Ben Ames has spent 20 years as a journalist since starting out as a daily newspaper reporter in Pennsylvania in 1995. From 1999 forward, he has focused on business and technology reporting for a number of trade journals, beginning when he joined Design News and Modern Materials Handling magazines. Ames is author of the trail guide "Hiking Massachusetts" and is a graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism.
Officials at the Port of Los Angeles are seeking more partners to share shipping data with their online cargo tracking pOréal following news that GE Transportation will expand the pilot project into a $12 million, five-year program and provide a secure network to handle the information flow.
The expansion is the latest step by industrial giant General Electric Co. to flex its muscle as a provider of supply chain technology. Over the past year, GE has acquired firms that provide cloud-based logistics collaboration and three-dimensional printing, and partnered with German I.T. giant SAP SE on an Internet of Things (IoT) project.
GE, which launched a two-month test of the pOréal in May, said the pilot was a success. However, to reach its full potential the system needs to enlist a greater number of stakeholders across the seagoing supply chain, port officials said Tuesday. GE and the port have said the pOréal would allow beneficial cargo owners (BCOs) and container line companies to share online data and gain advanced visibility of incoming cargo.
"Our goal of increasing the line of sight from a couple days to more than a week was successful, but the limiting factor was that it was a pilot and had limited sample size," Port of Los Angeles Marketing Manager Chris Chase said in an interview. "The response was 'This was a great start; I need more'."
If approved by the Los Angeles City Council, the expanded agreement would support some nine million TEUs (20-foot shipping containers), more than 15,000 truck providers, and thousands of cargo importers, the company said.
However, the port will have to convince supply chain players to share their data, a pitch that could be a difficult sell in an industry that traditionally guards its shipping statistics carefully and where rival firms often find their cargo sitting side by side on the same dock.
The port will address those privacy and competition concerns by relying on GE's Predix industrial internet and data analytics platform, which is designed to support the high security and large volume of data required, Chase said. "This is not a public website; different pieces of the supply chain have segregated data," he said. "If you sign on as a trucker, you only see information related to your trucks. And if you're shipping line A, when you log in, will see only your data, not lines C, D, and E."
New participants in the pOréal could include a wide range of supply chain providers. The original pilot included one terminal operator, three chassis providers, two steamship lines—Danish carrier Maersk Line and Swiss carrier Mediterranean Shipping Co. (MSC)—and various trucking and rail industry firms and BCOs, Chase said. The planned expansion would add the Port of Los Angeles' remaining six terminal operators and another dozen steamship lines, he said.
Once those players have agreed to trust the pOréal with their data, the process of joining the network requires a simple technical change in which they open up a new connection to their standard data interchange, Chase said. "The baseline building block is the data they send to Customs anyway; the information that by law they have to send in before the ship sails overseas," he said.
Much of that data can already be found on dozens of various websites, but the GE pOréal will collect it in a single online repository that allows users to see the information faster and gain precious time to react to changes, he said. "We're trying to marry the digital world with the existing world, to cut through the two weeks of static that now exists, since it takes 13 days for a ship to leave China and get to LA. If you know what's coming at you 7, 8, 9, 10 days out, it makes it easier to put assets in place than if you have 12 hours or 24 hours."
Armed with that advance warning, firms will be able to improve their efficiency, decrease traffic congestion, cut emissions from idling trucks, manage empty containers, locate chassis, and other tasks, he said.
Supply chain planning (SCP) leaders working on transformation efforts are focused on two major high-impact technology trends, including composite AI and supply chain data governance, according to a study from Gartner, Inc.
"SCP leaders are in the process of developing transformation roadmaps that will prioritize delivering on advanced decision intelligence and automated decision making," Eva Dawkins, Director Analyst in Gartner’s Supply Chain practice, said in a release. "Composite AI, which is the combined application of different AI techniques to improve learning efficiency, will drive the optimization and automation of many planning activities at scale, while supply chain data governance is the foundational key for digital transformation.”
Their pursuit of those roadmaps is often complicated by frequent disruptions and the rapid pace of technological innovation. But Gartner says those leaders can accelerate the realized value of technology investments by facilitating a shift from IT-led to business-led digital leadership, with SCP leaders taking ownership of multidisciplinary teams to advance business operations, channels and products.
“A sound data governance strategy supports advanced technologies, such as composite AI, while also facilitating collaboration throughout the supply chain technology ecosystem,” said Dawkins. “Without attention to data governance, SCP leaders will likely struggle to achieve their expected ROI on key technology investments.”
The British logistics robot vendor Dexory this week said it has raised $80 million in venture funding to support an expansion of its artificial intelligence (AI) powered features, grow its global team, and accelerate the deployment of its autonomous robots.
A “significant focus” continues to be on expanding across the U.S. market, where Dexory is live with customers in seven states and last month opened a U.S. headquarters in Nashville. The Series B will also enhance development and production facilities at its UK headquarters, the firm said.
The “series B” funding round was led by DTCP, with participation from Latitude Ventures, Wave-X and Bootstrap Europe, along with existing investors Atomico, Lakestar, Capnamic, and several angels from the logistics industry. With the close of the round, Dexory has now raised $120 million over the past three years.
Dexory says its product, DexoryView, provides real-time visibility across warehouses of any size through its autonomous mobile robots and AI. The rolling bots use sensor and image data and continuous data collection to perform rapid warehouse scans and create digital twins of warehouse spaces, allowing for optimized performance and future scenario simulations.
Originally announced in September, the move will allow Deutsche Bahn to “fully focus on restructuring the rail infrastructure in Germany and providing climate-friendly passenger and freight transport operations in Germany and Europe,” Werner Gatzer, Chairman of the DB Supervisory Board, said in a release.
For its purchase price, DSV gains an organization with around 72,700 employees at over 1,850 locations. The new owner says it plans to investment around one billion euros in coming years to promote additional growth in German operations. Together, DSV and Schenker will have a combined workforce of approximately 147,000 employees in more than 90 countries, earning pro forma revenue of approximately $43.3 billion (based on 2023 numbers), DSV said.
After removing that unit, Deutsche Bahn retains its core business called the “Systemverbund Bahn,” which includes passenger transport activities in Germany, rail freight activities, operational service units, and railroad infrastructure companies. The DB Group, headquartered in Berlin, employs around 340,000 people.
“We have set clear goals to structurally modernize Deutsche Bahn in the areas of infrastructure, operations and profitability and focus on the core business. The proceeds from the sale will significantly reduce DB’s debt and thus make an important contribution to the financial stability of the DB Group. At the same time, DB Schenker will gain a strong strategic owner in DSV,” Deutsche Bahn CEO Richard Lutz said in a release.
Transportation industry veteran Anne Reinke will become president & CEO of trade group the Intermodal Association of North America (IANA) at the end of the year, stepping into the position from her previous post leading third party logistics (3PL) trade group the Transportation Intermediaries Association (TIA), both organizations said today.
Meanwhile, TIA today announced that insider Christopher Burroughs would fill Reinke’s shoes as president & CEO. Burroughs has been with TIA for 13 years, most recently as its vice president of Government Affairs for the past six years, during which time he oversaw all legislative and regulatory efforts before Congress and the federal agencies.
Before her four years leading TIA, Reinke spent two years as Deputy Assistant Secretary with the U.S. Department of Transportation and 16 years with CSX Corporation.
Serious inland flooding and widespread power outages are likely to sweep across Florida and other Southeast states in coming days with the arrival of Hurricane Helene, which is now predicted to make landfall Thursday evening along Florida’s northwest coast as a major hurricane, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
While the most catastrophic landfall impact is expected in the sparsely-population Big Bend area of Florida, it’s not only sea-front cities that are at risk. Since Helene is an “unusually large storm,” its flooding, rainfall, and high winds won’t be limited only to the Gulf Coast, but are expected to travel hundreds of miles inland, the weather service said. Heavy rainfall is expected to begin in the region even before the storm comes ashore, and the wet conditions will continue to move northward into the southern Appalachians region through Friday, dumping storm total rainfall amounts of up to 18 inches. Specifically, the major flood risk includes the urban areas around Tallahassee, metro Atlanta, and western North Carolina.
In addition to its human toll, the storm could exert serious business impacts, according to the supply chain mapping and monitoring firm Resilinc. Those will be largely triggered by significant flooding, which could halt oil operations, force mandatory evacuations, restrict ports, and disrupt air traffic.
While the storm’s track is currently forecast to miss the critical ports of Miami and New Orleans, it could still hurt operations throughout the Southeast agricultural belt, which produces products like soybeans, cotton, peanuts, corn, and tobacco, according to Everstream Analytics.
That widespread footprint could also hinder supply chain and logistics flows along stretches of interstate highways I-10 and I-75 and on regional rail lines operated by Norfolk Southern and CSX. And Hurricane Helene could also likely impact business operations by unleashing power outages, deep flooding, and wind damage in northern Florida portions of Georgia, Everstream Analytics said.
Before the storm had even touched Florida soil, recovery efforts were already being launched by humanitarian aid group the American Logistics Aid Network (ALAN). In a statement on Wednesday, the group said it is urging residents in the storm's path across the Southeast to heed evacuation notices and safety advisories, and reminding members of the logistics community that their post-storm help could be needed soon. The group will continue to update its Disaster Micro-Site with Hurricane Helene resources and with requests for donated logistics assistance, most of which will start arriving within 24 to 72 hours after the storm’s initial landfall, ALAN said.