Technology from Logistics Management Solutions expected to reduce freight costs, improve data management and visibility
St. Louis, MO — March 30, 2006 — Danbury, Conn.-based Honeywell Consumer Products Group (CPG), which specializes in motor vehicle parts and accessories, has implemented Logistics Management Solutions' (LMS) Web-enabled transportation management system.
TOTAL was implemented in less than 90 days and is expected to further reduce transportation costs and improve data management and freight visibility for the CPG, which was looking for an effective way to manage its over-the-road transportation activities.
The LMS system operates within an on-demand, or application service provider (ASP), environment, enabling the Honeywell company to reap the benefits of transportation management technology without large upfront costs or a system commitment.
Honeywell found the implementation process to be practically seamless, said Michael Lee, logistics specialist for Honeywell CPG. We immediately realized the benefits of the optimizer, which has dramatically increased the productivity of our transportation planning staff.
The group's transportation personnel, who work at branch locations in Hebron, Ky., and Fernley, Nev., use TOTAL to perform freight optimization, freight rating, load planning, load tendering, tracking and tracing, and data management. Key components include a high-speed optimization engine that evaluates order data to exploit opportunities for freight consolidation, aggregation, pooling and cross-docking, as well as other cost-cutting strategies. The engine also employs customized parameters to guarantee Honeywell's safety and service directives are never compromised.
Regardless of marketplace conditions, freight optimization continues to be an effective means of lowering transportation costs, said Dennis Schoemehl, CEO and president of LMS. Freight optimization tactics are not new, but when they are combined with a robust on-demand system, shippers are able to reach a level of savings that was just not possible before.
Additionally, TOTAL's rating engine is tailored to assign carriers according to a CPG-defined hierarchy that considers their customers' preferred carriers, the group's preferred carriers and other quality, low-cost transportation providers. To minimize inbound costs, Honeywell suppliers access TOTAL through a secure Internet site and submit orders for pre-paid collect shipments. The shipments are then routed and dispatched by CPG planners using TOTAL.
Preferred carrier compliance and cost savings are monitored through the system's data management module, which creates a variety of standard, customized and ad-hoc reports. Authorized personnel also use TOTAL to perform online tracking and tracing.
TOTAL regularly interfaces with Honeywell CPG's warehouse management system (WMS) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) system to facilitate a data cycle that ensures optimal visibility. LMS' TOTAL uses Microsoft's BizTalk Server to exchange information with virtually any type of data management system.
