Partial 4.0

The concept of "end-to-end visibility", which we have frequently started to hear in the manufacturing sector, has made the wastes arising in every moment of production visible. Dozens of technology companies established solely to collect information from production lines have started operating in Turkey.

The visibility of every stage in the manufacturing sector has begun to turn into approaches preferred by bosses as well, in terms of costs reduced by waste combatting methods (lean production, etc.). In this context, seeing Industry 4.0 evolve from theory to practice in the manufacturing sector is considered promising.

The logistics sector, as its greatest helper, cannot remain indifferent to this revolution taking place in manufacturing. In this article, I tried to briefly discuss the less-than-truckload (LTL) transport method, which will experience one of the most important areas of this change.

Making LTL efficient against complexity

With the manufacturing sector becoming flexible, the increasing complexity has begun to force supply chains to be planned without inventory and in a continuous flow. In order to follow the variable and dynamic structure created by a supply chain in continuous flow, it has become essential to design different approaches and methods.

Undoubtedly, the first structure affected by this modern SC rule has been LTL transport. Driver bottlenecks, fluctuating demand structure, ELD regulations (Tachograph), transport vehicle optimization problems, and many unlisted external factors have started to make LTL transport expensive and unsustainable.

With the rise of e-commerce, people have started to order everything from toothbrushes to shoes online and expect the products they ordered to arrive undamaged and on time the next day.

To achieve this, the ability to load the products of dozens of customers onto the same truck, dozens of different invoice addressees, multiple stops and transfer hubs, different modes of transport, interactions of hazardous materials, and constraints imposed by customer-specific demands have made LTL transport expensive, difficult to manage, yet highly essential.

In addition, especially starting with air freight, data sharing (API) that makes the costs of many carriers and transport intermediaries visible has led cargo owners to lean towards establishing their own organizations to reduce the aforementioned costs.

Software offering LTL solutions and platforms digitizing this process from start to finish have also begun to provide cargo owners with significant knowledge and capabilities to organize their own LTL operations.

A cargo owner in America and Europe, shipping hundreds of different loads to multiple addresses every day, can collect bids from these technology platforms and manage their operations by making quick decisions.

The traditional way to make any cargo shipment is to constantly work with the same companies. Apart from this, the best method is to receive bids for each cargo, reach out to the right carriers, and select the firm to which the load will be given by operating decision mechanisms such as the best, fastest, cheapest, and most reliable. This method, however, is highly laborious and costly without using technology.

The Navlungo platform, which we began developing in June 2017, allows you to collect bids based on your criteria for a more effective management of your LTL cargoes.

You manage your bids from a single source, compare the companies as you wish, and choose the one that suits you best. After purchasing, you manage the process until your cargo is delivered from the platform.

Our smart pricing platform, which we continue to develop with our team, will be at your service very soon.