Technology is a hot topic across the logistics industry. While some folks remain wary of next- generation solutions, the most innovative companies have embraced these solutions as a means of creating a more connected and efficient supply chain.
Industry leader XPO Logistics is certainly in the latter category. In fact, the company has invested a staggering $3 billion in technology across the organization over the last decade. What’s more, XPO’s technology initiatives are differentiated by their own proprietary, in-house tools.
XPO has built state-of-the-art solutions for several different parts of the supply chain, including linehaul, pick-up and delivery, dock operations and pricing. Most recently, the company announced its new piece-level tracking (PLT) tool.
“Piece-level tracking allows XPO to provide greater visibility across individual components within LTL shipments,” said Jay Silberkleit, senior vice president of technology at XPO. “An LTL shipment is made up of multiple pieces, and they don’t all move at the same time. With PLT, we give a unique identifier to each of those pieces.”
Historically, each individual piece in an LTL shipment has been issued the same identifier. This common approach makes it difficult to quickly identify where each piece of the shipment is located at any given time, increasing the risk of delays and reduced visibility. By assigning unique identifiers to each piece, XPO is able to provide more granular real-time visibility information and identify potential issues and optimizations sooner.
This new, cutting-edge offering has already started giving XPO employees and customers greater confidence in tracking LTL shipments, according to Silberkleit.
“We’ve talked to a lot of large shippers, and they’re really excited about this increased visibility,” Silberkleit said. “Our machine learning models are actually really happy too because now that we have this information on a more granular level, we can optimize those models.”
In addition to providing greater visibility today, the data accumulated from piece-level tracking will also help XPO build a framework for future applications and broaden the scope of existing applications.