Dallas: For the fifth consecutive year, Transplace, a leading provider of transportation management services and logistics technology, held its annual CPG Summit with top ranked consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies – facilitating a forum for like customers to discuss top of mind issues.
Clement Pappas hosted the event at its Carney Points, NJ headquarters and transportation leaders from Del Monte, Colgate-Palmolive, Sunny Delight and Phillips participated in the day-long event where collaborative transportation management best practices was a major focus among other timely topics, including: system enhancements, improving service performance metrics, benchmarking and 2012 freight bid strategy and market outlook.
With transportation as the common denominator, Transplace created this event five years ago to bring together leading CPG customers to discuss important issues and set an actionable agenda that matches their needs. One area of interest – appearing on the agenda each year – was collaboration and attendees shared best practices of collaborative transportation management including: co-shipping, dedicated fleets and multi-party bids.
"The discussions during the CPG Summit around collaboration, benchmarking and strategy are extremely valuable as these talks identify opportunity areas such as multi-party bids and it also drives new improvements in transportation across our business," says Craig Ablin, vice president of supply chain for Clement Pappas. "We recognize the value Transplace brings to the table through technology and service, allowing our collaborative ideas to become reality."
Attendees also discussed how to continue improving service performance metrics. Many have their customers provide a service score card so they can identify and act upon opportunities. In addition, participants voiced their interest in the 2012 freight bid strategy and market outlook.
"We appreciate Clement Pappas hosting this year's CPG Summit and providing a forum for us to listen to our customers, understand their concerns and share strategic insight for making improvements," says George Abernathy, president of logistics at Transplace. "In addition to knowledge gained on our side, our customers learn from peers and the combination of all attendees empowers the group to identify collaborative transportation management that is now an active part of logistics strategy and success."
Participants discussed where they have made investments in marketing and system enhancements based upon savings from freight bids over the last two years. The next factor covered was total product amount, a critical component for success in allowing the management of product lines and infrastructures within existing networks.
Finally, the group expressed interest in receiving more frequent benchmarking across several metrics where specific key performance indicators (KPIs) and assessorial information is highlighted.
