Author Archives: just2bruce

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INTTRA urges industry-led standards for containers and logistics

Lee Hong Liang has written an interesting article about the call for standards in maritime documentation.   To my view, it’s no doubt needed badly, and has been for years.  The desires of maritime operators to work as local optimizers has hurt their presence in supply chains, which are the ultimate cooperative enterprise.  That won’t do any more, especially with supply chains themselves changing so fast in the light of trade wars and operating location changes.

Devolution of supply chains is occurring, if I can borrow a word from the port governance literature.  Now they are more focused on insuring end to end performance rather than perpetuating themselves to get ‘volume’. There are too many external factors driving changes.  Trump’s trade wars are just the ultimate hyper-push to this trend.

Apparently INTTRA has been purchased by another firm, so it remains to be seen how much impact this will have.  But the effort is much appreciated.

 

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via INTTRA urges industry-led standards for containers and logistics

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Posted on November 28, 2018 in Logistics, Production Operations, Shipping, Supply Chains

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CMA CGM and CEVA detail tie-up

Chris Dupin has an interesting article in the most recent American Shipper.  CMA/CGM is trying to buy a majority interest in CEVA, the 3PL firm based in Switzerland.   CEVA has been the target of another buyout effort by DSV, another 3PL.  the time was certainly ripe for a consolidation in both the 3PL and the maritime transport space.  This merger or combination is another attempt to deepen the reach of a maritime company into downstream supply chain management.

Like all of these mergers, we’ll have to see if it works out, and if the combination succeeds in improving results for shippers and receivers of goods.  But for me it is  a step in the right direction for a maritime company.  If you try to tackle the downstream problems, you will start to understand how to improve and deliver more value.  Whether a purchase is the best route is an open question, but it is certainly a good try.

The article also points out that CMA/CGM is innovating in other ways now.  It has an in-house incubator, ZeBox, of small concerns that have ideas for improvements. It’s moving ahead on tracking containers and monitoring some of the risk conditions they face while traveling; and it is making some investment in bill of lading improvements through a blockchain technology project with BuyCo, another startup.  These are certainly ways to get innovators thinking about the maritime supply chain problems.  Who winds up with the rents is yet to be determined.

 

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via CMA CGM and CEVA detail their tie-up

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Posted on November 26, 2018 in Leadership, Logistics, Shipping, Strategy, Supply Chains

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Six operators join to form the UK’s largest logistics company

Alex Lennane has written in the Loadstar about the merger or assimilation of six UK diverse logistics firms under one management.  Perhaps this is what’s necessary to get firms to work together– a bigger hammer.  If they cannot learn to do it on their own, let’s put them together under one management.

However, this approach is fraught with issues. Most mergers do not reach the state of grace they envisioned, because of resistance to change within.  And much of the value of a firm is in its people, and their skills at dealing with the countless exceptions that mark any business.   Another is the heterogeneity of the businesses– every firm in a merger thinks their way of doing something has to work that way for them.  It might not be true, or it might, but even thinking it draws boundaries that can take considerable effort to crack.

We will have to see if this new management structure generates rewards the size the PE firm expects.  Of course if they just make something big enough to sell publicly with temporary results, that will be enough for them to make their money and pass the risk on.

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via PE firm puts six operators together to form the UK’s largest logistics company – The Loadstar

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Posted on November 23, 2018 in Logistics, Production Operations, Strategy, Supply Chains, Trucking

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