FEEDBACK DETAIL:

Feedback of the week - on Integrating TMS with WMS and SCP systems:

 .... but waiting until now gave me a chance to see what people had to say. That viewpoint echoes something that I have been saying about TMS, WMS, Order Management, and many other Supply Chain systems. It is all integrated, and the integration is different for every company, industry, and region.

Speaking from what I see for the logistics for an "A" level retailer, Demand Forecasting, PO Creation, Inbound TMS, EDI, Store Order Management, WMS and TMS all have to have some sort of integration layer. Does Demand Planning and Forecasting have to integrate with the outbound TMS? No, but it should integrate with the inbound TMS functions for strategic/tactical planning and cost analysis. Does PO Creation have to Integrate with Store Order Management? No, but store-order processing data, better feed back into the Demand Forecasting. So the decision that has to be made is do you create direct link connections between each application, or do you create a "data bus" layer that carries the data for integration to all applications, and only the information needed from the bus is dropped into the application(s).

One of the real stinky challenges that we have is that we use the contract dedicated fleets that deliver to our stores for vendor backhauls. The question is should that process be controlled by the inbound or outbound TMS? The process is an inbound function, but because we want to use the available capacity in the outbound fleet to bring goods back to the servicing DC, the function really lives in the outbound TMS. Now, lets introduce another layer of complexity, where I want to pick up all PO's for all Distribution Centers as a backhaul pickup, processing the other DC freight into TL consolidation for shipment. Today we make a static decision to route a vendor in a fixed method (this vendor is a x-dock consol vendor) and make changes when the vendor has more than 3/4 of a TL to go to another DC. At best - reactive.

Anyway you look at the problem, you come back to a strong need for an integrated solution. If you do not see the need for integration, you either have a very simple supply chain to manage, or have not looked at the problem long enough, or both. Because of the wide variety of

WMS/TMS/OM/SCM needs and processes created by all of the diversity of business structures out there, I doubt that there will ever be enough "critical mass" for a software vendor to create a truly integrated platform. So what the IT folks of each trading partner will need to do is create that integration layer I speak about, both for the internal systems and with the external systems. The EDI protocols that are out there are the first steps of defining that external integration level, and can be used to create the internal layers that are needed.

Three years ago when I was first thinking of an integrated DF/TMS/OM/WMS/TMS process I thought about the number of vendors that were EDI capable and the ones that were not. I was about ready to turn my back on EDI when the EDI manager of one of our key LTL carriers made the blunt statement to me that IF I wanted the carriers to "play my game" that I needed to stick with the EDI protocols. Her point was that the carriers have made a significant investment into EDI, and that while some players are able to do more, that they all can do EDI. To do something

"non-standard" would not be supported by many of the carriers.

Some solutions out there for Inbound TMS use a web site for the vendor to enter the PO and pickup information. Great for the vendors that are not EDI, but what about the vendors that are EDI? If you do not have the ability to integrate that EDI information, then you are missing the boat.

David Schneider

Pep Boys

More on RFID compliance parallels:

The SSCC 18 or more commonly known as UCC-128 shipping label is a compliant label - as long as the Vendor Relations department of a retailer feels it meets its needs.

It is a voluntary standard which changes by retailer / by division (in some cases) but is guarantied to change without notice once a year. Many companies are paying tens of thousands of dollars a "month" in charge backs because they cannot keep up with the changes or it is impossible to make them.

I hope that RFID formatting is a mandatory standard and all industries comply without variance.

Dan Castiglione

Carters

On "High price of doing business in China":

The article on the cost of doing business with China had an outstanding message. I ran into this problem 15 years ago when we were opening up a JV in Beijing for imaging products manufacture. The Chinese really restricted us at that time to have 80% local manufacture. This ultimately had to include some high technology content. In that case it was for sale of product within their own country. They are all about gaining control of product know-how. They aren't going to be content with just doing the machining.

Excellent analogy to Japan's practice much earlier.

I think the problem is that there is so much pressure to compete with lower production costs, seize the present cost advantage, that US companies don't have the backbone to "just say no" to giving away the intellectual capital that will ultimately haunt them downstream. We shouldn't assume that the Chinese won't eventually begin to produce competitive state-of-the-art solutions themselves. They are quite capable of becoming innovative.

Erv Bluemner

RedPrairie