Chicago: DSC Logistics has announced several key transportation initiatives designed to expand the company's role as an industry leader. The heightened focus on transportation follows two years of dramatic growth in DSC's transportation business volume.
According to Ken Heller, senior vice president, Supply Chain Excellence, who was recently named to lead DSC's transportation teams: "Working in collaborative partnerships with customers has identified opportunities for DSC to take not only a broader role -- as we currently do with Lead Logistics Partner responsibilities for a number of customers -- but also to expand our capabilities for specific transportation modes and models, including direct store delivery."
Heller's responsibilities will include: heading up a newly formed DSC Transportation Council that will focus on service and growth with existing customers and new customers through supply chain optimization, solutions development and continual improvement. DSC's other leading transportation experts also will be members of the Council.
Other initiatives include:
- Addition of transportation professional Justin Zubrod to DSC's Advisory Board of Directors. Zubrod brings more than 30 years of experience working with transportation companies as a consultant with Booz & Company and A.T. Kearney and as founder and principal of his own firm, Justin Zubrod & Associates.
- Re-design of DSC's Transportation Center, where transportation experts collaborate in real time on customers' networks and shipments, with access to live streams of information on schedules and conditions.
Heller explained the increased concentration on transportation by saying: "DSC has established a reputation as one of the nation's leading supply chain management firms, based mostly on the excellence of our warehousing operations and the strength of our strategic partnerships. While we have provided integrated solutions for more than forty years, transportation is an important area of growth because by being a multi-modal, full service transportation provider with expanded capabilities, we will address a wider range of our customers' needs and circumstances with greater cost-effectiveness."
DSC was founded as Dry Storage Corporation in 1960 in a single warehouse on the South Side of Chicago by James McIlrath. Within five years of the founding, McIlrath was dissatisfied with the transportation services available to his warehousing customers, so he bought a trucking company and continued to expand into new geographies and new areas of service.
McIlrath's daughter, Ann Drake, has served as CEO of the company since 1994 and has built the company into one of the nation's leading supply chain management firms.
