BY VICTORIA KICKHAM, SENIOR EDITOR
REDUCING FREIGHT COSTS
Strategy
TRANSPORTATION MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS (TMS)
have long been the solution to making continuous improvements in a company’s freight management operations. Yet
many companies say they struggle to justify a return on the
investment.
That may be changing. Rockwell Automation, a
Milwaukee-based industrial automation products manufacturer, said it has found a way to reap the benefits of
a TMS without a full-blown investment in the software.
Through a partnership with logistics software provider
RateLinx, Rockwell is using a Data-as-a-Service (DaaS)
solution to better manage domestic less-than-truckload
(LTL) freight, a program that has helped the company
improve visibility across its shipping network, reduce costs,
and streamline operations, according to Jeffrey Dudzik,
Rockwell Automation’s global transportation manager.
“This is a dynamic way of doing something without
taking on the heavy investment [of a TMS],” said Dudzik,
noting that Rockwell Automation’s monthly DaaS fee is a
fraction of the cost of the hardware, software, and related
services associated with a TMS. “It was a minimal risk for
Rockwell Automation as an organization—a somewhat
small investment to create better visibility and control over
my freight network.”
Rockwell Automation faced all the challenges that a TMS
is designed to resolve. It struggled to improve transport
performance because of a lack of visibility and access to
clean data. The company’s analysts and technicians had
to pore through multiple carrier websites for tracking and
tracing information, as well as rate quotes. Carrier perfor-
mance reports—which can produce valuable information
about quality, cost, and service levels—were often outdated
because they were received weeks after the fact.
Yet Rockwell Automation could not justify a TMS investment because its freight profile—mostly lightweight and
smaller-sized shipments—did not align with a TMS’s core
mission, which is to generate efficiencies by consolidating heavy, dense shipments into truckloads, Dudzik said.
Rockwell needed the data that a TMS would provide, without the enterprise software required to produce it.
RATELINX TO THE RESCUE
Enter RateLinx, which offers an à la carte approach with
its DaaS software. The software captures, integrates, and
analyzes data from multiple streams, and then delivers
information in the form of reports and dashboards that
companies can use to make better decisions on carriers
and shipping methods. Rockwell Automation began using
No TMS? No problem!
How Rockwell Automation uses RateLinx’s Data-as-a-Service offering to
improve its freight management operations without a traditional TMS.
