SAP demo of blockchain leveraged in an international ocean shipping scenario

Leverage SAP to track shipments

If your business involves selling product then inevitably you need to move that product, whether it be from your suppliers to you, or from you to your customers. If that is the case then you will also be interested in knowing how those movements, or shipments, are doing.

If they are experiencing a delay then it could potentially impact the promise you made to your customer... If the goods are delayed on route to your warehouse then you could potentially impact the plan for the warehouse folks who may have arranged a special shift to receive the goods in...

Wouldn't it be nice to know that the plan that was laid out up front was being followed? We can't force our suppliers to comply but there are ways to measure compliance and react to deviations to the plan just as soon as you are made aware of them. How can we accomplish that?

U.S.-bound shipments post strong gains in April, reports Panjiva - Article from Supply Chain Management Review

Data recently issued by global trade data provider Panjiva showed annual and sequential gains for United States-bound waterborne shipments in April.

April shipments at 950,408 saw a 9.7% gain on an annual basis, which Panjiva said represents the fastest rate of growth going back to February 2016, and comes on the heels of a 8.7% annual gain in April that led to a 17.3% annual increase in the U.S. trade deficit.

Panjiva cited various factors for April’s strong performance, including:

• China and European shipments rising 16.4% and 16.1%, respectively;
• Chinese customs data reporting a 12% increase in the dollar value of goods shipped in April, with some arriving in May;
• shipment gains from Europe mark a return to double-digit growth and its fastest rate of expansion since August 2016; and
• imports from South Korea, where the U.S. is threatening to renegotiate the KORUS (U.S. - Korea Free Trade Agreement) saw its second straight month of declines, down 10.6%;

Read the full article here

Internet of Trains: SAP kits Trenitalia trains with hundreds of sensors | IT PRO

"Trenitalia reboots maintenance and engineering using the IoT, which partner SAP believes is a sign of the next industrial revolution.

 The sunny Italian countryside rattles by at 350km an hour, but it’s not the speeds alone that make Trenitalia’s Frecciarossa trains impressive – it’s the hundreds of sensors beaming 5,000 data points a second into the cloud. 

 Trenitalia is working with SAP to harvest and process that data to completely reimagine train maintenance. At the moment, trains are pulled off the rails for a check-up after a certain number of kilometres or a set amount of time – not unlike taking your car in for an MOT. That takes trains out of service even when they don’t have a fault, costing Trenitalia unnecessarily. By slapping sensors onto every measurable component or part – from the engine to the passenger Wi-Fi – the Italian train firm hopes to not only be able to switch to maintenance when necessary, rather than at a set time, but to predict problems and fix them before they start. “It’s a new way to approach maintenance, better understand the business and intervene when necessary,” said Barbara Morgante, CEO of Trenitalia."

Read full article here

Supply Chain Execution with SAP software

In this three-minute video, Markus Rosemann, VP Solution Management, Supply Chain Execution, SAP, talks about SAP solutions for logistics and fulfillment. Learn more about SAP solutions for Transportation Management, Warehouse Management, and Track & Trace.

SAP® Vehicle Insights Drives the Digital Transformation of Connected Vehicles

SAP® Vehicle Insights Drives the Digital Transformation of Connected Vehicles: "SAP® Vehicle Insights, an application that offers a variety of services to manage connected vehicles, including basic data analytics that can be used for fleet analytics, vehicle diagnostics and mobility-as-a-service scenarios, pushing live mobility to the next level. It enables companies to use information about entire fleets and car-specific key data like gear recognition, fuel stops, scores for economical driving or heat mapping to improve not only the management of their fleets but also of individual vehicles. With predictive maintenance functions for mileage and tire wear, repairs can be planned more efficiently, thus reducing costs. "

NFI Chooses MacroPoint for Load Tracking

MacroPoint, creators of patented freight tracking software designed to give 3rd party visibility into load status, today announced that NFI, a fully integrated supply chain solutions provider, has implemented its solution to enhance load tracking capabilities within its brokerage service offering.

“We chose MacroPoint to fill a gap in the track and trace function of our business,” said David Broering, SVP, Integrated Solutions at NFI. “MacroPoint gives us another tool to use to provide our carrier partners with options for updating us with the location of the loads they’re hauling. With MacroPoint we will also be able to track more loads with the same number of people, allowing us to scale our business faster without having to incur additional overhead costs.”

NFI, headquartered in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, is a privately held company that provides dedicated transportation, warehousing, intermodal, brokerage, transportation management, global, real estate, and trailer storage services. The more than $1.1 billion operation has 25 million square feet of warehouse and distribution space and a company-owned fleet of over 2,000 tractors and 8,200 trailers, operated by more than 2,600 company drivers and 250 owner operators.

Activated on the mobile phones of drivers hired by NFI’s carrier partners, MacroPoint’s location tracking software provides load status and location visibility. With MacroPoint, the company now has real-time location tracking, on-time delivery monitoring, and arrival/departure notifications, eliminating the need for third parties to check in to receive load status reports.

Read full press release here: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2015/05/prweb12741478.htm

Identification Of Pharma Cases In The U.S. - Dirk Rodgers

Article from Dirk Rodgers - "Last week I discussed controversy over the use of GS1’s Serial Shipping Container Code (SSCC) in the Brazil pharma supply chain to meet regulatory requirements imposed by ANVISA. But there are different controversies, or at least potential confusion, in the U.S. pharma supply chain surrounding case labels, and some of those are relate to the SSCC and its use. 

A case product identification label is the label a manufacturer usually places on each homogeneous case at case-packing time to identify what is inside the corrugated box. A “homogenous case” is a case that contains units from a single NDC and all units are from a single packaging lot. The product identification label should not be confused with a shipping/logistics label, which, if it exists, is applied at the time of shipment and contains information about the destination.

Typically, cases that are shipped from a higher-volume manufacturer to a larger wholesale distributor will be placed onto a pallet. The pallet often has cases of multiple products, and even different homogeneous cases of the same product can contain different lot numbers. You can sometimes even find a Non-homogeneous case mixed in with the homogeneous cases. Further, cases on the same pallet can actually be fulfilling different purchase orders submitted by the buyer. All of these variations complicate the job of the receiving clerk." - Read full article at RxTrace.com

SAP Event Management Use Cases – Part 1

I often get asked how we can leverage SAP Event Management functionality. This is a great question because, after all, SAP EM is a tool that is delivered with SAP to provide end-to-end business process visibility and exception management. Much like you would leverage a workflow solution to enforce certain activities to take place at […]


https://qdatausa.wordpress.com/2014/09/23/sap-em-use-cases/