and ‘Meltdown’ are the code names given to different strains of a new class of attacks that target an underlying exploitable design implementation inside the majority of computer chips manufactured over the past 20 years.

Security researchers revealed three major variants of attacks in January 2018. The first two are referred to as Spectre, the third as Meltdown, and all three variants involve speculative execution of code to read what should have been protected memory and the use of subsequent side-channel-based attacks to infer the memory contents.

“Not all processors and software are vulnerable to the three variants in the same way, and the risk will vary based on the system's exposure to running unknown and untrusted code,” said Neil MacDonald, vice president, distinguished analyst and Gartner fellow emeritus. “The risk is real, but with a

731/(87%71(8*4-7108 85(567*8$2//8#783++7.67-864854*787 6706!8 468520.78 8,3583 %)/0713#2/26(83++7.67-8548*30(85(567*58 8-75 64'5"8*4#2/78-7%2.75"8571%715"8%216)3/ *3.,2075"8076$41 830-856413&783''/230.75"84'7136240867.,04/4&(830-86,78 067107684+ ,20&58-7%2.758 17 )217-838-7/2#71367"8',357-8'/3084+83.62408+41817*7-23624087++4165!

clear and pragmatic risk-based remediation 2. Nearly every modern IT system will be

plan, security and risk management leaders

memory can only be read, but not altered.

can provide business leaders with confidence

Exploitation of the flaw requires untrusted

affected to some extent. Not since Y2K

that the marginal risk to the enterprise is

code to be introduced and executed on

has a vulnerability affected so many

manageable and is being addressed.”

the target system, which should be

systems – desktops, mobile devices,

extremely difficult on a well-managed

servers, virtual machines, network and

Gartner has identified seven steps security

server or appliance such as a network or

storage appliances, operation technology

leaders can take to mitigate risk:

storage appliance. There is also an

and the Internet of Things devices –

advantage in not rushing to “panic patch.”

required a deliberate, phased plan of

1. Modern operating systems (OSs) and

Early patches created conflicts with some

action for remediation efforts. The starting

hypervisors depend on structured,

antivirus offerings and locked up Windows

point for security leaders must be an

layered permission models to deliver

desktops. Some conflicted with the use of

inventory of affected systems. In some

security isolation and separation. Because

AMD microprocessors, so that the

cases, the risk-appropriate decision will

this exploitable design implementation is

systems would not boot. Other early

be not to patch. However, in all cases, the

in hardware – below the OS and the

patches had performance impacts that

roadmap for security leaders will be the

hypervisor – all software layers above are

have been improved by subsequent

inventory. For each system, a detailed

affected and vulnerable. However,

patches.

database or spreadsheet is needed to

20

IT

MANUFACTURING

&LOGISTICS

March 2018

www.logisticsit.com sttic

Insight

\\\ Manufacturing \\\

track the device or workload, the version

the impact on performance is not offset by

network-based intrusion prevention

of its microprocessor, firmware version

the reduction in risk, so patches will not

systems also mitigate the risk.

and OS.

be applied. Even for some well-managed servers, the decision may be made to

7. Spectre and Meltdown represent an

forgo patches to protect performance until

entirely new class of vulnerabilities, and

remotely exploitable. A successful attack

future patches have demonstrably

this is just the beginning. The underlying

requires the attacker to execute code on

acceptable impacts. However, for server

exploitable implementation will remain for

the system. As such, application control

workloads, when the performance

years to come.

3. The vulnerabilities are not directly

and whitelisting on all systems greatly reduce the risk of unknown code execution. However, shared infrastructure as a service (IaaS) infrastructure is particularly vulnerable until the cloud providers update their underlying firmware and hypervisor layer (which the leading providers have done). Strong separation of duties (SOD) and privileged

“

Ultimately, the complete elimination of the exploitable implementation will require new hardware not yet available and not expected for 12 to 24 months.

This is why the inventory of systems will serve as a critical roadmap for future mitigation efforts.”

– Neil MacDonald, vice president, distinguished analyst and Gartner fellow emeritus.

account management (PAM) reduce the risk of the introduction of untrusted code.

4. When devising a remediation strategy,

characteristics allow, Gartner

“Ultimately, the complete elimination of the

recommends patching and firmware

exploitable implementation will require new

upgrades.

hardware not yet available and not expected for 12 to 24 months. This is why

Gartner recommends breaking the strategy into prioritized phases, because

6. For systems that are not patched or only

the inventory of systems will serve as a

the risk, performance implications and

partially patched, multiple mitigating

critical roadmap for future mitigation

potential hardware upgrades required will

controls can reduce risk. The single

efforts,” said MacDonald. “To lessen the

vary greatly among use cases. Start with

most important issue to address is

risk of future attacks against vulnerabilities

systems that represent the most risk —

restricting the ability to place unknown

of all types, we have long advocated the

desktops, virtual desktop infrastructure

or untrusted code onto the device. By

use of application control and whitelisting

(VDI), smartphones and externally facing

reducing this, risks are significantly

on servers. If you haven't done so already,

servers.

lowered, because attacks require local

now is the time to apply a default deny

code execution. For all systems, this

mindset to server workload protection –

means taking a “default deny” approach,

whether those workloads are physical,

prepared for scenarios in which the

and application control and whitelisting

virtual, public cloud or container-based.

appropriate decision is not to patch. In

greatly reduce the risk. To the extent that

This should become a standard practice

some cases, this will be due to lack of

public attacks become known, traditional

and a priority for all security and risk

patches on older systems. In other cases,

endpoint protection platforms and

management leaders in 2018.”

5. Information security leaders need to be

www.logisticsit.com sttic

IT

MANUFACTURING

March 2018

&LOGISTICS

21

Supply Chain

Success story

Labeyrie Fine Foods improves forecast accuracy and optimises its supply chain with DynaSys

L

abeyrie already dates back half a century. The company was founded in 1946 in the Halles de Bordeaux food market in France, trading in foie gras, Adour River salmon and game. From the outset, the company has underscored its position as a leader in fine food, whether by organic growth or acquisition.

Each of the Business Units has its own range and its own identity, encouraging both entrepreneurship and innovation. Synergies are created across the group using cuttingedge technologies to support this unique structure. A typical instance is the DynaSys Demand and Supply Chain Planning (DSCP) solution that was first implemented at Labeyrie over 10 years ago.

In 2017, the Labeyrie Fine Foods Groups, encompassing Blini, Labeyrie, Delpierre and l’Atelier Blini (among others) generated €988 million in turnover with a workforce of more than 5390 people, operating out of 17 sites across Europe.

The challenge: Maintain service levels, improve forecast accuracy and optimise planning

The group is organised into Business Units and the brand names are all independent.

The Labeyrie Business Unit turns over €250.5 million per year and offers a wide selection of gourmet food to meet all customer tastes.

From cocktails to dessert, including starters,

main dishes and sauces as well as the hallmarks of the brand, foie gras and smoked salmon. This enormous range of more than 600 products sometimes makes it difficult to forecast the sales, procurement, inventory and production planning. “Ten years ago, we selected the DynaSys Demand Planning and Production Planning solution,” explained Magali Fidan, IT project manager at Labeyrie.

“Our target was a service level of above 98.5%, maintaining that moving forward, and providing the most reliable forecasts possible to planning, to keep ahead of our production requirements.”

Stéphanie Irigoin, Labeyrie’s customer supply chain manager, added: “The implementation of the solution was particularly instrumental in centralising forecasts and bringing them to the core of our process. Everybody gets what they wanted, thanks to the various reports they requested, whether that is operations, sales management, management control or general management.”

To understand Labeyrie’s business, let us take a close look at exactly how its Supply Chain works. The key characteristics are: variable product shelf life ranging from 16 days to 4 years; a highly varied range covering 3 of the group’s 4 business areas; high-quality raw materials used in ‘festive’ and fresh products; seasonal ranges where 52% of the brand’s turnover is generated in 2 months; raw materials procurement requirements; short product life cycles; the impact of promotions on sales; customers and large scale retailers operating on a just-in-time basis and rapidly changing export requirements.

“The forecasters update Demand Planning twice every day, depending on our order backlog,” Irigoin pointed out. “It gives them time to make reliable statistical calculations and forecast the right shipping date, within a minimum and maximum date bracket.”

Once all the data has been entered into

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Success story

products and its aging, the quality of finished products, and just in time production. Other constraints are also easily controlled.”

•

•

The benefits: Concrete results It is evident that increased agility, reliability, anticipation and data centralization are the primary gains that Labeyrie has achieved with DynaSys Demand Planning and Production Planning.

DynaSys Demand Planning, a production cycle is set up using the finite capacity planning solution: DynaSys Production Planning.

Irigoin continued: “The six users of the DynaSys planning solution then take over and generate a realistic Master Production Schedule (MPS). Follow-up is daily, with a fiveweek horizon and an 18-month vision. It enables us to manage our inventories for the best, while optimising our working capital and cash flow.”

The solution: Robust, integrated, flexible and customisable Here’s how the Labeyrie team see the benefits of the DSCP solution: •

•

•

Having all the indicators and parameters in the same tool and on the same screen is essential for efficient and rapid decision-making (a major advantage in food & beverage business for short and seasonal expiration date products).

Having a flexible tool, making it possible to set up customised views and tailored warnings so that users can quickly diagnose issues and take appropriate action.

Having frequent collaboration (several times per day) between forecasting and planning, generating a high level of responsiveness in an increasingly complex and unpredictable environment.

“Today, we still face the same challenges,” said Irigoin. “There are also the financial challenges linked with the proper management of inventory for the perishable

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Fidan commented: “Their robustness, flexibility and broad functional spectrum have all enabled us to model our business processes so that our Supply Chain fits our needs, and not the other way around. Getting to grips with the DynaSys tool was a simple and rapid process, thanks to the ergonomics, and the integration into our existing IT solutions, especially JD Edwards, our ERP, was particularly easy.

“The Production Planning solution was more recently implemented in 2013 and has already

•

Supply Chain

Better control of working capital resulting in a 50% drop in the inventory level at year end and reduction of stock waste by 62%.

Provided a decision support tool for management to help define the budget, growth strategy and investments.

Enabled an S&OP approach thanks to the end-to-end planning structure offered by the DynaSys solution.

The future: Support the group growth Within the group, the right solutions lead the way with Blini and Delpierre having also opted for DynaSys. Charles-Hervé Faulque, supply chain manager at Blini, commented: “Having an expert and integrated solution for our entire Supply Chain considerably cuts down on manual actions and the risks of making mistakes. The overriding change is in the awareness of our management staff about how important high-quality forecasts are in establishing accurate budgets. It means that our strategic decisions can be based on a

“

One of the major advantages is that we are able to see further ahead within our S&OP approach, thanks to the close link between generating accurate forecasts and using reliable production plans, as well as having a view of overall activity management.”

– Magali Fidan, IT project manager, Labeyrie.

optimised our production flows and improved our productivity. Irregularities or inventory shortages are a thing of the past. Together, these advantages have enabled us to achieve a 99% customer service level, and to maintain this best in class performance. Our management has an overall vision of our activity because the information feeds our ERP, allowing collaborative work between departments.”

Other confirmed benefits are: • •

•

•

Improvement of customer service level by 2.2 points.

Constant achievement of 85% sales forecast accuracy despite the constraints in terms of promotions and seasonality.

Optimisation and enhanced reliability of the medium and long-term production plans, preventing irregularities and shortages.

Productivity gain delivered by improvement in production processes.

long-term vision and real time data, whether it concerns actions to be conducted, investments or resources to be planned.” The goal is that all the companies within the group will build their Supply Chain based on these solutions.

Fidan said of the DynaSys support team: “They are always available, responsive and professional, ready to address all our questions and queries quickly. It’s a considerable advantage to us.”

DynaSys’s partnership is part of the committed approach of the group and its brand names, accompanying it in its goal of worldwide growth. Faulque concluded: “One of the major advantages is that we are able to see further ahead within our S&OP approach, thanks to the close link between generating accurate forecasts and using reliable production plans, as well as having a view of overall activity management.”

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Insight

Frost & Sullivan recognises Telit as a Customer Value Leader for its broad portfolio of IIoT-driven offerings

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ased on its recent analysis of Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) platforms for discrete applications market, Frost & Sullivan has recognised Telit with the 2017 European Customer Value Leadership Award for its broad portfolio of IIoT-driven offerings, such as modules, connectivity solutions, industrial & IoT platforms and general expertise in the field. Specifically, Telit’s deviceWISE IoT platform helps customers solve interoperability issues across the manufacturing enterprise, improving productivity and accelerating their time to value.

The IIoT requires linking assets to each other throughout the manufacturing value chain to extract valuable, real-time intelligence from the huge datasets they constantly generate. Both developers and manufacturers are exploring new tools and techniques to improve the bottom line.

Different types of equipment from multiple vendors follow different protocols and standards, making it difficult to connect them to enterprise IT systems. Many companies still use legacy systems that require specialised skill sets to make them IoT-ready, which compounds integration challenges and delays time to value.

For instance, a German automotive company adopted Telit’s platform to connect its assembly line, including robots, PLCs and even DC tools to the factory back office maintenance system to allow automatic scheduling of maintenance.

Telit’s platform enabled smooth asset integration, making the manufacturing IIoT environment ready in only one day for what typically takes months.

Fast and seamless integration Sharmila Annaswamy, senior analyst at Frost & Sullivan, commented: “As machines become connected to enterprise systems, maintaining 24

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data integrity by ensuring secure data flow across the connected network becomes imperative. As such, customers need an advanced IoT platform that can facilitate the fast and seamless integration of industrial assets into a connected ecosystem, generate real-time actionable intelligence to boost performance, and significantly enhance performance quality and efficiency.”

customers to create both simple and complex applications using a fourth-generation programing language interface. This capability greatly improves the connection of any industrial machine to any IT system. For full commercial installation of the Telit deviceWISE platform, Telit offers customers pay-as-you-go pricing in a subscription or perpetual model, meaning customers only pay for the services they use.”

Telit’s deviceWISE industrial grade IoT platform, comes with pre-programmed connectivity and integration capabilities that can solve interoperability issues between different machines, protocols and systems. Telit deviceWISE automatically links all factory and business system applications to each other, allowing customers to enjoy the value of an IIoTenabled manufacturing platform faster than is possible with competing solutions. Telit’s innovative platform lets customers connect new and legacy systems. Even old legacy machines can be integrated to modern enterprise systems, applications, and even cloud-enabled databases.

Telit’s solution allows customers to gain end-toend visibility into the manufacturing value chain, enabling operational and IT teams to collect industrial data, control manufacturing quality, perform OEE calculations, create preventive and predictive controls, create charts and HMIs, and much more. For its clear customer value proposition and platform effectiveness, Telit has earned Frost & Sullivan’s 2017 Customer Value Leadership Award in the European IIoT platform for discrete applications market.

Vendor-independent deployment in the cloud, on-premise, or as a hybrid system speeds up the integration process. The platform’s compatibility with any operating system and system architecture eliminates the need for hardware-related investments to make manufacturing environments IIoT-ready. As the only industrial grade IoT platform that horizontally links and offers holistic operational visibility from shop floor to top floor and across the entire manufacturing value chain, Telit deviceWISE removes the need for separate interfaces to program assets, even in the future.

Annaswamy continued: “What differentiates Telit’s deviceWISE from other competing solutions is its strength in high speed data collection and processing. The platform has a powerful edge processing engine that allows

Each year, Frost & Sullivan presents this award to the company that has developed an innovative element in a product by leveraging leading-edge technologies. The award recognises the value-added features/benefits of the product and the increased return on investment it gives customers, which, in turn, raises customer acquisition and overall market penetration potential.

Frost & Sullivan Best Practices awards recognise companies in a variety of regional and global markets for demonstrating outstanding achievement and superior performance in areas such as leadership, technological innovation, customer service, and strategic product development. Industry analysts compare market participants and measure performance through in-depth interviews, analysis, and extensive secondary research to identify best practices in the industry.

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Industry News

Supply Chain

Supply chain professionals recognised with a work-based degree solution Supply chain leaders and aspiring leaders of all ages are now able to gain a work-based supply chain leadership degree apprenticeship, which can be funded from employers' apprenticeship levy pots.

U

niserve Group has confirmed that the Supply Chain Leadership Degree Apprenticeship standard has been approved by the Institute for Apprenticeships. It will be deliverable by the middle of this year.

Uniserve, supported by the Supply Chain Academy and Leeds Trinity University, has been chairing the employer's group that has driven and created the standard for this qualification. The trailblazer group has included some of the UK's biggest supply chain leaders; including Sainsbury's, Nestle, Royal Mail, United Biscuits and Siemens, as well as many SMEs, universities, colleges and supply chain professional bodies.

Official confirmation of the Supply Chain Leadership Professional Integrated Level 6 Degree Apprenticeship approval was recently delivered to Uniserve HR director Paul Stone, who chaired the trailblazer group. This is good news for the group and its members and should be a major boost for supply chain professionals across multiple industries.

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Suitable for all ages The work-based supply chain degree is suitable for all ages and requires only 20 days per year off-site learning, completion of which – usually over a four-year period – results in a full Bachelor's degree. Stone commented: "We are absolutely delighted with this news and looking forward to seeing relevant business-led qualifications and standards

recognised in our profession. Our group is also communicating with Government to map career paths from entry level up to the degree level, but more on that later. The degree can largely be funded through the apprenticeship levy, meaning companies can benefit from minimal investment while developing their most prized assets - their people.”

He continued: "We are finding that lots of companies are still not making proper use of the funds that are generated from the apprenticeship levy, which can now be invested in creating fully functional and efficient supply chains. I would like to thank all of the members of the group who gave up their own time to support this so admirably. Uniserve may have led this, but it was a real collaborative effort and congratulations should go out to all.”

The degree apprenticeship approval followed the news that Uniserve Group company – CP Training Services – had been successful in its application to be an apprenticeship training provider, which means CP can deliver the apprenticeships and provide the required 20 days learning at the Supply Chain Academy.

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TimoCom interview

Women in logistics -

a success story

Marita Saares-Lakso is CEO and dispatcher of Ibertrans in Finland. The company has received the accolade of ‘The Strongest in Finland’ and is conquering the Iberian Peninsula. The following TimoCom interview looks at why it would appear neither the South nor the North can do without her company.

Mrs. Saares-Lakso, what does your company represent?

“In 1992 we began transporting fruit from Spain, and now we take care of the import and export of other foods, refrigerated and heated transport and goods from the pharmaceutical industry; that is, delicate products. We are experts for transport on the Iberian Peninsula and for freight to Finland. Together with my colleague, Marjatta Oinonen, we cover a large area for this specialised industry. Without Ibertrans there would definitely be something missing in the North and the South.”

How did you end up working in freight transport?

“It is simple: I trained as a freight forwarder. I worked enthusiastically for a large transport company for years. Now, here I am with my own company. I have found a niche that allows me to make full use of my logistics knowledge. The demand for fruit, vegetables and pharmaceutical products has risen continuously since I started the company. I am incredibly proud that we are already celebrating our 25th anniversary this year, and that we have loyal customers that really value the work we do.”

What are the challenges of the transport industry?

“Finding reliable partners. Only a good network can ensure that you can find customers, and keep them, at all. You have to develop a feeling for offering the right price, and also deliver the goods on time, no matter what the conditions on the road are, or what the traffic is like.”

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Marita Saares-Lakso: “A woman in a management position in a company is definitely a benefit.”

What is ‘The Strongest in Finland’?

“Today, seals and certificates are decisive when it comes to having a good company image. “The Strongest in Finland” is one of these awards, and Ibertrans received it this year. It is visible proof that a company is credit worthy, as well as a testament to their reliability and solvency. Only 12% of all Finnish companies are awarded this special certificate. We also reached the highest credit level last year. It is very rare for a company to be awarded the honour twice in a row.”

Do we need more women in management positions in the logistics industry?

“I think that women are particularly sensitive, and that is their strength. They are much better equipped to respond to customer requests. Women are able to really listen to the clients, not just hearing them and this way

can find better solutions for all parties. A woman in a management position in a company is definitely a benefit. We have a long way to go before we achieve true equality. But I think we have made great strides. Finland is celebrating 100 years of independence this year. It is easy to relate the celebrations to the advancements in women’s independence.”

Where do you see Ibertrans in the future?

“The digital transformation has already taken us a long way. We can use electronic methods to send contracts, invoices and other information. Mobile phones make day to day life easier. Mobile data even allows us to view delivery status, which means that the process is becoming easier all the time. What has not changed is the need for transport. It is the best foundation to ensure that Ibertrans will be around for another 25 years.”

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Event news

TRANSPORTATION MANAGEMENT

Assigning digital orders

is easy

IT service provider, TimoCom, will be on-hand to help manufacturing companies with agility at the Multimodal 2018 in May.

3

D printing, machine-to-machine communication, the Internet Of Things and Big Data influence connections to customers and suppliers – and thus the individual supply chain. Even transport acquisition as part of this chain is changing significantly. Europe’s largest transport platform will use this year’s Multimodal event in Birmingham to demonstrate how manufacturing and trade customers can react agilely to their customer’s needs.

From 1 to 3 of May 2018, at stand 4025, hall 4, Maria Toft Madsen, country manager; Mikael Andersson, account manager; and, new this year, Camelia Petrowski, sales manager – all from TimoCom’s Northern Europe team – will be on location at the Multimodal in Birmingham. These friendly ‘Northern Lights’ will be on-hand to show both existing and new customers how to assign transport orders digitally.

“We want people to really experience how simple, efficient and secure it is these days to request, assign and even manage transport orders digitally,” said Toft Madsen. TimoCom’s new TC Transport Order function helps companies from the manufacturing and trade industries to find a suitable transport provider at any time, in particular during market fluctuations, so they can continue to make their move. Even without any prior experience, manufacturing companies can direct transport requests simply, securely and simultaneously to several verified transport service providers.

The interface is particularly user friendly, plus all processes can be viewed at any time.

Toft Madsen continued: “Our world has become volatile. We can no longer prevent digitalisation. In the past, long-term planning and framework contracts were enough, but these days we need flexibility to retain customers and remain in the market.”

From left to right: Mikael Andersson, account manager; Maria Toft Madsen, country manager; and Camelia Petrowski, sales manager – all from TimoCom’s Northern Europe team – look forward to showing both existing and new customers how to assign transport orders digitally at Multimodal 2018 in May.

The team looks forward to answering questions and listening to suggestions about the transport platform, and to share knowledge with event visitors.

Your digital transport orders in good hands!

With TC Transport Order®, you can handle your transport orders directly within the TimoCom transport platform.

Optimise your business processes with TC Transport Order®

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www.timocom.co.uk/Quote-requests

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Opinion

4 key factors to

optimise your logistics operations realising savings of up to 20%

By Michael Beck, product evangelist, inet-logistics.

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ne of the key challenges for manufacturers and suppliers alike is to fight high global logistics operation costs. In a world full of pressuring competitors, ever-more complex supply chains and a volatile market due to dynamic customer demands, an increasing number of companies share a common set of goals: significantly reducing transportation costs, minimising transportation routes, increasing the utilisation of capacity, more efficiently shaping administrative processes, and gaining transparency of transportation orders, delivery statuses and freight costs. This can only be achieved with the help of a webbased transportation management system (TMS).

Accompanying you through transportation management transformation

sharing. Finally yet importantly are multitenant capabilities, scalability and end to end visibility.

transportation costs can be reduced by 8 to 14% due to integrated and sustainable transportation management. But there are 4 key factors to watch when implementing a comprehensive transportation management.

#02 Organisation and Responsibility #01 The centerpiece: Transportation management system A Cloud-based TMS is an absolute must-have for optimising global logistics operations because it ensures consistency in terms of organisation, process and communication.

Optimising transportation planning is not the only advantage of the system: the TMS adds value with process standardisation in conjunction with the ability to network with various players – from the supplier to the planner, freight forwarder, and freight carrier all the way to the customer on a platform that ensures real-time communication and data

With the help of a TMS you can establish a central organisation unit that serves as an information hub – a central location that can guarantee a comprehensive overview of the supply chain at the location, division, and internationally. A decision on outsourcing depends on whether it is feasible to internally construct and further develop the necessary knowledge of planning, operations and systems technology. In doing so, it is entirely conceivable to outsource just some areas. For the final decision, a concrete business case should be created, in which necessary investments are compared with the direct and indirect costs.

At inet-logistics we have travelled this road with more than 150 companies for almost 20 years and our solutions have evolved with the top trends keeping always our high standard services. inet’s integrated TMS can provide our customers with capabilities from longhorizon planning to near-term transportation execution; from monitoring and event management, tracking and tracing, billing and invoicing through to transportation analytics and performance management.

Our position as a leading Cloud TMS provider as well as our logistics background gives us the competence to understand global supply chain networks. Based on our customers’ experiences and success stories, we estimate that a sustainable annual savings of 6 to 8% can be achieved based on continuous optimisation efforts. Furthermore, annual

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With the help of a TMS you can establish a central organisation unit that serves as an information hub – a central location that can guarantee a comprehensive overview of the supply chain at the location, division, and internationally.

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Opinion

TRANSPORTATION MANAGEMENT

uniform and integrated processes. The better the processes are coordinated and the clearer the interfaces and responsibilities, the easier it can be ensured that processes are faster and thus effort and costs decrease. In particular, similar and identical business processes that are currently carried out at various locations or by various internal and external instances need to be aligned.

Standardised, effective, and efficient processes in turn guarantee consistent and transparent data. Data quality on the other hand is a decisive success factor for efficient planning.

Michael Beck: “inet’s integrated TMS can provide our customers with capabilities from long-horizon planning to near-term transportation execution; from monitoring and event management, tracking and tracing, billing and invoicing through to transportation analytics and performance management.”

#03 Important enablers: standardised processes For central transportation management to work most efficiently, it is necessary to create

#04 Keep change management in mind A successful implementation project needs time and sufficient resources because strategic innovations – like the centralisation of transportation management with the accompanying changes in responsibilities and the introduction of new processes – often cause resistance within the organisation. For a successfully designed and coordinated change, there needs to be a well-thought out

framework concept as well as active, preliminary and accompanying measures, so that the teams involved in the transformation accept and support the transformation.

Collaborative future with inet Connecting all supply chain partners on a cloud-based platform is a very important step in optimising supply chain networks, which some enterprises still have to take. The next evolution of that would be connecting enterprises that for example have similar transportation routes or an overlapping supplier base. This enables higher asset utilisation leading to cost reductions and less CO2 emissions. A collaboration platform like inet TMS, that is multi-tenant capable, Cloudbased, and neutral already provides the best conditions to fulfil these demands and, at the same time, supports newly created organisational models. Let’s create a collaborative world together.

We are creating a collaborative world.

Get connected to thousands of supply chain partners on a webbased, multi-tenant platform and communicate in real-time.

Our heart beats for logistics.

Since 1999, we optimize complex, multimode, multlileg, international and domestic transportation networks.

The future is digital - so are you?

We are looking for experts in: Software Engineering | Product Management Consulting | Quality Assurance | IT Operations

www.inet-logistics.com

TRANSPORTATION MANAGEMENT

Product analysis

Fast and accurate

proof

of delivery Philip Jarrett, director of sales & marketing, BEC (Systems Integration) Ltd., discusses BEC’s new eSmart Proof of Delivery (ePoD) system and the wide range of benefits it offers to distributors.

F

or any company operating partly or wholly within the distribution sector, cost-effective, accurate and timely delivery of goods has to be a nonnegotiable. You not only need to ensure the right goods are delivered in the right quantity to the right customer within the right timeframe; you also need full tracking and traceability of the whole transaction process. With this in mind, BEC now offers a new ePoD software application that is more than fit for the task. The eSmart Proof of Delivery (ePoD) application is the ideal solution whether you are delivering your own products or someone else’s items to the customer.

Key benefits The overriding benefits of ePoD are: • Reliable and accurate proof of delivery and collection in real time, enabling you to bill customers quickly and with confidence.

• Human error is minimised and the reports enable you to resolve invoice disputes.

• Easy integration with your existing systems, with the use of web services or file import/export.

Customisable Available as an off-the-shelf solution, ePoD software can also be customised to suit the precise needs of your business due to its modular format. Modules include: Warehousing: When a delivery vehicle arrives, ePoD enables you to book goods into a predetermined location in the warehouse.

Once ready for delivery, operatives use a

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handheld device to pick items and load them onto a van. This process applies to individual items and batches, with the application showing expected vs. actual quantities on the vehicle.

Vehicle Inspections: ePoD leads the operator through checks to ensure that the vehicle is fit for use. Reports are then made available on the dashboard and handheld device. This helps drivers to produce evidence that they have complied with regulations.

Task Management: Enabling the configuration of routes, drivers and vehicles, the ePoD application uses GPS for location and route planning. You can schedule tasks for a particular driver and update the system with new jobs throughout the day via the dashboard or file import.

Designed to be device and operating systemagnostic, the ePoD application is installed on each handheld terminal. The devices use Wi-Fi and/or 4G LTE to communicate directly with the hosted server rather than your systems.

Whilst some operations may take place in a 'store-and-forward' mode to offset connectivity issues, ePoD provides near-real-time updates to the server and dashboard when the devices have a signal.

Integration

Deliveries: Providing reliable and accurate proof of delivery and collection, ePoD enables the customer’s signature to be captured via a handheld terminal. The device can be used to take a photo of the goods to show lack of damage. This photographic evidence is watermarked with the time, date and GPS location so you can resolve customer delivery / invoice questions quickly. Drivers can also record the delivery status (Deliver, Fail or Card Left), issue automated triggers to send to customers, and enter their own reasons for delivery failure.

Return to Depot: When items are returned to the depot, they are booked off the vehicle via the ePoD application.

Customer Surveys: The ePoD application can also be used to obtain feedback from customers.

Implementation

BEC offers two methods of integration between the host system and ePoD, using developer APIs or web services. Because the ePoD application is modular, we can develop integration modules for most third-party systems, depending on customer needs. We have successfully integrated with systems such as Microsoft Dynamics AX and NAV, Agresso, InspHire, Oracle DB tables, MS SQL DB Tables, Ortec, and numerous other systems via CSV, FTP and web services.

Storage BEC will store, archive and configure your data on secure servers for retrieval as and when required. For customers with a large volume of photo data and needing cost-effective storage, our system will offload photos from the database to cloud-hosted bulk storage.

Other features Additional key features within ePoD include:

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Product analysis

TRANSPORTATION MANAGEMENT

Reporting: Any details of the status of the delivery can be confirmed in real time on the system’s dashboard and appropriate reports compiled. ePoD can produce graphs, tables and printed PDFs as well as customised reports.

Support Hosting: ePoD is hosted in an off-premise third-party UK data centre, using Windows Server stack.

Dashboard: The web dashboard is served by IIS and the back-end database is MS SQL Server. The dashboard can be used to manage users, tasks and locations, and to send messages to the driver.

Branding: The dashboard and application can be customised with your company’s brand, logo and colours.

Printing: You can print from your handheld device straight to a mobile printer (including barcode labels).

Full support packages are also available, complete with managed helpdesk. Tailored options allow you to have an out of-the-box or bespoke service offering that will meet the needs of your business: EMM Priority: For Enterprise Mobility Management software only, we offer SOTI MobiControl (www.soti.com). We can install, configure and even host the software package for you – and our first-class support for the product comes as standard.

device for repair. Once your warranty is due for renewal, we’ll give you a courtesy call to explain the options.

Gold: This is a fully managed service that enables you to report any issues with your devices to us. We then either resolve the issue remotely or log the fault with the manufacturer and provide you with a completed RMA form to ship the device. We will then reconfigure the device when it has returned from the manufacturer and will ship it back to you – tested, fully charged and ready to deploy.

Platinum: As for Gold, plus enhanced services such as buffer stock management, ‘pack and collect’ or out-of-hours support.

So, for reliable and accurate proof of delivery and collection in real time, the eSmart ePoD system from BEC has to be worth further investigation.

Hardware Priority: For hardware sales only, you can log a faulty device. We work directly with the manufacturers on your behalf to complete the RMA for you to ship with the

BEC eSmart® Proof of Delivery Streamline Your Delivery Process Device and operating system-agnostic, the eSmart® Proof of Delivery app improves the reliability, accuracy & speed of the delivery process.

App modules include: 9 Warehousing - booking in items & picking for delivery 9 Vehicle inspections WR HQVXUH YHKLFOHV DUH ¿ W IRU XVH 9 Task management LQFOXGLQJ *36 IRU URXWH FRQ¿ JXUDWLRQ VFKHGXOLQJ 9 Deliveries - incorporates signature & image capture 9 Return to depot - for booking in items that are returned 9 Customer surveys - for obtaining feedback

Call BEC today and speak to the experts: +44 (0)1254 688 088 or visit www.becsi.co.uk

PROOF OF DELIVERY

TRANSPORTATION MANAGEMENT

Opinion

TMS and visibility:

giving

customers the insight they want

By Mohit Paul, SVP EMEA, BluJay Solutions.

Mohit Paul: “For a long time, powerful supply chain solutions were pricey and only available to the largest enterprises. But Cloud computing has changed that, eliminating the high upfront costs that used to come with on-premise logistics solutions.”

I

n the post-Amazon era of logistics, information is everything. Customers expect extremely deep insight into the location, ETA and status of their deliveries, across both the consumer and B2B sectors. Retailers need pinpoint accuracy in their delivery schedule, and major commercial logistics operators, who have long worked with pen, paper and fax, are being forced to catch up. General perceptions of the supply chain have changed: no longer an unknowable closed shop, openness is now a primary differentiator.

In that context, visibility into supply chain processes is essential for logistics providers looking to retain and grow their market share.

Companies need to make sure they have automated, Cloud-based TMS systems in place to manage the information flow from the whole supply chain and make updates on individual packages available on demand.

supply chains, with many organisations relying on a growing number of key suppliers.

Disruptions continue to occur at lower levels, which may induce severe knock-on effects to organisations at the end of the supply chains.

It is therefore important for organisations to focus on reporting disruption firm-wide and increase supplier visibility.”

Put simply, relying on manual processes in your supply chain – spreadsheets, telephones, calculators, fax machines – just doesn’t cut it anymore. Not only are they time-consuming and inefficient, these methods bring with them a much higher chance of communication breakdown – lost letters, missed calls and poor filing can all lead to a costly loss of productivity.

In 2016, the Business Continuity Institute’s annual Supply Chain Resilience Report found that 72% do not have full visibility of their supply chain. Covering businesses in 14 industries across 67 countries, it also found that 74% experienced at least one supply chain disruption over the previous 12 months – and that 24% of respondents estimated that disruptions cost their business €250,000 or more. Strangely, 35% of those surveyed said they don’t even bother to report disruptions or other incidents affecting their supply chains.

The findings were surprising then, and it’s still a major concern for many operators. People involved in supply chain planning and execution have long recognised the many benefits of visibility: better insight into how your supply chain is performing from end to end, the vision needed to anticipate and prevent problems, and the ability to quickly respond to any issues that do arise.

Nevertheless, there’s still a long way to go.

Technology brings not only efficiency and the ability to capture, report and act on important benchmarking data, but also connectivity. With automated Cloud-based solutions, businesses have real-time access to information throughout the logistics ecosystem – which they can also share across the organisation, with outside partners or even with customers.

“Supply chain visibility remains one of the biggest challenges to resilience,” the report states. “The data shows the complex nature of

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Current challenges Deep insight with cloudbased TMS The key to realising those benefits is technology.

Despite all this, we’re not seeing as widespread a take-up as the benefits might suggest. One possible reason for this is cost – or at least the perception of cost. For a long

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TRANSPORTATION MANAGEMENT

Cutting-edge logistics While visibility brings a number of benefits on its own, it can also serve as the catalyst for supply chain execution convergence. Supply chain execution convergence is a two-stage process in which a business eliminates that ‘silo thinking’ to get its various supply chain operations – procurement, shipping, warehousing, transportation – fully synchronised and in tune with one another. Once that’s achieved, the business then extends that deep interconnectedness even further to outside suppliers, vendors and other entities in the supply chain ecosystem.

General perceptions of the supply chain have changed: no longer an unknowable closed shop, openness is now a primary differentiator.

time, powerful supply chain solutions were pricey and only available to the largest enterprises. But Cloud computing has changed that, eliminating the high upfront costs that used to come with on-premise logistics solutions.

The Cloud delivers affordable, subscription-

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based solutions, plug-and-play deployment and a fast ROI – all while giving organisations anytime, anyplace, anywhere access to data. In short, the cloud has made it possible for business of all sizes to tap into technology that can streamline their supply chains and boost visibility.

As partner-to-partner sharing increases with the introduction of the ‘global trade network’ model and transparent processes ensuring that all parties have access to the information they need, businesses will be able to drive efficiency and results across the whole supply chain. Logistics providers must make the effort to automate their information processing and get deep, real-time insight into the supply chain – or risk losing out to competitors that get there first.

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TRANSPORTATION MANAGEMENT

Opinion

Stop losing customers

with

the help of transport management software

By Dave Renshaw, CEO, OBS Logistics.

W

hether your company is a 3PL or have an in-house logistics operation, all transport operations have a common set of pains when delivering the right product to the right place at the right time. OBS Logistics understands this and works to constantly create solutions to better provide companies with the capacity to operate efficient and accurate supply chain operations while helping to satisfy your customers.

problem of multiple outcomes diffusing any confusion and providing businesses with ‘a single version of the truth’.

Transport managers need to provide customers with a fast, accurate and convenient service. They also need to manage operational costs, protect against delivery failure and penalties, and in some cases take care of billing functions. With the right system, there is no longer a need for several different processes, eliminating the

Paper manifests, proof of delivery and other documents are printed, stored and managed at an expense of a customer’s time and resource. By using an electronic proof of delivery system, companies no longer need to deal with paper copies. This has environmental benefits, namely reducing paper consumption and waste, and cutting

OBS Logistics through software solutions provides ‘a single version of the truth’; ensuring businesses have full control of these aspects within their supply chain.

Accurate, paperless proof of delivery

unnecessary storage space. However, it brings much bigger practical benefits. Having electronic records can streamline multiple processes, including deliveries, invoicing, disputes and returns. With all information centrally available, delivery issues can be resolved faster and customers can be satisfied sooner. Distribution firms and 3PL companies can even use tariff and billing functions to charge for services carried out in a quick and accurate manner. In-built costing of vehicle operations within TMS also enables profitability analysis by customer, contract, vehicle and consignment.

Discussing the main benefits ePOD has provided for our customer Hewicks Haulage, the company’s training manager Trevor Buckle said: “It has cut down on the amount of order books we use, but the real benefits have been in the transport planning, the allocation of jobs and the reporting system has transformed the reports we send to customers, some daily others weekly. It has sped up the invoicing process also allowing us to e- invoice.”

Speedy service Customers expect fast and efficient deliveries; it is important businesses meet these expectations because customer loyalty leads to customer retention. Retention plays an important part in your company’s profit; therefore, it is important to meet delivery needs in order to satisfy and delight.

Transport managers often deal with various sources of information when managing deliveries, making it difficult to collate

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Opinion

conflicting data into an order. Many transport solutions deal with only one element of transport management, for instance, telematics systems track and monitor individual drivers and vehicles. However, they are unable to solve complex planning and execution challenges. The right system such as CALIDUS TMS creates truly unified operations by integrating with WMS and other systems, offering total visibility across the entire transport process.

Transparency over orders Transport managers need a TMS which can pull all the information from various locations and provide ‘a single version of the truth’ about orders and processes.

Whatever products you stock, it’s likely that much of your inventory was originally sourced from another country. As a result of this, many firms need to be able to work across depots, branches, own fleets and subcontractors.

International operations may need multi-

TRANSPORTATION MANAGEMENT

lingual and multi-currency support across multiple time zones. On top of this, 3PL organisations will need to manage multi-client contract operations.

Real time delivery updates Customers want to know the status of their order and when it will be delivered. Tracking functionality through features available with an effective and versatile transport management system enables your transport team to monitor the progress of orders, vehicles and individual deliveries with real-time status updates and live ETAs. Not only does this improve customer service, it also reduces the risk of penalties for late or early deliveries.

OBS Logistics offering

CALIDUS TMS supports the complete integration of supply chain activity, installed on premise or implemented as a managed service, with the ability to integrate with a range of WMS solutions and even existing TMS systems to help you track orders from start to finish. Implementing the correct TMS can guarantee that these factors discussed are appropriately achieved throughout your supply chain.

Rob McAdoo, managing director of Moran, commented: “In selecting an IT systems partner, we wanted a company we could work with who not only had the right products for our business but also understood the 3PL marketplace and the demands customer contracts place on us. We have established an excellent relationship with OBS Logistics at all levels and they are very responsive to our needs and very supportive in our initiatives to secure new customers.”

Through experience, we have found that businesses need a TMS that fits around their existing systems and can be implemented as part of an already functioning supply chain.

A member of the Sanderson Group of Companies

Supply Chain Tracking

• Optimise capacity

• Planning and execution

• Reduce pick errors

• Timed delivery management with ePOD

• Increase stock accuracy

• Integrated telematics

• Reduce pick times • Manage Railhead / Yard

• Complete visibility

obs-logistics.com

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TRANSPORTATION MANAGEMENT

Opinion

Modernising the future of

last-mile

delivery through smart tech

By Maarten Hemmes, founder & CEO, CarPal.

R

e-imaging delivery means creating a better framework for the way companies and operations managers work, and following the below pillars of on-demand delivery is paving the way to efficiency and growth.

•

• •

Digitalization: implementing digitalization for internal processes to achieve better operational workflows Automation: learning how to use tech platforms that automate operations Optimization: making use of crossfunctional features that boost performance

The present-day on-demand delivery landscape has changed considerably and continues to drive companies to work in a different way - to better cater to consumers and compete with bigger players that dominate the market so they can have a chance to stand out from competitors, become more efficient and, eventually, scale their business faster.

For some companies, this means implementing a system that helps them work with better processes to be more efficient, and for others, it means the simple idea of enabling their business to join the on-demand delivery landscape to compete with big players like Amazon or Alibaba.

When issues occur, companies can make use of the ‘control tower’ concept (live tracking and monitoring) to get live updates and alerts or retrieve the necessary information without depending on third parties.

managers can work seamlessly to match the orders to drivers thus minimizing the workload, automating processes, and ensuring resources (in-house drivers and contractors) are efficiently utilized even during busy periods - to ensure a maximum fulfilment rate.

To achieve this goal, there are smart platforms that put emphasis on sophisticated algorithms to empower companies to innovate, be more productive and efficient in the everyday tasks.

And there’s more, maximizing deliveries this way doesn’t always mean being more efficient for the day, but also thinking ahead, collecting data of deliveries and identifying the patterns that will help plan the next deliveries with accuracy, ensuring fulfilment and scalability for future deliveries.

Tech is at the centre-stage of delivery operations

Be at the helm of the “control tower”

Through technology that includes smart algorithms such as geofencing, AI and Machine Learning, and predictive analytics, companies can achieve this goal and will be able to automatically and accurately plan, manage and control their entire operations cycle.

With such a platform in place, operations

Today, technology remains at the center stage of last-mile delivery, reshaping it to become more agile, lean, and better able to meet changing customer expectations.

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For instance, the concept of the “control tower” in last-mile delivery stands for a hub for visibility,

decision-making, and action, based on real-time information.

When running a delivery operation, there are challenges that businesses need to overcome like lack of visibility, allocation of drivers and manual routing.

As a result, they will not only have to incorporate new tech, but also adopt new strategies so they don’t risk becoming irrelevant in this competitive market.

By creating this ecosystem that focuses on transparency, companies can have visibility into the order to reduce the risk of potential issues as well as gain data on how to better manage orders.

A delivery management software features an intuitive UX friendly dashboard which typically doubles as a “control tower” and can easily organize all your deliveries in one place so you can have full overview of the operations flow.

This way, companies can start by planning, creating, managing and modifying deliveries on-

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Opinion

TRANSPORTATION MANAGEMENT

the-go to gain full visibility of the entire process.

The road to digitalisation In 2018, delivery management will gain more traction through automation, digitalisation and optimisation. To help companies become more efficient and have more visibility into their operations, the supply chain needs to become more flexible - and businesses need to gain competitive advantage.

Customisation, visualisation and optimization will become the pillars of any delivery operations that wants to become efficient. By this, we mean working closely with technology that paves the way to growth.

A good example of optimization would be the simple process of routing orders which usually takes companies hours - whereas a smart tool like route optimization would effectively cut this process into half.

operations, this type of technology will definitely be a gateway to success.

save time and create a streamlined operations workflow.

Optimizing delivery operations has a significant and tangible impact on revenue as well as transparency and accountability, allowing companies to better analyze all the relevant data to adjust their operations and boost productivity.

Third-party delivery companies should also consider incorporating this technology (in their daily operations) to be able to compete with big players like Amazon and offer faster delivery services at lower prices.

Driving business efficiency and productivity

An important factor which makes a difference in any operations is having the ability to literally cut the time spend on manual routing into half.

In an industry as important as logistics, which has become the backbone of any companyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s

As a detrimental task for many companies, route optimization is meant to empower your teams to

Organizations that want to innovate in the lastmile delivery sector can start such utilizing sophisticated products that support delivery management, fulfilment, and optimization to differentiate themselves from their competitors.

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Warehouse Management

I

Insight

The rise of artificial intelligence â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Why the logistics sector needs to innovate to accommodate The logistics industry is ever evolving. One of the major changes is the rise in artificial intelligence, which is inevitably having a major impact across all parts of the distribution chain.

Players in the logistics industry, both large and small, may be left wondering what these changes will mean for a human workforce in the near future. Tony Hughes, CEO of Huthwaite International, discusses the emerging trends in AI, such as voice recognition, as well as the pros and cons of this developing technology for companies.

A

rtificial Intelligence is already making huge impacts across all parts of the distribution chain, not least in voice recognition interfaces for the ordering phase.

In the rest of the chain, highly or totally automated companies can already link to other businesses' automated networks, resulting in near-total automation. This will leave little opportunity for a human workforce.

Price isn't everything Automating so many people out of the actual workings of the logistics process means that the remaining staff will most likely be in human interface roles. This especially applies to the difficult-to-automate roles of sales and negotiation, affecting as they do, relationships

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at all levels including clients, sub-contractors, suppliers, collaborators and stakeholders.

Automated systems have strong merits, but price isn't everything and sometimes people want things to be done by people, for no other reason that they prefer it.

Additionally, not every company will be willing or able to change what they do, or how they work in the face of automated competitors. As AI increasingly penetrates every area of life, there will be a general refocusing of value onto human presence; trust, versatility, adaptability, customer support and skills, rather than on automated production and distribution. This will result in widespread business restructuring, greatly changing the nature of the manufacturing/distribution chain. At the same time, automation will see a refocusing of roles onto tasks still best achieved by humans.

Human contact is often better when face-toface, so this is likely to generate a reversal of globalisation. Many companies will use the more refined human edge as a key factor in justifying a higher price or a slower response.

And this refined human edge has to be trained.

Collaborative competition AI presents opportunities for collaborative competition (where companies put aside selfinterest and collaborate to tackle today's complex interconnected problems). This is particularly relevant among companies that are reliant on people, or unable or unwilling to fully embrace AI. While there is an obvious advantage in automation, not all companies will want to go down that route. If they don't, then they can form protectionist alliances. This will

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Warehouse Management

require a high level of selling capability to present a persuasive case to fellow participants, to industry and to clients as well as strong negotiation skills to establish a common mandate and secure a favourable outcome. Protectionist alliances tend to form when faced with a common threat; for example, licensed taxi drivers are in competition with one another but still grouped together to fight hard against Uber.

On the flipside, AI equally offers advanced networks and tools to enable better collaboration between logistics companies. For example, small companies can group together into alliances to buy at better prices, distribute more efficiently, and establish awareness via community brands. Such alliances do not form automatically and are a commercial opportunity for those with the right sales and negotiation capabilities to make them work.

Planning for the worst-case scenario In May 2017 a Tesla Model S was implicated in the world's first fatal self-driving car crash.

Neither the driver nor the car's sensors detected a truck that had driven across their path. Tesla was cleared by US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, but it

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highlights the importance of planning for the worst-case scenario and ensuring liabilities are agreed when negotiating the supply or purchase of new technologies. It's a new landscape with a new set of considerations.

I

Insight

commercial sustainability. With no case studies or existing clients to reference, those responsible for selling and marketing AI will need to be at the top of their game to anticipate and provide the levels of information

â&#x20AC;&#x153;

Overall, AI clearly offers a major threat via automation but also provides opportunities and tools to those companies who want to stay with humanbased systems, either purely protectionist, or by using them as a differentiator.â&#x20AC;?

Also, persuading clients to move from traditional to artificial intelligence technologies is becoming a pivotal role. Building memorable brands, writing new stories and understanding, crafting and communicating different messages for the myriad of influencers in the decision-making unit will all be essential. Core to this is trust. Addressing concerns and consequences and doing so early in the Buying Cycle to avoid escalation later on will be a crucial part of the sales and marketing process.

Lionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s share The bigger the potential deal, the more the client will demand evidence of capability and

and reassurance needed. Those who are will speed up the sales cycle, and with it, adoption rates and thereby secure a lion's share of the market for their companies.

Overall, AI clearly offers a major threat via automation but also provides opportunities and tools to those companies who want to stay with human-based systems, either purely protectionist, or by using them as a differentiator. One person's threat is another person's opportunity. Ensuring that the remaining humans in the system are well trained and know their complementary skills well will ensure that they can extract the best advantage of human and machine coworking.

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AUTOMATIC DATA CAPTURE MOBILE COMPUTING

Insight

Mobile applications removing informational borders and facilitating communication within healthcare Service, safety, and satisfaction for patients and clinicians are the top priorities driving the mobility initiatives of leading healthcare organisations, according to a new report by VDC Research.

s patient satisfaction becomes

A

Applications available to health care providers

professionals require to make critical decisions

increasingly important to

enable easy reference and secure

in real time.”

insurance providers, consumers

communication as well as access to patient

expect health service providers

information.

information access, and convenience of other

While health care organisations have stitched

to VDC, events such as WannaCry’s high-

consumer services.

together patchworks of products and services

profile cyberattack on healthcare organisations

Significant concerns related to privacy, security, and regulation still remain. According

to offer the rapid response time,

to assist their health care professionals, VDC’s

and other institutions in May 2017 focused

The range of mobile hardware health care

research shows that these solutions have not

public attention on the need for improved

organisations rely on and have been

yet delivered the desired level of effective

safety measures. “Security and privacy

benefitting from spans smartphones, handsets,

communication.

concerns will continue to stifle health care mobility adoption until these issues are

wearables, notebooks, and tablets (both

properly addressed,” said Gisser.

consumer-oriented and purpose-built devices).

“Mobility adoption within health care

The report also states that health care mobility

environments presents a unique set of barriers

offers significant benefits to healthcare

because health care IT systems and

The full market report discusses the role of

providers as mobile solutions allow them to

databases are extremely fragmented,

mobile technology in the health care industry

supply caregivers with a wealth of information

disconnected, and interoperable,” said

and looks at the top mobility challenges

while removing existing informational borders.

Spencer Gisser, research associate of

healthcare organisations face. It includes a

enterprise mobility and connected devices at

summary of key participants involved in the

Mobile applications have broad potential in

VDC Research. “This makes it extremely

healthcare mobility ecosystem, identifies

terms of their functionality, including telemetry,

difficult for mobile solutions to seamlessly

market trends, and analyses prominent

e-prescribing, and patient monitoring.

access the information healthcare

vendors and solution providers.

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Product News

AUTOMATIC DATA CAPTURE MOBILE COMPUTING

New DS5100 laser informational borders and facilitating communication within healthcare

D

atalogic, the automatic data

scanner portfolio with a smart, flexible and

connectors block for easy installation,

capture and process

high performance offer.

setup and maintenance.

automation solutions provider, has introduced DS5100, the new flexible, powerful and

compact laser scanner. With multiple models

Key benefits

Typical applications

•

Performance in harsh industrial

•

Automotive: shop floor, work in progress

environments at any operating condition.

•

Food & beverage, pharmaceutical:

available, the DS5100 family delivers superior reading performance and

•

Outstanding reading execution.

Secondary package control, end of line,

embedded industrial connectivity in a top

•

Flexibility.

palletising, automated warehouse, tote

industrial grade.

•

Cost-effective.

tray identification, automatic picking

•

Ideal for different applications.

process control, intralogistics, entry level

Datalogic has managed to combine in a

•

Easy installation, set-up and maintenance.

sorting and shipping process, pallet

single product the most real and earnest

•

Compact dimensions.

reading, cold storage and outdoor

needs of any production environments: a

•

Multilanguage display.

cost-effective solution, ideal for any identification needs, in many applications, from the automotive industry, to the food & beverage, to the pharmaceutical one. Due to

in-progress control, parts traceability,

•

Medium and long-range models, linear

palletising, shipping process, automated

and oscillating mirror models.

warehouse, intralogistics.

•

DS5100 laser scanner allows to cover an extensive range of applications such as:

General manufacturing: Shop floor, work-

Key features

the availability of medium range, long range, oscillating mirror and sub-zero models, the

applications (sub-zero models).

•

secondary package control, end of line,

Mechanical focus adjustment for extreme application flexibility.

•

Smart multi-side and networking capability,

shop floor, production traceability, end of

on-board ID-NET interface for high-speed

line, automated warehouse, intralogistics,

communication networks in combination

pallet reading, cold environment.

with DS2100N/DS2400N, on-board Ethernet Bus Connection (EBC) for real-

“

The continuous push towards the renewal of its technology and the major investments that Datalogic places in Research & Development, lead to an ever further technological upgrade of its solutions.”

time synchronisation events in combination with DS8110/DX8210 network.

•

On-board Ethernet/IP and Profinet for total embedded connectivity to main industrial Fieldbus provide cost saving, simplified cabling and short installation time.

•

Digital Signal Technology (DST), ACR4 reconstruction

The continuous push towards the renewal of

technology, PackTrack

its technology and the major investments

for outstanding reading

that Datalogic places in Research &

performance.

Development, lead to an ever further

•

Superior ambient light immunity.

technological upgrade of its solutions. Thus

•

Top industrial grade, IP65 and sub-zero

•

X-PRESS interface, Genius configuration

version for low temperature environments.

DS5100, with its outstanding performance, will replace some of the current laser scanner solutions, simplifying the Datalogic

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software, multi-language display, rotating

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AUTOMATIC DATA CAPTURE MOBILE COMPUTING

Insight

Worldwide device shipments will increase by 2.1% in 2018 – Gartner orldwide shipments of

W

devices – PCs, tablets and mobile phones – totalled 2.28 billion units in 2017, according to Gartner, Inc.

Shipments are on course to reach 2.32 billion units in 2018, an increase of 2.1%.

Two markets will drive overall growth in device shipments in 2018. First is the mobile phone market, led by the high-end smartphone segment. Second is the premium ultramobile market, where thin and light Apple and Microsoft Windows 10 devices are stimulating higher demand.

“Consumers have many technologies to choose from, which poses two main challenges for vendors. The first is to compete

shipments will increase by 2.6% in 2018, with

interfaces, but also through biometrics and

for wallet share, given how many devices

the total amounting to 1.9 billion units. In

further enhancements to display and camera

consumers own. The second is to deliver

2018, smartphone sales will grow by 6.2% to

features.

value and maintain relevance – to offer the

represent 87% of mobile phone sales. "We

right device to the right audience," said Ranjit

expect Apple smartphone sales to grow by

5G phones will reach the market in 2019,

Atwal, research director at Gartner. "We will

more than the market average in 2018, with

when rollouts of 5G networks will start in

see more buyers focusing on value, rather

the launch of new models fueling stronger

select countries, such as the US and South

than just price, and therefore considering

replacement cycles," said Roberta Cozza,

Korea. "We predict that, by 2021, 9% of

higher-priced devices.”

research director at Gartner.

smartphones sold will support 5G," said

PC market will be flat in 2018

In 2018, smartphone vendors will focus on

of video and streaming services, as it will

delivering more compelling personalised

bring faster uplinks and support new AI

Gartner forecasts that shipments of traditional

experiences, via on-device (AI), virtual

applications."

PCs will decline by 5.4% in 2018 (see Table

personal assistants and more natural user

Cozza. "Overall, 5G will be a significant driver

1), with notebooks showing the steepest decline (6.8%). The premium ultramobile market will be the only PC segment to achieve

Worldwide Device Shipments by Device Type, 2016-2019 (Millions of Units) Device Type

2016

2017

2018

2019

Traditional PCs (DeskBased and Notebook)

220

204

193

187

Ultramobiles (Premium)

50

59

70

80

Total PC Market

270

262

264

267

Ultramobiles (Basic and Utility)

169

160

159

156

Computing Device Market

439

423

423

423

Mobile Phones

1,893

1,855

1,903

1,924

Total Device Market

2,332

2,278

2,326

2,347

growth in 2018, without which the overall PC market would decline.

“DRAM costs have doubled since June 2016, and PC providers have increased PC prices since the first half of 2017," added Atwal. "This trend is likely to continue into 2018, until DRAM cost trends reverse.”

By 2021, 9% of smartphones sold will Support 5G Gartner forecasts that mobile phone

Source: Gartner (January 2018)

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Analysis

AUTOMATIC DATA CAPTURE MOBILE COMPUTING

Tipping point for ‘tap and go’ as mobile payments top £975 million Mobile payments are fast approaching a tipping point, with spending via smartphones accelerating according to the latest consumer spending data from Worldpay.

he number of in-store contactless

T

make up a further 12.5% of the total spend.

James Frost, CMO of Worldpay said: "Digital wallets are growing in popularity every day,

transactions made via a mobile device totalled 126 million last year,

But according to Worldpay's analysis,

but what's interesting is the shift in the way

with the amount spent topping

shoppers are now starting to purchase

people are shopping with their smartphone.

£975 million. This marks a 328%

higher value items via their smartphones. In

No longer just restricted to light bites and

year-on-year rise in in-store mobile spending;

the second half of 2017, the average spend

post-work pints, mobile contactless payments

and with almost a third of consumers now

per transaction increased by 11%, with a

are becoming increasingly popular for

taking advantage of their phone's payment

notable lift-off following the increase in

higher-end purchases too, as manufacturers

capabilities, these numbers are set for

retailers accepting 'limitless' Apple Pay

integrate more sophisticated security features

exponential growth over the next 12 months.

transactions in May. Consequently, luxury

into handset designs."

department stores and high-end boutiques Accounting for 59% of all in-store mobile

are now one of the fastest growing sectors

Recent research by Worldpay found that

transactions, the supermarket sector has been

for mobile payments; although the volume of

more than half of consumers can now see a

an important driver in the uptake of digital

mobile transactions in this category remains

future where mobile replaces their card within

wallets such as Apple Pay, Google Pay and

a small fraction of the total (2.9%), its share

the next five years. This number rises to 65%

Samsung Pay, as time-poor shoppers grab

of the market has more than doubled since

for Gen Z (16 to 20-year-olds), suggesting

groceries on the go. Pubs, bars and restaurants

last year.

that digital transactions could soon spell the death of the traditional wallet.

Frost continued: "Contactless cards have paved the way for mobile payment adoption, but there is still work to be done before mobile ‘tap and go’ becomes ubiquitous. We know that three-quarters of consumers still prefer plastic when it comes to making a contactless payment, which may stem from our reliance on a physical wallet for other aspects of the checkout process, such as collecting loyalty points, or showing ID." "But that is all set to change over the next 12 months. The DVLA is set to launch a digital version of the traditional driving license later this year, and with more businesses looking to integrate their loyalty programmes with mobile wallets, we can expect the ease of carrying just one device to win out for consumers very soon."

Figures refer to analysis of UK contactless card transactions across all sectors between 01/01/2017 and 31/12/2017, compared to 2016.

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Printing & Labelling

Opinion

Three game-changers

By the end of 2018 over 50% of manufacturers will be building IoT technology into the design phase of their products When you think â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;IoTâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, is your first thought newly affordable, available sensors being added to products after they've been manufactured? If it is, well I believe 2018 will change that perception as IoT takes a decisive step forward in its evolution. If we think of IoT as like a product's nervous system, 2018 will see it grow from picking up signals at the periphery to being the brain of the product, constantly sending, receiving, growing and gathering information, from the centre of the product throughout its lifetime, in the process enabling new services and revenue streams. Manufacturing is one of the markets most heavily impacted by IoT today. According to Global Market Insights, IoT in the manufacturing market was valued at over US$ 20 billion in 2016 and will grow at more than 20% (CAGR estimate) from 2017 to 2024. Current IoT investments that are unique to the manufacturing environment are taking place in three major initiatives: â&#x20AC;˘

â&#x20AC;˘

â&#x20AC;˘

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Smart manufacturing to increase production output, product quality, or operations and workforce safety as well as lower resource consumption.

Connected products to impact product performance, including collecting detailed information on products in the field, remote diagnostics and remote maintenance.

Connected supply chains to increase visibility and coordination in the supply chain, tracking assets or inventory for

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more efficient supply chain execution.

We will see IoT being included as a part of the design process in all three of these IoT initiatives. Manufacturers are realising that by engineering IoT technology into products and equipment already in the design process you will be able monitor not only the equipment's performance to predict when it needs repair, but also how and when it is being used â&#x20AC;&#x201C; which provides game-changing competitive advantages.

By the end of 2018 more than 50% of manufacturers will be building IoT technology into their products from day one â&#x20AC;&#x201C; already thinking forward in the design phase and asking themselves what services and revenue can this product generate throughout its lifetime? In fact, where will our revenue be coming from in the next five years?' It's a good question.

And it leads us to my next key prediction...

Servitisation speeds ahead: by 2020 most manufacturers will earn over half of their revenue from services With the manufacturing industry becoming more and more commoditised, the need to differentiate yourself is key to survival and profitability. We now see that a large number of manufacturers are shifting to a more service-centric business model â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the buzz word is â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;servitisationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;.

Servitisation is a way for a manufacturer to add capabilities to enhance their overall offering in addition to the product itself.

One famous example is Apple, which did

this a few years ago when it had gained the majority of market share with the iPod and introduced iTunes to increase loyalty, differentiate itself, and generate more revenue. You may think that it will never apply to your business, but companies are now reaping the benefits of servitisation across many different subsegments. For example, Philips provides Schiphol airport outside Amsterdam with â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;lighting as a serviceâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, which means that Schiphol pays for the light it uses, while Philips remains the owner of all fixtures and installations. Philips and its partner Cofely will be jointly responsible for the performance and durability of the system, and ultimately its re-use and recycling at end of life. This has resulted in a 50% reduction in electricity consumption without having to buy a lamp.

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I see this development among IFS's customers as well. For global furniture manufacturer Nowy Styl Group, servitisation has been crucial to its growth.

In 2007, it announced ‘for us, chairs are not enough’, starting a transformation from pure manufacturer to world-class office interior consulting company. Another example is a customer that manufactures cleaning products and started to offer delivery and service dosing systems. The company understood that choosing the right cleaning products was just part of its customers' main objective, i.e. keeping its premises hygienic. Applying the products in the most effective way, choosing the right accessories, establishing the right routines – all these too were crucial to keeping premises clean.

Both these customers realised that with technology accelerating as fast as it is, no matter how beautifully designed a chair, or how effective a cleaning product, today's luxury products turn into tomorrow's commodities faster than ever, pulling prices down with them. With servitisation, manufacturers escape the corrosion of commodification. Expert services built on years of experience provide a kind of value customers will always pay for, regardless of technology trends.

According to the IFS Digital Change Survey, conducted by the research and publishing company Raconteur, 68% of manufacturing companies claim that servitisation is either ‘well-established and is already paying dividends’ or ‘in progress and is receiving appropriate executive attention and support’. However, almost one in three manufacturing companies are still to derive value from servitisation. These are missing out on revenue streams and new ways to develop their offerings. To be successful in their response to customer needs and increasing demands, manufacturers must look to new business models to compress time to market, taking an idea through from design to a saleable item as quickly as possible.

New technology like IoT adds an additional layer to servitisation. With sensors detecting when your product or equipment needs service, this data can trigger an

automated service action that will realise significant benefits to make your service organisation more effective. This type of automated predictive maintenance will become more and more common as it is a natural next step after implementing IoT to optimise service efforts.

By 2019 the hype around 3D printing will be over, and real benefits blooming My third prediction is that 3D printing, just like IoT, will enter a new, more mature phase. No matter how big the 'wow' factor is when we first see it, apart from smallerscale manufacturing production like hearing aids and jewelry, 3D printing has so far failed to live up to its full potential. all this could change in 2018.

We are seeing a couple of developments that point in that direction. The first one is the improved scalability of 3D printing solutions. A new generation of 3D printing companies is moving into manufacturing traditionally dominated by injectionmoulding manufacturers, with new, faster, better connected automated systems that reduce some of the time-consuming preand post-processing that has been such an obstacle to wide-scale uptake. One

company, Stratasys, for example, has collaborated on a new printer, the Demonstrator, that combines three printers into a stack system—each printer able to communicate to its neighbors in real time.

The new printer is highly scalable, meaning it can significantly increase production capacity, printing from 1500–2000 components a day. This means that you can achieve an economy of scale to bring costs down, which will be an important catalyst for the success of the 3D printing technology.

The aviation industry is pioneering 3D printing technology today, and the manufacturing industry can learn from that.

One successful example is the new GE turboprop ATP Engine, which was 35% 3D printed, taking it down from 855 components to 12 and contributing toward the engine being lighter, more compact, and delivering a 15% lower fuel burn and 10% higher cruise power compared with competitor's offerings.

The expanded capacity and reduction in pre-and post-processing that new, highly innovative mid-size 3D printing companies are bringing to the field mean that, in 2018, I think we will see manufacturing companies joining in with A&D and flying high too with new 3D printing capabilities.

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