Freight system facilitates collaboration along the supply chain

Reducing the cost of logistics is the clear objective of every participant in the supply chain – and collaboration by all parties to identify areas of optimisation and cost reduction is increasingly being recognised as the means to this end. “Collaboration,” explains Glenn Lawson, head of customer services at Core Freight Systems, “implies the sharing of information – and the efficient sharing of this data is generally a function of the information technology systems in place along the chain. “This data should provide input to the decisions and subsequent action taken to optimise the movement of the goods,” he told FTW. Supply chain executives should therefore be examining the attributes of the IT systems used within their areas of responsibility, says Lawson, “whether reviewing the system endto- end or in the usage of the internal applications within their own organisations – and which are required to contribute to the overall supply chain.” Core Freight Systems provides a comprehensive software package for South African freight forwarding and customs clearing operations. “The application is designed to realise not only efficiencies in the traditional forwarding and clearing processing within an organisation, but to facilitate the interaction with other relevant third party applications in the overall supply chain as required. This enables their clients to participate through “collaboration” in order to optimise the logistics supply chain. This is achieved primarily through two modules of the CoreFreight suite, CoreQuery and CoreXchange,” says Lawson. CoreQuery is an on-line internetbased application which shows the updated status of all shipments as processed through the CoreFreight application. The CoreXchange functionality is designed to accommodate the efficient import and export of data from the CoreFreight database itself, he added.