6/26

Journal of Commerce reports on how the shipping industry is not adapting to the new demands of ecommerce.

The main challenge is in communications, he said. “Vendors are trying to get product from the port faster, but the communications layer is broken. They’re using a lot of work-arounds,” he said. For example, building inventory stockpiles inland and shuttling freight to stores. 

“They’re doing that because they can’t guarantee they’ll meet a must-arrive-by deadline,” McCandless said. The blind spot on inbound freight can be quite big. “We’re working with one large U.S. retailer that has a 30 percent black hole on inbound tracking,” McCandless said. 

Where are the communications connections broken? Pick your location. The transfer of a container from ship to shore is one data problem point: When will a container be unloaded, where will it be stacked and when can it be pulled by a drayage operator?
As a shipment heads inland, how are dray deliveries scheduled? Are shippers notified when a container has been deconsolidated and when a truckload or intermodal shipment has been dispatched? How are landside shipments tracked in-transit? How are delivery appointments scheduled at inland distribution centers? Are shippers alerted when a less-than-truckload shipment is dispatched to a store or factory? How is data transferred for last-mile deliveries? 

...“The industry needs to fundamentally rethink how it does business and not just try to out-Amazon Amazon,” said Richard Metzler, chief marketing officer at uShip, an online transportation marketplace. “All the retailers are struggling to figure out what to do against Amazon. There’s too much inventory from a cost and service point of view. It has to change.”

The article gives especially helpful attention to the tendency to assume that effective information-sharing requires something akin to Electronic Data Interchange (EDI).  More often all that's needed to facilitate hand-offs across demand and supply networks are a set of thin Application Program Interfaces (APIs).  EDI requires the intimacy -- and complications -- of sex.  API is more like a friendly kiss.