The Logistics Information

As markets become more sophisticated, with a level of demand for increasingly high service, businesses and consumers seek to define their priorities and direct their efforts to the offer of a case not only with the current desires of another, but to explore what current technology allows, even when not absolutely sure of the result which is going to achieve.

In this context, logistics explores and encourages the use of more advanced features, creating new models of distribution or collection, storage and mechanical power production or simply accelerating the flow of information associated with their processes.

This last aspect, the requirement that the information is actually available at the same moment that each step of the logistics process happens, is itself an open universe suggests that innovation in the game title. It is no longer, or at least not only, information that relates to logistics, but the logistics of information, assessment, development and implementation of technologies that will allow the traffic information on the logistics processes is fast enough, that the ability to store huge amount of information and find from the same accurate data that is needed for decision making at every instant, resulting in a great new times and adequate logistics.

Collection, transportation and delivery: A little more info

Assuming that the reader is logistician certainly be familiar with the basic model of transport that is used in a B2B process. A company ships a set of products having destinations other company, using any modal. While the products everywhere, the demand for information is met objectively. By issuing the invoice, the shipper shall provide the recipient of the XML Invoice (or so should do it), so that it knows that initially receive delivery “x” days or hours later, as the agreement existing. The first difficulty occurs exactly at this point. The government estimates that only 50% of recipients receive the XMLs of NFes issued against them. We will return to this point later. In addition, the issuance of the invoice is not synonymous boarding. This, however, can be signaled by another document linked to SEFAZ, environment that focuses the operation of electronic documents of legal character. This is the MDFe, Electronic Manifest Tax Documents issued by the carrier as a cargo manifest. Sending this to both ends of the process inform the authorizing source and destination on the effective commencement of carriage. This however is still not being used on a large scale. Along the path, the carrier is the primary source of information. She can keep tracked or tracked vehicles, getting geolocation data of the vehicle in transit or from the mobile or embedded device that fires on key points. You can also just ask the driver to turn every “y” amount of time, or every frame of the default script. Or, may receive the passage of vehicle on toll (by means of automatic ticketing systems) information, and thus the control of travel. It is fairly common to have these data carrier, though curiously unusual transferring them to either the shipper or the consignee of the cargo. In general, conveyor or minimally organized logistics operators, there is a system that accumulates these data, but in most cases, information remains a sacrifice for those interested, sometimes even within the carrier. Training and motivation, financial, technical and human resources to create simple integration mechanisms that implement the flow of data and the processing thereof generating missing information.

In this process, often the shipper seeks to maintain the data available, eliminating the intermediation of the carrier, directly hiring the company tracking, and providing an environment for direct input from driver’s actions. But possibly the biggest revolution in this context occurs from the use by the recipient of the Manifestation of the Recipient, again a feature available in SEFAZ environment, whose legal character enables the elimination of demand for the return of southpaw DANFE signed. This physical return of the southpaw is one of the most anachronistic elements of our logistics processes, since, in fact, all the information can transit through the electronic channel available, safely even as the signature, which helps both the shipper and the recipient. By using MD, delivery information flows in real time, without intermediaries, between the shipper and the consignee. The carrier can also be covered by the model, replacing the need to stamp and sign the lefty (or back) of knowledge (or DACTE).

As information becomes more urgent, migration is a policy controls to evaluate and refine procedures for decision-making ” on the fly”, or allowing to anticipate actions that allow the logistical planning to take place smoothly.

Talking things, things they hear

Conventionally be called Internet of Things the ability to associate intelligence to objects in general, through electronic tags that, by issuing and / or picking up signals, arranged in wireless environment that also allows reading or sending data can talk effectively, identifying and defining flows and processes. A small example is the possibility of a supermarket, the shopping cart being driven through the aisles signal the location of certain consumer products, the list that already contains, or the accumulated value that was placed in the cart, the simple reading (via RFID) signals emitted by products and by integrating the management system from the point of consumption.

This lets you identify significant potential gains for processes that today are generally time consuming and error prone. The process for picking training load can be dramatically more efficient with the use of identifier tags, either by product, storage place, by container or pallet. And this gain persists not only carry the load, but also their identification. A vehicle might be able to identify its contents, leading to the same validation in any system. Every delivery it can be done, if there was evidence of error in the process or not. This reading content could be used in barriers, in order to avoid visual inspection, also ensuring the supervision that the content of the vehicle conforms to the documentation.

Different dialogues

In the logistics domain described here, communicating with the proper exchange of data between systems is critical. The construction of these channels, so the result of the inevitable view that the set of processes necessarily imply different systems to cover all aspects and demands, indicates that the old concept of interfaces must evolve into a new model in which the connection systems may be taken without further effort, without characterizing this connection a ‘ seamless ‘ in which there are losses, and safety information.

The mechanism that most closely matches that fluid communication between systems today is the use of web services following certain standards that allow systems to talk, or feeding by consulting the information needed to make each environment can realize their potential and that users have a perfect view of the whole or part of the logistics flow that concerns them to work. Interestingly, even in integrated management systems, sometimes its operation in modules ends up creating fiefdoms of information that only with the use of portals visibility or BI solutions (business intelligence) can be broken.

In the same direction, but changing the focus of intra – company environment to the universe of markets, gathering data from a single segment so that it can operate optimizing resources is something that has not yet managed to provide, even taking up the technology to such fully available. For example: today, have a unique environment to view delivery processes at different levels of players linked to the logistics flow is just utopia. A carrier data available to its customers shippers on its website, but there is not a ” portal of carriers ” in which to deposit all data to be shared by many clients to have a vision of all the transport contracted by each, keeping is, of course, the security restrictions and privileged access to information, ensuring it sigi each shipper company to preserve the nature of their shipments and deliveries. That is, despite sharing the same environment, each company sees only their own data, but offered by all carriers engaged in a unique environment. Likewise, many shippers deliver information to its recipients customers, with deliveries in portals. However, each recipient must accompany the delivery he directed fractional, when the logic would be able to access a single environment, linked to the number of suppliers of its business segment, in which all supplies are available, regardless of the shipper origin.

This web of inter – relationships, that we call horizontal portals by business segment, requires the breaking of technical and business paradigms, much the aspect of it is habit than by innovation. The same applies to several other opportunities to use technology in the logistics world, wasted by the difficulty to list the gains and break down the barriers that leave us immobilized forward with creative solutions supported by existing technological resources.

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