Skip to main content

How 3PL’s Can Stay Young to Increase Value & Capture Market | LoadProof

 


It’s true that necessity is the mother of invention. Creativity, though, is the father, and knowledge is the midwife.

As people, we are wired for survival. When we are in tough times, our creativity and persistent shine through. By staying focused and thinking creatively, we can come up with solutions and take advantage of each opportunity as it arises. I know that from experience. When I graduated from college as a mechanical engineer, I was hired to do software development because I had math and public speaking skills. I wanted to succeed and thrive in that job, and I kept pushing even though software development wasn’t my forte when I started.  Later, I wanted new challenges, so I leverage my grit, persistence and necessity to reinvent myself as a solutions architect and a leader of consulting, technical, operations and integrator teams.

The challenging world of third party logistics (3PL) is ripe for a similar approach. Margins are thin. It’s hard to make money. Inventiveness becomes a critical skill.

When I worked for a supply chain software vendor, we courted luxury retailers and left 3PL service providers alone, knowing that these logistics providers would fight tooth and nail about our rates. I can think of examples when a 3PL would pass us over, though we were known for great execution, to take the lowest priced vendor. Often, that attempt would fail and they would end up back on our doorstep.

Click here to continue reading this article.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Optimize Your Warehouse Replenishments with these Best Practices | LoadProof

  This best practice is about making  replenishments  inside the warehouse. It is important to stay on the top off replenishments always in your warehouse. If you have just one shift that you are running it would help a lot. If you spend extra hours in the evening and then do the topping off all your active locations it will be helpful for the pickers in the next shift. In the next morning when the pickers come after all the locations will be full and they can start picking right away without wasting time in replenishments. If you have two shifts running either choose the second shift or have a third shift if possible and keep doing the top off replenishments. There are active replenishment locations and these active locations have Min and Max. Whenever your inventory falls below min, replenishments are going to get triggered or it will get triggered if there is an order that needs a lot of picks from a particular location. This will drive the location down which will tri...

Picture Documentation for Freight Claims White Paper – Part I | LoadProof

  INTRODUCTION This document describes the benefits of an effective Picture Documentation System(PDS) that helps with getting Freight Claims Paid faster. An effective pictures documentation system helps with 1 – Get Freight Claims paid much faster by making pictures available quickly and easily, 2 – Provides visibility to the damages through pictures. The visibility gained provides insight into the handling mistakes made while the orders are fulfilled, so that the parties can determine and establish accountability boundaries and get the shipper paid. BACKGROUND What are Freight Claims? A freight claim is a legal demand by a shipper or a consignee to a carrier for financial reimbursement for a loss or a damage of a shipment. Freight Claims are claims submitted by manufacturers/suppliers/shippers to transportation vendors and or carriers, when the goods the Supplier shipped did not arrive at the destination in a pristine state. Instead it arrived as damaged, the packaging was damaged...

3PL Panacea: The Flexible Mobile Supply Chain Platform | LoadProof

  The third-party logistics (3PL) business is tough, because it covers a wide gamut of service offerings, that include some combination of: Just move my boxes and/or pallets. Move my boxes and/or pallets and store them in your warehouse. Move my boxes and/or pallets and operate my facility. Own all the labor and activities in my facility. Offer all distribution services for my product (All I will do is download my orders into your system/supply chain). I’ve even run into more complicated models of operation, including both tightly and loosely coupled models.  In a tightly-coupled model, the supply chain systems of the 3PL, including orders, inventory, transportation, advanced shipment notices, purchase orders, and more, are tightly integrated into the shipper’s supply chain systems. All this information seamlessly flows between both supply chain systems of the 3PL and the shipper. They stay in synch with each other and the parties perform the functions in their respective syst...