3PL Summit: The art of scheduling appointments for supply chain success

Curee: “How many data points are squeezed into this process? It is insane the amount of things that go into it. You’re talking about hours of service, both sides of the stop; this is a really good use case to leverage technology. The thing that matters for us is, a lot of time when you start Jane might always want a 9 a.m. appointment. Jane trains John, so John’s always going for 9 a.m. appointments. The reality is when you look across the entire supply chain, not just your bubble, 9 a.m. might not be the best appointment time for you or anyone else.”

Kim: “Some of the larger players are storing data on customers. Just like our customers measure us on KPIs, we’re storing that data ourselves. We use that data in our RFP process and pricing. When we know something that typically goes wrong or have high dwell times, etc., we price that in. For those players that don’t price that in, they end up winning the lane but they start running into actual problems, which makes customers unhappy.”

Kim: “It really is taking as much data as you can get. It’s not just about the 3PL and the driver. It’s what does the warehouse need, what docks are full; once the trucks are unloaded, where does it go? Is there even space for that product? Making sure that all that is dynamic and shared is very difficult in this industry. It’s choosing what is best for the entire scenario.”

Curee: “I think one of the things that are key is that you can win freight in this business for being the cheapest on the bid; you can always win business by being the person who can execute on it. It really comes down to execution. We have customers that were struggling in quarterly business reviews because they weren’t able to take on the  freight because they weren’t able to get the appointments fast enough to make those appointments work for them.”