With years of experience in Lean operating principles behind it, Menlo Worldwide Logistics, the global logistics subsidiary of Con-way Inc., is using that experience to launch Menlo Transportation Services.
The next-generation transportation management portfolio is designed to deliver optimized solutions that remove waste, create efficiencies, and introduce Lean continuous improvement processes to transportation network operations. The company is offering the services to help its customers engineer more efficient supply chains, both regionally and globally, it says.
"Transportation networks and the operating costs they generate are one of the largest expenditure areas for any supply chain," says Robert L. Bianco Jr., president. "And while we have managed transportation capacity for our customers since Menlo's inception, the difference today is that customers want more specific capabilities and solutions, with rapid deployment and faster cost-saving results."
Within the portfolio are two primary offerings: solution engineering and transportation management.
"They want proven best practices, coupled with experienced people using the latest systems to plan, optimize, execute, measure and improve their transportation processes as a whole, across the full gamut from sourcing to settlement, or at the individual node level," says Bianco. "And they want it delivered as an outsourced, flexible service that can scale to their needs and flows in the supply chain. That's what Menlo Transportation Services will do."
Menlo's solution engineering experts will help create more efficient, faster, and more reliable transportation networks by:
- Benchmarking and understanding the current state of transportation networks;
- Identifying areas of waste and inefficiency by using Lean tools and methodologies;
- Design, test and optimize alternative operating models and transportation network designs;
- Develop and implement a road map and timeline to deploy redesigns and/or introduce network improvements;
- Measure and evaluate the new operating model to ensure projected benefits are being captured, where shortfalls exist, identify root causes of failure, develop and deploy corrective actions.
The transportation management will:
- Evaluate and source transportation resources, manage freight transportation contracts and rates;
- Create value and operating synergies with transportation service providers;
- Tender and manage freight shipments, and confirm acceptance of planned shipments by carriers across all modes, including status of multiple events in the transport cycle from pickup, to in-transit monitoring through delivery;
- Integrate product and order information (such as sales or purchase orders) with transportation data and documents to provide a single, holistic view of goods in transit, with visibility to product orders as well as transportation transactions;
- Settle and pay freight charges, and audit charges against contract rates;
- Track and manage claims for short, damaged or missing shipments;
- Generate performance analytics and business intelligence on transportation spend and service metrics to drive additional predictive modeling, qualitative measurement and gap analysis to identify, validate and implement continuous improvement opportunities.
