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How holy is the Grail of Real-Time in Supply Chain?

A transportation management system (TMS) helps companies move freight from origin to destination efficiently, reliably, and cost effectively. In a TMS survey, ARC found that respondents indicated freight savings of approximately 6 percent with the use of a TMS application.
TMS achieve these savings based on process enforcement, visibility, analytics, and optimization.
Whereas process enforcement and optimization are based on visibility and analytics – any visibility benefits or any analytics functionality is only as good as the data quality and the currentness of data processed.
Capgemini also indicates, that the demand for global visibility is increasing and that shippers want to know where everything is located across the entire supply chain at any given point. Shippers today are still challenged by disparate systems, an obstacle no serious global shipper can afford.
The conclusion is: real-time data is key in order to achieve visibility, analytics, optimization and process enforcement. Real-time is the grail in supply chain.

When does the grail become a holy grail?
  • if 10-15% savings could be achieved instead of the above indicated 6% savings
  • if no additional manpower has to be added
  • if no investment in expensive equipment has to be done
  • if getting-up and running can be achieved quickly
  • if the system does it all instead of people


Three success criteria have to be considered:
  1. the “Indiana Jones” willing to find the holy grail is an adventuresome hero (engaged and experienced)
  2. the holy grail should continuously be used to “drink” from (continuous use of data and new processes)
  3. the holy grail should be “ornamented and decorated” more and more over time (sophistication of software)
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