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Friday Five
In this week's Friday Five: LSPs have a new way to manage ocean cargo chaos, colleges are rethinking supply chain lesson plans, IKEA takes ocean shipping in its own hands, and Portland may stop being weird. Let's get to it.
Slync.io announces Booking & Allocation Management solution designed for LSPs [Slync.io]
Dallas-based logistics technology provider Slync.io announced a new solution that helps logistics service providers (LSPs) navigate the treacherous waters of ocean freight. The new Booking & Allocation Management solution streamlines ocean booking execution, matches vendor demand with carrier supply, and provides a bird’s eye view into carrier performance.
Powered by the Logistics Orchestration® platform, Booking & Allocation Management by Slync.io allows logistics operators to stop managing global value chains by emails and spreadsheets. By reducing their reliance on unstructured data and automating processes, LSPs can reduce manual reporting efforts by 75% and accelerate transaction times by 45%, while dramatically reducing human errors by automating manual data entry.
"There’s never been a time like this in global logistics,” said Chris Kirchner, Founder, Chairman and CEO of Slync.io. “Recent events have exposed the urgent need to fix broken ocean booking processes and ensure that carriers are held accountable for their performance. With Booking & Allocation Management, Slync’s clients are already seeing that they can save time, reduce risk, and expand operational capacity.”
To learn more about how LSPs can optimize their operations and provide better customer outcomes with Booking and Allocation by Slync.io here.
Pandemic throws a book at the logistics teaching of the past [Bloomberg]
The ongoing supply chain crisis is causing business schools to rethink how they are teaching supply chain courses and preparing the next generation of logisticians.
After years of teaching the benefits of just-in-time inventory management, courses are now being updated to include the benefits of safety stocks, data analytics, and supplier diversification to better prepare the workforce for future crises.
“For years, we had sort of taken logistics for granted,” says Skrikant Datar, the dean of Harvard Business School. “The pandemic caused us to rethink it.”
IKEA is jumping onboard with Walmart and The Home Depot taking ocean shipping into their own hands [Container News]
Scarce capacity and sky-high carrier rates have pushed IKEA to follow the same playbook as retailers Walmart and The Home Depot as they have started acquiring their own containers and chartering ships in efforts to minimize the ongoing ocean disruption.
Maersk invests in new fuel start-up backed by Warren Buffett [CNBC]
Demark-based Maersk has joined the Oracle of Omaha, Warren Buffett, and invested in California start-up WasteFuel. By converting agricultural and municipal waste into more eco-friendly fuels, WasteFuel will “develop green bio-methanol production in the Americas and Asia.”
The investment is made through Maersk’s corporate investment arm, Maersk Growth. Morten Bo Christiansen, head of decarbonization at Maersk, will join WasteFuel’s board as part of the investment.
Keeping Portland weird might become more challenging as trans-Pacific carriers are finding alternatives to Long Beach [JOC]
Finding it difficult to secure terminal space at West Coast ports, carriers are setting their eyes on Portland. Mediterranean Shipping Co. (MSC) announced this week it will add Portland stops on its weekly Santana service. Additionally, SM Line and three other forwarders have begun calls in Portland with chartered vessels.
To keep up with consumer demand in the U.S., carriers continue to increase their Asia to West Coast services. With terminal space at premium in Long Beach and Seattle, carriers and NVOs are finding openings in Portland.
Until 2020, Portland went four years without having any weekly liner services after a jurisdictional dispute involving International Longshore & Warehouse Union (ILWU) and International Container Services Inc (ICTSI).
If you missed it, check out last week’s logistics news recap which game highlighted a first for #logtech, a scary outlook for Halloween, the impact of potential labor shortages in Korea, and more. Stay tuned every Friday for a roundup of the week's biggest logistics headlines in our weekly blog, The Friday Five.
If you want to learn more about how Logistics Orchestration® by Slync.io can help you navigate the complexities of global logistics, just schedule a consultation!
