Quick News : Friday and Saturday 10-28-2005 / 10-29-2005

Yes, even the U.S. military needs experienced logistics “soldiers”. In Camp Pendleton, US Supply Chain Marines practice supply chain drills to prepare themselves for Iraq:

A new Material Distribution Company concept, which will be used with 1st Marine Expeditionary Force during their next deployment to Iraq, is designed to make this job more efficient. An exercise conducted by 1st Force Service Support Group’s 1st Supply Battalion Oct. 6, allowed these Marines to practice this new concept.

The exercise replicated the distribution of cargo from Operation Iraqi Freedom, substituting buildings on base for areas in Iraq. The exercise allowed Marines to practice their jobs in a deployment-like atmosphere.

“In OIF I, the biggest issue was confidence in supply,” said Maj. Anthony Fabiano, from Hoosick Falls, N.Y., commanding officer of the MDC. “Marines would order something five times because they couldn’t see where (their order) was.”

The improved processes should diminish units having to re-order their items and hoping at least one of them will come in.

“For OIF II there was a compressed timeline before deployment,” said 1st Lt. Jeremy Hall, executive officer for MDC. “This go-around, the battalion has had more time to test processes that incorporated the new technology.”

The new concept and technology uses radio frequency identification tags to track shipments. Using a program called the Battle Command Sustainment Support System, Marines can locate areas where these shipments have been.

DHL is once again helping in Hurricane relief efforts, this time in Florida as they have arranged the airfreight of 44,000 lbs of bottled water :

As South Florida residents continue to contend with the damage caused by Hurricane Wilma, DHL, the world’s leading global express delivery and logistics company, is today sending a dedicated Boeing 727 to the stricken region carrying a payload of approximately 44,000 pounds of bottled water to support relief efforts. The company’s U.S. headquarters are located in Plantation, Florida – at the heart of the area impacted by Wilma.

Also, we have updated our Seafreight Links section by adding a number of shipping lines to the list. Please feel free to check out all the resources we have linked.

Fedex and UPS News

In response to ever rising fuel costs, UPS has launched some initiatives which will save the company $1 million per month in fuel costs.

UPS has implemented several new procedures, including:

* Reducing the amount of extra fuel carried by aircraft.
* Using only one engine during taxiing.
* Having more UPS airplanes use electrical power from buildings
* In-ground electrical hook-ups instead of the aircraft’s auxiliary power unit

In other news, UPS credits recent growth to supply chain services and the success of the somewhat recent acquisitions of Menlo Worldwide and Overnite Transportation.

New logistics technologies, supply chain services, an integrated shipping network, and strong branding are the key drivers behind the financial growth gained by United Parcel Service over the past year, according to Scott Davis, the company’s chief financial officer.

Also within the past 12 months, UPS has made two acquisitions in the supply chain arena Davis said, during a recent Webcast by UPS.

In keeping with these purchases of Menlo Worldwide Forwarding and Overnite Transportation, UPS has just renamed one of its operating divisions Supply Chain and Freight, said Teresa Finley, vice president of investor relations, also during the call with analysts.

UPS is also paying particular attention right now to the midrange market, according to Davis.

For the complete article, read here.


And finally, UPS has bolstered their online tracking service. The tracking service will allow customers to track both parcel shipments and large heavyweight shipments via the same online platform.

United Parcel Service Inc. has added new features to its enterprise-oriented Trade Direct service, making it possible for retailers, dot-com sites and other enterprises to now track the status of both small packages and large freight around the globe through a single Web-based system.

An upshot of ongoing systems integration work at UPS, the new Web capability is based on a software application known internally as Flex Global View, said Steve Holmes, a UPS spokesperson.

UPS initially deployed Flex Global View in its supply chain services to give corporate supply chain managers insights into the whereabouts of large freight shipments.

But the new feature for Trade Direct customers brings the ability to locate shipments of all sizes, directly from the UPS Web site.

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Fedex is anticipating handling 5% more packages on the busiest shipping day of this years holiday season, December 12th.

FedEx expects to ship about 8.5 million packages globally on its busiest day on December 12 — about 400,000 more than last year and the most ever for the Memphis, Tennessee-based company.

FedEx’s average daily volume year-round is 6 million packages. The holiday season runs from Thanksgiving through the day after Christmas.

Quick News: Wednesday 26-Oct-2005

Turns out Kansas City is well ahead of the competition in setting up NAFTA trade opportunities with Mexico:

The nonprofit SmartPort organization promotes international trade in the region and is the lead agency in a plan to establish a Mexican customs facility in the West Bottoms near Kemper Arena.

“Every city in the country is developing an inland port,” Gutierrez said Monday of San Antonio’s announcement. “We welcome the competition.”

Gutierrez said Kansas City’s effort stood apart because it was the only U.S. city the Mexican government had agreed to negotiate with — so far — for a customs operation on U.S. soil. And he speculated that a Mexican customs pilot project here was likely to be the only one in the Midwest, with similar operations eventually envisioned for the East and West coasts.

Under this area’s arrangement, freight would be inspected by Mexican authorities in Kansas City and sealed in containers for movement directly to Mexican destinations with fewer costly border delays. The arrangement would become even more lucrative when Asian markets that shipped through Mexican ports were figured into the mix.
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Kansas City already has much of its Mexican trade network in place.

During the past year Kansas City has signed cooperative agreements with the Mexican deep-water port cities of Manzanillo and Lazaro Cardenas, and the Mexican state of Michoacan, aimed at fostering business and government partnerships to move goods more efficiently to and from Mexico through Kansas City.

Earlier this month Kansas City signed similar working agreements with Winnipeg and the Canadian province of Manitoba.

Meanwhile, locally based Kansas City Southern earlier this year acquired Mexico’s Texas Mexican Railway Co., which eventually is seen as a cargo corridor passing through the former Richards-Gebaur airfield — also planned for redevelopment as an intermodal transit and cargo hub with a Mexican customs component.

Last week Mexico’s BancoMext foreign trade bank announced in Kansas City the establishment of a branch operation here to attract U.S. investors.

A 2005 report on trends and issues in logistics and transportation has determined that “collaboration” is necessary to have a successful supply chain:

The 2005 year’s study focuses on “collaboration,” a concept that was defined by the report as having three key characteristics: alignment of individuals and organizations, sharing of real time data, and standardization of processes. The study concludes that very little true collaboration is currently going on today, as analysis shows that less than 10% of participating firms are capable of full collaboration. The top three reasons identified as impediments to collaboration were technical issues (94%), strategies not aligned (86%), and lack of trust (82%).

“This survey demonstrates that collaboration is more than just good business sense, as supply chain members that align their people, processes, and technology can collaborate to make the ‘right’ decisions based on high integrity, high visibility information,” said Peter Moore, vice president of supply chain and RFID at Capgemini. “Despite a consensus on the need for collaboration, however, this year’s survey results demonstrate that technical and cultural barriers often keep organizations from reaching the desired level of integration across the supply chain.”
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Other key findings from the study include:

* Respondents had more success partnering with manufacturers than end-user consumers, retailers, or distributors.
* Since 2003, commercially purchased software packages have increased 6% at respondent companies.
* In addition, 47% of leading-edge firms use commercially-purchased software packages today, as compared to only 26% of laggard firms.
* “Just in time” is considered important or very important to seven in ten (71.7%) leading-edge firms compared to only four in ten (42.4%) of laggard firms
* Prioritizing data visibility & synchronization was the other major difference between three-quarters of leading-edge firms who claim it is important or very important to them (78%) vs. less than half of laggard firms (43.8%)
* The two tools that have decreased in use since 2003 are software developed in-house (a 4% decrease) and third party providers (a nearly 2% decrease).
* The top five domestic distribution processes in use are inbound logistics management, consolidated shipments, drop-ship programs, core carrier programs and third-party distribution.
* Since the 2003 report, rail and express package on-time delivery performance has improved slightly, while three truckload modes (TL, national LTL and regional LTL) on-time performance has decreased slightly.

BAX is setting up shop in Chengdu, China :

BAX, one of the three leading logistics companies in the United States, has become the first transnational solely-funded logistics company approved to be established in China under the CEPA framework.

The company has established a presence in Chengdu, capital city of southwestern China’s Sichuan Province.
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The Chengdu site is the first step for the logistics giant, which entered Chinese market in 1994, in the southwestern China market.

UPS and DHL are already present in Chengdu.

In trucking news, U.S. freight traffic with Canada and Mexico broke new records in 2004. The previous high record was in 2000, the year before 9/11 hit :

The United States traded $712 billion in goods with Canada and Mexico in 2004, topping the previous high of $654 billion in 2000 by $58 billion. The 2004 trade level was a 13 percent increase from 2003 when $629 billion was traded. Trade in 2004 was up 18 percent from the low of $604 billion in 2002.
Trucks carried almost two-thirds of this freight measured by value – $453 billion in 2004. Rail carried 15 percent, followed by maritime with 6 percent, and air and pipeline with 5 percent each. Freight transported by trucks represented the largest modal increase in value from 2003 to 2004 up $49 billion, followed by rail up $12 billion and maritime up $8 billion.
The value of freight shipments moving between the United States, Canada and Mexico has risen 88 percent since 1995, growing at an average rate of 7 percent per year. Since 1995, the total value of U.S. freight shipments with Mexico has grown 146 percent or almost 11 percent annually. Trade with Canada grew 64 percent or almost 6 percent annually.

Just goes to show that trade with our NAFTA partners continues to grow by leaps and bounds.

In Asian news, ANA (All Nippon Airways) will begin dedicated cargo service to and from Thailand using B767-300 freighters :

The Japanese airline, which has largely concentrated on passenger business since the start of its Thai operation 16 years ago, will operate eight cargo flights a week, using B767-300 freighters.

The dedicated cargo services will form a key part of ANA’s Thai operation, for which passenger-carrying capacity will also be boosted by 18% starting on Sunday.

Kimiya Arima, ANA’s general manager for Thailand, said yesterday that the airline’s expansion, reflected stronger passenger and freight traffic anticipated between the two countries, driven by the Japan-Thailand Economic Partnership Agreement (JTEPA).

A good news story from the transportation industry and the relief effort in Pakistan :

World Airways, a wholly owned subsidiary of World Air Holdings, Inc. , partnered with its cargo customer, Air Canada, to fly 150 pallets of relief supplies to Islamabad, Pakistan on a World Airways MD-11 freighter over the weekend.

World Airways and Air Canada donated the cost of the flight from Toronto to provide 160,000 pounds of supplies for the victims of the earthquake that devastated an extensive area of South Asia. World Vision gathered the supplies, which included more than 4,000 tents, 5,250 tarps and a supply of generators and emergency lights.

“World Airways has a long history of helping humanitarian causes around the globe, and we were pleased to be able to partner with our customer, Air Canada, and complete this special mission,” said Randy Martinez, World Air Holdings chief executive officer. “These supplies will be of great help to the many families displaced by the earthquake.”

Lately, nothing but bad news for Australian importers, and during the busiest time of the year. It just seems like things keep getting worse:

A logjam at the country’s biggest ports has prompted fears about border security, and freight handlers say dangerous goods are clearing Port Botany without the usual customs paperwork.

The federal Minister for Customs, Chris Ellison, held five hours of talks with freight industry leaders yesterday in an attempt to resolve teething problems with a $250 million computer system that has caused almost 20,000 containers to accumulate on Port Botany’s wharves.

Two freight forwarding agents said yesterday that sensitive chemicals were being rushed through before formalities were complete as customs officials struggle to avoid a toxic pile-up at the port.

Michael Hudson, of TNT Freight Management, said ammonium nitrate, used for explosives in the mining industry, had been put on a train to Newcastle before paperwork was finished.

“Prior to us completing the customs requirements, the goods were already released and sent up to Newcastle,” Mr Hudson said. “What does this mean from a border security point of view?”

Ammonium nitrate is a so-called red line cargo that has to be cleared within two hours. The managing director of Cornish International, Kent Heazlett, said he was aware of similar instances over the past week.

The only good news seems to be that cargo that has been sitting since the crisis began is finally beginning to clear customs, they just need to start moving it out of the ports now:

CARGO is moving at Australian ports but many importers have no idea their goods are ready for collection, thanks to another glitch in the controversial new computer system.

Major ports – especially Port Melbourne and Port Botany in Sydney – have been facing gridlock because of problems with the Integrated Customs System (ICS) introduced two weeks ago.

The new system was meant to clear imports and exports faster than the former 20-year-old program, but instead containers have banked up because of slow processing.
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But Customs officials said today that 45 per cent of cargo sitting on wharves in Sydney and Melbourne had been cleared.

Customs New South Wales regional director David Collins said movement at terminals was now “normal”, with a total of more than 6000 containers moved out of both ports yesterday and again today.

“Cargo is moving,” he said. “Port Botany is not in gridlock and shipping containers are moving away from the waterfront.”

The claim was backed up by major stevedore P&O, which said it was “working effectively”.

Almost 7500 containers were waiting to be collected from the two ports, Mr Collins said.

But he admitted many importers and freight forwarders were not aware their goods were ready because of another glitch, this time with notification.

“There’s certainly a messaging problem as well as a data matching problem,” he said. “Once they (importers) submit their information electronically and it attains a clear status, there have been problems getting that clear status to the waterfront.”

I sincerely hope things get cleared up quickly in time for the Christmas holidays. Good luck mates !

Directory of World Airports

The latest edition of Air Cargo World magazine contains the 2006 World Airports Directory. The directory is an excellent resource providing details for all major US and international airports. Each individual link contains specific airport contact information, airport specifications, capabilities, etc.

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