Logistics stalemate

Logistics stalemate       When was the last time you heard or read about something truly revolutionary in the logistics and freight transportation industry?
      Occasionally big ideas surface, including super-high-speed containerships to shorten transits between continents to a few days and blimps for ferrying large and oversized cargoes to remote locations. But in reality shippers are many years away from embracing such concepts, much less having a need for them anytime soon.
      There are a few notable breakthroughs in the recent past, such as ocean freight containers, refrigerated boxes, cross-docking and double-stack rail services, that have taken the industry to new heights in terms of efficiency and modernization. But most of these technologies and related services are now quite mature.
      Introductions of high-tech inventory management tools in the past five to 10 years could be considered another innovative breakthrough for the industry. However, as No'l Perry, managing director of FTR Associates, concludes in this issue of American Shipper (see article on pages 8-13), businesses have probably exhausted most innovative inventory-reduction ideas at this point.
      All of this raises a serious question: Has the industry's available tools reached a point where they have wrung just about all efficiencies they possibly can from the international and domestic freight management system? Have we entered a period of logistics stalemate?
      Concerns among analysts and practitioners that this may indeed be the case are likely fueled by the lack of funds available among transportation and logistics corporations toward research and development initiatives into new freight facilitation technologies. The economic downturn has lowered a cloud of fiscal conservatism over the industry during the past two years.
      Not everyone has abandoned the drive for change in the supply chain, and it's still people, with the aid of technologies, who discover better tools and ways to move freight.
      The Auto Industry Action Group's Materials Off-Shore Sourcing (MOSS) program (pages 16-19) exemplifies this passion to promulgate change in the supply chain. When implemented, MOSS will remove paper, faxes, e-mails, phone calls and the constant rekeying of data into different systems, saving not just the auto sector, but potentially other large import industries, billions of dollars in tied up working capital.
      Now that would be revolutionary.