inbound

Here’s our monthly roundup of some of the logistics and material handling industry’s charitable contributions and activities:

▪ Freight brokerage Total Quality Logistics (TQL) illuminated its headquarters building for the month of October to highlight its efforts to raise money for cancer research. Through its annual Loads for a Cure campaign, TQL donated $1 to the American Cancer Society for every load the company moved during the week of Oct. 8–14. This year’s campaign raised more than $13,400. Cincinnati, Ohio-based TQL is also holding its first “Great Shave” event. If employees donate more than $5,000 to the American Cancer Society’s Making Strides Against Breast Cancer walk, two “mystery” vice presidents will have their heads shaved.

▪ The Transportation Intermediaries Association (TIA) has chosen England Logistics Inc. as the recipient of the 2012 TIA 3PL Samaritan Award. Last year, England Logistics and parent C.R. England together donated more than $500,000 to local charities. Employees also donated thousands of hours of service.

▪ UPS Inc. celebrated its 10th annual Global Volunteer Month in October. As part of a campaign to make employees’ communities more environmentally sustainable, UPS is awarding $2.2 million in grants to a variety of environmentally focused organizations. Volunteer projects organized by UPS employees included planting trees in Madrid and Miami Dade County, Fla., and creating outdoor play areas at a child care center in South Africa. ;

Community service

The ultimate supply
chain challenge

For many years, airfreight purchasing behavior was driven by the calendar. You could safely assume rates on certain lanes would go up in August and drop again at the end of December. But now, that “classic” seasonality in air freight is gone, says Horst von Kanel, senior director airfreight North America/Latin America for the global logistics service provider Damco Inc. As a result, he says, airfreight forwarders have had to become more flexible and agile to help their clients navigate a market where unpredictability has become the norm.

One way forwarders are doing that is by focusing more on short-term, opportunistic transactions rather than locking in long-term rate commitments with carriers, von Kanel says. The current market volatility suggests there is little or no advantage to making long-term rate commitments, he explains. With the current capacity situation, moreover, the average wait for spot requests has dropped considerably, and forwarders are on the lookout for opportunities for their shipper clients.

Shippers might see today’s sluggish airfreight market as a chance to lock in low rates, but this can be a double-edged sword when capacity is tight, von Kanel warns. Higher-paying cargo may receive priority status, while lower-rated freight remains grounded, resulting in transit delays and late arrivals.

Another way airfreight forwarders are responding to a volatile market is by developing alternative routing options. For example, when air export capacity is unavailable from the West Coast of South America to Asia or Europe, fruits and vegetables might move by ocean container to a hub location, such as Panama or Miami, and then by air to their final destinations, von Kanel says. ;

Forward(er) thinking

Thinking about the unthinkable can make you uncomfortable, but it’s the only way to avoid failures in response efforts when disaster occurs.

That was one of the many pieces of advice that came out of a session titled “Catastrophic Events: The Ultimate Supply Chain Resiliency Test” at the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals’ Annual Global Conference.

At one point, David Kaufman, director of policy and program analysis at the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), told the audience, “We have a self-interest in the nation’s resilience in the face of catastrophic events.” In truth, he went on, the top concern isn’t really the catastrophic event itself, it’s the domino effect that follows disasters and creates further consequences.

Some questions teed up by the panel that should give all of us pause:

▪ In the absence of power, how do we deliver potable water, or any other essential services or commodities, through the “last tactical mile”?

▪ Things cannot return to normal until the private sector restores operations. What, then, does the private sector need from the government to help it get up and running in the wake of a disaster?

▪ Nobody likes to consider worst-case scenarios, but what happens if the “maximum of maximums” happens? How will you recover?

▪ How can you leverage regional, national, or international size and scale to create effective local response?

Sandra G. Carson, vice president of enterprise risk management and compliance at Sysco, offered this advice: “You’ve got to be willing to take criticism for being overpre-pared, because there is no defense for being underprepared.” ;