St. Louis, MO — October 11, 2005 — KRATON Polymers LLC (KRATON), a Houston, Texas-based specialty chemicals company with annual revenues of more than $800 million, said it has selected Logistics Management Solutions (LMS) to provide it with transportation management services and technology.
LMS said it will direct KRATON's outbound domestic freight operations, which entail truckload and less-than-truckload shipments traveling to KRATON customers throughout North America.
Additionally, authorized KRATON personnel will use LMS' transportation management system (TMS), TOTAL, to track and trace shipments via the Internet and produce carrier utilization and performance reports. LMS is also responsible for negotiating KRATON's carrier rates.
"Our partnership with LMS was a result of the changing marketplace in the trucking industry," said John Branch, logistics manager for KRATON. "The ability to expand our contract carrier base to ensure coverage of our customer shipments at the lowest possible cost, without adding to staff or investing in systems technology, was a strategic decision by KRATON. The benefits were quickly realized as the economy expanded and truck capacity could not keep up with the market."
KRATON's enterprise resource planning (ERP) system sends daily shipping orders to TOTAL, which uses Microsoft's BizTalk Server to exchange data with other systems. LMS planners use this data to plan and execute outbound freight shipments. LMS updates TOTAL with shipping and carrier information, enabling KRATON to access information 24 hours a day, seven days a week through the Internet.
LMS http://www.lmslogistics.com
KRATON Polymers http://www.KRATON.com
