newsworthy
Transplace has acquired Lakeside Logistics, a Canadian
third-party logistics service provider. … InMotion
Global Inc.’s transportation management software,
AscendTMS, now includes free IFTA (International Fuel
Tax Agreement) tax reporting as part of its comprehen-
sive feature set. … Third-party logistics service provider
Kenco celebrated its 66th anniversary by announcing
that it had exceeded $530 million in revenue and
5,000 employees for the first time in its history. …
Transportation and logistics service provider A. Duie
Pyle has expanded its Protect From Freeze service
for the 2016/2017 winter season. The service enables
LTL customers to ship water-based products with full
protection from freezing temperatures. … APICS has
reconfigured one of its flagship certification programs,
the Certified in Production and Inventory Management
program, to better serve the needs of the supply chain
work force. The revised version will move from a
five-module exam configuration to a two-module exam
configuration. … Jaxport’s new $30 million intermodal
container transfer facility in Florida is now open for
business. … Transportation and logistics service provider
Werner Enterprises has completed a 10-acre expan-
sion project at its terminal in Laredo, Texas. … Crown
Equipment Corp. has opened a new sales and service
location near Milwaukee to meet growing customer
needs in the Eastern Wisconsin and Northern Michigan
regions. … The Crane Manufacturers Association of
America, an independent incorporated trade associa-
tion affiliated with MHI, now offers users the chance
to get Specification No. 78 free of charge when placing
an order for Specification Nos. 70 or 74. … 3Gtms Inc.,
a provider of Tier 1 transportation management soft-
ware, has opened an office in Utrecht, the Netherlands.
… UniCarriers Americas Corp. has received its OHSAS
18001 occupational health and safety zone certification.
OHSAS 18001 is an international occupational health
and safety management system specification intended
to help organizations control health and safety risks. …
FourKites has raised $13 million in Series A funding led
by Bain Capital Ventures. … Storage product specialist
Akro-Mils is celebrating its 70th anniversary.
short takes
Panel: Key to Internet of Things success is handling data overload
More companies are embracing the Internet of Things
(Io T) as a tool to cope with rising e-commerce order volumes, but as the trend expands, many users are scrambling
to manage the flood of new data, an industry panel said
recently.
Falling prices on the building blocks of the IoT—such
as sensors, bar codes, and radio-frequency identification
(RFID) tags—are making the strategy more affordable for
users in industries such as healthcare, manufacturing, retail,
and transportation and logistics, according to a study by
Harvard University’s Technology and Entrepreneurship
Center at Harvard (TECH).
That expansion is triggering a new challenge, dubbed
“the data dilemma,” according to TECH’s recently released
report on its 2016 Strategic Innovation Symposium, “The
Intelligent Enterprise.” Sponsored by Zebra Technologies
Corp., the Sept. 27 symposium included members from
industry, government, and academia, among them representatives from General Electric Co., Target Corp.,
Whirlpool Corp., Zebra Technologies, Google Inc., IBM
Corp., Accenture, the National Football League, the city
of Boston, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and
Harvard.
The dilemma is that it has become easier to collect data
than to analyze it, the report said. As more businesses adopt
Io T strategies, they will begin to focus more on the art of
analyzing the data and turning it into outcomes, rather
than simply adding more sensors to parcels, pallets, or truck
chassis, the report said.
“There’s some significant transformation going on in
supply chain and logistics,” Bill Cusack, Zebra’s transporta-
tion and logistics marketing lead, said in a phone interview.
“E-commerce is driving incredible volumes through our
customers’ operations. And the Internet-driven sales trend
will continue to expand, so our customers are all under
pressure, whether they are [the U.S. Postal Service], DHL,
or FedEx.”
Zebra’s answer to this challenge is to expand beyond its
traditional identity as a hardware vendor selling printers
and scanners to become a consulting resource for “enter-
prise asset intelligence” (EAI), Cusack said. “The Io T could
just be your refrigerator talking to your washing machine,
but EAI focuses on the enterprise, because our customer
needs to sense, for example, that a truck is not being loaded
properly, and then get notified of that problem in time to
intercede,” he said.
Among other benefits, that approach would extend the
utility of the IoT beyond basic tasks like tracking trucks
and other assets, to areas like improving the efficiency of
operations, the report said.
