Day two of last week’s Automotive Logistics Europe conference in Bonn, Germany, took the form of workshops where delegates focused on a range of interests including information systems, service parts and the impact of the recession on the logistics and supply chains of tier suppliers.
Discussions focusing on outbound movements revealed that, even in the current market conditions, managing the peaks and troughs of finished vehicle supply was a huge challenge and a source of waste.
LSPs argued that carmakers could help them to act more “intelligently” by sharing forecast information and carmakers observed that greater visibility about routes, loads and capacity was needed to solve wasted capacity.
The group discussing outbound movements also called for IT tools to give this visibility between all parties involved and enable them to use the information at their disposal in an intelligent way.
Towards this, delegates were introduced to a new outbound supply chain solution from Sovereign Business Integration called Event Management Logistics (EML).
The technology uses RFID tagging, barcoding or data entry to capture events as they happen along the entire automotive outbound supply chain and feeds the information back to the EML command and control centre.
Every movement of the vehicles can be monitored across all carriers and handlers over land, sea and rail and during storage in compounds or holding centres through to final delivery.
Carriers can use EML to pre-register arrival at a destination for more efficient loading and throughput. Compound managers can see when a vehicle is due to arrive, and plan ahead to eliminate or reduce waiting times and reduce risk of damage as well as cost.
At the same time, dealerships can plan for the arrival of their vehicles, and offer this as part of an enhanced services package to customers.
According to Sovereign manufacturers are also set to benefit from this improved service, as well as their own use of EML, to manage logistics partner contracts and damage claims.
Commenting on the new solution, Richard Barker, CEO of Sovereign Business Integrations said: "Global manufacturing policies have comprehensively shrunk production costs as they support environmental policies. However, the old-fashioned fragmented approach to automotive supply chain has yet to catch up with the rest of the modern retail world and is exacerbating an already impractical and unfeasibly expensive distribution process.
He went on: “The motor industry's endemic failure to streamline and manage the outbound supply chain is not only adding cost and CO2 emissions but also fundamentally undermining the quality of product delivered to customers. As the economic squeeze continues, the cost and environmental impact of outbound supply chain inefficiencies must become a major concern for the automotive industry."
