BY PETER BRADLEY, EDITORIAL DIRECTOR
TRACK AND TRACE
BUSINESSES OF ALL SORTS ENTRUST
third-party logistics service providers
(3PLs) with much of their inventory
for a host of reasons. It can help them
extend their geographic reach and enter
new markets. It keeps brick and mortar
off the balance sheet. Third parties can
provide specialized services and technologies that it makes no sense to develop
in house. They can give clients the flexibility to scale up or down as business
requirements shift.
Today, outsourcing may make more
sense than ever. “When you look at
the speed of change and the level of
uncertainty, specifically when you look at things like
omnichannel and e-commerce, growth rates are hard to
predict. Leveraging 3PLs makes sense,” says Mark Wheeler,
director of supply chain solutions – North America for
Motorola Solutions, which provides bar-code scanners,
mobile computers, and other communications equipment
and technology.
That same emphasis on speed, though, means that fast
and accurate communication between 3PLs and the customer is crucial.
Bruce Stubbs, director of industry marketing for distribution at Honeywell, which offers a variety of data capture
technologies, adds, “As omnichannel becomes more prevalent, that’s driving a lot of pressure in the DC environment.
A lot of distribution networks can handle delivery to the
box stores. But there are many people who don’t have the
internal expertise or right infrastructure to handle omni-
channel. It takes a different type of operation for picking,
packing, and shipping direct to consumer. We’ve seen a lot
of people take that portion of their operations as they move
into the multichannel arena and give it to a 3PL.”
Those same challenges make close integration between
customer and 3PL systems imperative. “When you are
operating that much faster and going to direct-to-con-sumer fulfillment, you have to look at how you handle that
integration,” Wheeler says.
A WINDOW ON THE SUPPLY CHAIN
Yet despite decades of development of track and trace
tools, getting good visibility into inventory that’s in the
technologyreview
How far can you see?
Close connections with
your 3PLs—and the
inventory they manage—
is more critical than ever
in the age of omnichannel retailing, e-commerce,
and fast cycle times.
