- Round 'em up. Averitt Express has been chosen to provide transportation and supply chain management services to Costco Wholesale Corp.'s warehouse club operations in Texas. Averitt will handle the transportation of all retail items available at 12 Costco club stores in the Lone Star State—from meat and poultry to TVs and computers. Averitt will also provide on-site personnel to coordinate outbound transportation at Costco's Dallas distribution center.
- Will it launch a thousand ships? FKI Logistex has won two contracts from Helen of Troy, a company that supplies personal care and consumer products, including the Revlon, Sunbeam, Vidal Sassoon, Karina and Oxo brands. In the first deal, FKI will provide material handling systems for the company's new 1.2-million-square-foot DC in Southaven, Miss. The equipment will include pick-to-light systems, mobile picking carts, conveyors and sorters. The second contract will provide upgrades to the pick-to-light system at Helen of Troy's existing DC in El Paso, Texas.
- China beachhead. Zebra Technologies has signed Digital China Holdings Ltd., one of China's leading IT product distributors and systems integrators, to be its value-added distributor in China. The alliance will make it easier for Zebra to reach Chinese customers with its bar-code, wireless and RFID-based solutions.
- Listen up. Voxware has deployed its VoiceLogistics technology at a facility operated by Mitchell Grocery, a wholesale grocery distribution company that serves 250 independent supermarkets in the Southeast. Mitchell uses the systems to pick the more than 500,000 cases of dry groceries, milk, produce and ice cream the company processes each week. The voice technology is also used for truck loading.
- Big chill. Atlas Cold Storage has selected RedPrairie's DLx Transportation Management Solution for installation at three of its refrigerated warehouses in Green Bay, Wis., Hatfield, Pa., and McDonough, Ga. It will also expand the software solutions to warehouses in Canada during the coming year. The RedPrairie solution will provide transportation planning, execution and reporting capabilities.
- Managing the flow. BGR Inc. of West Chester, Ohio, has selected RT Systems' RT Locator warehouse management system to control all inventory movement from receiving through shipping using wireless radio-frequency terminals. BGR provides tape, industrial papers, mailers and packaging products.
- They won't just mail it in. I.D. Systems has received orders valued at $2.6 million from the U.S. Postal Service to deploy its Wireless Asset Net powered industrial vehicle management system at nine more USPS facilities. This will bring to 22 the number of facilities using the vehicle management system. The system includes wireless devices that attach to lift trucks and pallet movers, a communication infrastructure, and client-server software that provides real-time location tracking.
- From Mt. Olympus to ... Schenker Canada will be the cargo, freight and logistics service provider as well as customs broker for the Canadian Paralympic Committee. The company will handle logistics for the 2006 Winter Paralympic games in Torino, Italy; the 2008 Summer Paralympic games in Beijing; and the 2007 Para Pan American games, which will be held in Rio de Janeiro.
- Chemical enhancement. KRATON Polymers, a specialty chemicals company based in Houston, has selected Logistics Management Solutions (LMS) to provide transportation management services and technology. LMS, a non-asset-based third-party logistics service provider, will direct KRATON's outbound domestic freight operations, which include truckload and less-than-truckload shipments to customers throughout North America.
- Water, water everywhere. Evian North America has entered into an agreement with GT Nexus for hosted software and information management services. Evian is North America's largest importer of bottled water from Europe. GT Nexus will provide software applications, partner integration, data management and network operations support. The initiative will use the GT Nexus Web-based platform to centralize global visibility for Evian and its customers.
- A new culture. The Dannon Co. has joined the CHEP pallet pool. Yogurt and other Dannon products will now ship directly on CHEP pallets to grocery stores, convenience stores, club stores and foodservice customers.
- Follow that truck! Trans-Soft, a software development company for the freight forwarding and logistics industry, has linked its TS2000 Plus and TS2000NET software products with Datatrac's eTrac network. Atlanta-based DataTrac provides software and wireless communications solutions to truckers, couriers, freight forwarders and shippers. The integration of the two systems will provide customers with online visibility of shipment status in real time.
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