Top 10 Tips in managing inbound freight.

Collaborate with other departments to make sure you are managing this "final frontier" of your business: Inbound Freight.

Tip 1 : Talk to your vendors. Ask them what cost, shipping, and efficiency benefits they provide to the customer by using their carriers or schedules. The customer ends up paying either way, so push for carriers that demonstrate service and reliability and not those who move operational inefficiencies from a vendor's dock to the customer's dock.

Tip 2 : You need to set standards for overages, shortages, documentation, and damage in order to avoid unexpected change. For example, All you have to do is specify penalties for these problems in your contract. If the person who owns the freight faces penalties, they will be more likely to solve these issues.

Tip 3 : To find shared metrics, try to get buy-in from the C-suite. They might not speak transportation, so find parameters that are understood there and make this a new initiative. Consider success metrics in terms of product margin, inventory cycle time, and safety stock for logistics.

Tip 4 : Use a transportation management system to make cost-effective business decisions. It can be hard to find the best option between agreement allowances and market rates, so taking into account transportation management systems is recommended.

Tip 5 : With a visualization of inbound vs outbound freight that are local, you will be able to see opportunities for both vendors and transports to share their loaded miles. There may also be lucrative opportunities that can arise from meticulous network or center of gravity studies.

Tip 6 : If a shipment is of less than truck load size, the cost to unload can be more than 5 times that of a single truck. By having your goods shipped using third-party logistics and a target company, you can reduce the amount of shipments and get the same job done in half the time.

Tip 7 : In order to effectively prepare for future inventory, make visibility a pre-requisite of negotiations. For example, when shipping from one location to another, in-transit geo-location technologies like GPS can allow you to know where your freight is and the best possible delivery date.

Tip 8 : When you are working in a purchasing group, implementing scheduling for suppliers will help the receiving and flow process. Giving suppliers a user-friendly portal and scheduling appointments can be useful for all parties.

Tip 9 : Your acquisition of supplies can be viewed as the final frontier in supply chain management. It is important to consider whether analyzing your inbound freight will be more difficult than your organization would like to manage, or if it would be more efficient to continue working with the status quo. It is always a good idea to research the various options and choose one that best suits your organization’s preference.

Tip 10 : Ensure that inbound freight is analyzed regularly, or trade off with a third party to save time. Vendors constantly change and distribution centers may move, so your process might become obsolete.