Transport Desk Operations and the Holy Trinity

Just imagine this. Two delegations representing their countries meet to hammer out an agreement. They are assisted by an interpreter who is vocally challenged but is really good at typing. The delegates don’t speak a common language but all of them can read and write English.

Since the stipulated time is short, one of the sides initiates the conversation and puts forth its entire perspective at one go. Once finished, the interpreter feverishly types in all the details (in English of course) and hands over the sheaf (of typed paper) to the other side.

The delegation on the other side of the table makes its own notes and acknowledges the sections which it agrees with (by counter-signing it). The entire sheaf is then handed back to the first delegation. Sometimes scribbles cause confusion (due to its poor legibility) but in the interest of time, one has to assume things and proceed.

The first delegation then makes adjustments and finalizes its narrative which the interpreter again types and appends to the original sheaf and hands it back to the team across the table for final ratification.

----

Now imagine if these two delegations were mandated to hammer out 3 such agreements every day, 365 days a year!

In the world of Transport Operations, this scenario is a daily reality. To imagine that, juxtapose the two delegations with an “ERP system” and a “Transport Management System (TMS)”. The ERP’s narrative happens to be the “Distribution Orders (DO)” list. The vocally challenged interpreter happens to be the line printer attached to the ERP {if this revelation has managed to kill all your appetite for curiosity, I am extremely sorry!}

Well, the printed “DOs” are manually carted to the TMS desk {I wish someone devised a robotic line printer which could print as well as ‘deliver’ the sheaf at the desk, just to fit in with my analogy above}. The desk then creates  â€œLorry Receipts (LR)” in TMS and then scribbles the LR number against each DO. The sheaf with “LR-scribblings” is then carted back to the ERP desk for it to capture the LR details.  The ERP subsequently generates invoices against the DOs and the invoice details are then printed (more paper which gets appended to the earlier sheaf!) and handed back to the TMS desk to capture invoice value against the LR. By the way, the DOs, LRs and Invoices have to be in absolute harmony at the end of the day and by the way, this holy trinity happen to share a “MANY::MANY” relationship!

If only one could get these two systems to talk to each other in near real-time (akin to an interpreter who is versatile in both languages and isn’t vocally challenged), we would always have the trinity in perfect sync!

Our preliminary analysis shows that this can potentially boost Transport Desk’s productivity by a cool 60%. In the world of transport operations where margins are typically thin, this ought to be a definitive game-changer.