T: 4. 5"
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Our Service Doesn’t Stop
at the Dock
The Port of New York and New Jersey
provides shippers with rail services
that bring goods to and from markets
along the Eastern Seaboard and beyond.
With two Class I railroads servicing
the port’s three on-dock rail facilities,
our six terminal operators provide
shippers with access to all major world
markets with unparalleled e;ciency.
That’s what we call delivering the goods.
markets with unparalleled e;ciency.
Visit our online rail transit tool at
www.rail.portnynj.com
capabilities that allow associates to adjust
their schedules, swap shifts, and request
time off—all from their smartphones.
“More and more customers are moving
to this type of capability to provide more
flexible work schedules, making themselves more attractive to their current and
future work force,” Simmerman explains.
“[In addition], these capabilities help off-load the tedium of these tasks for supervisors and managers—freeing them up
to concentrate on running the business
[and] coaching employees.”
EMBRACING ANALYTICS
Retailers are also turning to analytics
to address labor-related concerns, says
Toby Brzoznowski, co-founder and chief
strategy officer for supply chain technology developer Llamasoft, which provides
software that allows companies to create
digital models of their supply chains to
test “what if?” scenarios for all aspects of
business planning. Digital modeling can
be a crucial tool in managing seasonal
labor demands as well as for determining how new policies or processes may
affect hiring, training, and other staffing
concerns, he says. Using supply chain
modeling software, companies can test
scenarios based on increased throughput to determine how much additional
staffing may be required, for instance.
The software can help determine when to
add a second or third shift, for example,
or indicate how implementing next-day
delivery might affect the need for labor
across the entire retail organization.
“A lot of these things are interesting data
and analytics problems,” Brzoznowski
says of the changing retail environment.
“[Retailers] are using our software to
find the balance—to find the right mix of
labor and automation, for instance. They
are testing different hypotheses.”
As with other aspects of the evolv-
ing retail environment, much of what is
changing can be traced back to e-com-
merce and omnichannel business trends.
Brzoznowski and others argue that imple-
menting the right technology solutions
can go a long way toward making better
decisions about how to react and respond
to those trends.
“The changing dynamic of [adopting]
more of an omnichannel or e-com-
merce strategy [is driving retailers] to
offer more aggressive services to their
customers. As a result, they have to
leverage their physical operations—
not just their warehouses, but also
their retail stores and the people who
are running them,” he says, pointing
to data, digital decision-making, and
technology in general as an important
piece of the puzzle. “[Organizations
are] taking a step back and taking a
data-driven approach to figuring out
exactly what they can offer and what
kind of services they can, sustainably,
provide to customers.”
