inbound
square deal
move ’em out, track ’em down
In order to track thousands upon thousands of
pieces of equipment, supplies, and cargo containers, the U.S. military has turned to a solution that
will be familiar to many supply chain managers. It
is using real-time asset monitoring technology to
keep tabs on the whereabouts of everything from
hamburgers to Humvees.
As the pullout from Iraq and redeployment of
resources to Afghanistan nears, the military has
been involved in a number of asset tracking programs, including the following:
;
In June, the U.S. Army loaded hundreds of
military assets onto Navy transport ships at
Norfolk, Va., and then tracked each one as it traveled along the coast and was offloaded onto the
beach at Camp Lejeune, N.C. (See photo.) During
the exercise, the Army relied on a logistics and asset
tracking system developed by ARINC Inc. and
Impeva Labs to follow individual items. Known as
Next Generation Wireless Communications for
Logistics Applications, the system uses battery-powered electronic tags that form secure local
mesh networks and link to mobile RF gateways—
no local power or ground communications infrastructure is required. The gateways transmit global
positioning system (GPS) tag locations and sensor
data over communications channels like satellite
and cellular networks.
;
Damco, the global freight forwarding arm of
the A.P. Møller-Maersk Group, is using System
Planning Corp.’s GlobalTrak system to track and
monitor shipments for the Army & Air Force
Exchange Service (AAFES) in the Middle East.
The system provides security, cargo condition
monitoring, and cargo tracking and inventory
management using publicly available global communications networks. The AAFES shipments,
destined for military base exchanges, arrive in
Turkey and then travel cross country to Iraq.
Damco places a Global Trak asset monitoring unit
on truck trailers crossing Turkey. The unit carries
a suite of sensors that report location and cargo
condition via two-way cellular and satellite communications to a secure online portal.
;
Leave it to the Japanese. The developers of some of the
world’s most ingenious consumer products have come up
with yet another innovation: square watermelons.
We learned about the block-shaped fruit from the blog
Supply Chains Rock ( http://supplychainsrock.blogspot.com),
maintained by Chris Sciacca, an IBM public relations pro
currently working for Big Blue in Switzerland. Why should we
care about square watermelons? As Sciacca points out, there’s
less dead space between these melons than with the traditional variety. And because their shape allows shippers to
pack them in stackable square cartons, more of these melons
can fit in a truckload. So what is now simply a fashionable—
and expensive—novelty could eventually lead to substantial
freight savings for produce growers.
You can watch a Japanese-language You Tube video showing how the unusual melons are packed and shipped via
Supply Chains Rock; just scroll down to “square is now hip
for watermelons.” ;
the name of the (logistics) game
PHOTO COUR TESY OF MIKE PE TERSEN, U. S. ARMY, SDDC
Evidence suggests that if you want your son to grow up to be
a third-party logistics executive, you can up the odds by
naming him Scott Riddle.
We know of three Scott Riddles who fit the profile. First,
there’s the newly promoted chief operating officer, warehousing and supply chain at Network Global Logistics
(NGL), a Broomfield, Colo.-based provider of supply chain,
logistics, and transportation services. Prior to joining NGL,
he was vice president of sales and marketing for Daylight
Transport, a non–asset-based transportation and logistics
company.
The second Scott Riddle is co-founder of M33 Integrated
Solutions, a third-party logistics company known for its proprietary transportation management software and its “
co-management” team approach to helping clients with their
daily operations. He is also president of the Council of
Supply Chain Management Professionals’ new Piedmont
Triad Roundtable in Greensboro, N.C.
And Scott Riddle Number 3 is regional director of operations for LeSaint Logistics, a third-party logistics company
that serves the chemical, pharmaceutical, food and beverage, paper, and retail industries. The Chicago-area 3PL
operates more than two dozen facilities across the country
and offers its own suite of logistics reporting and management software.
