Logistics Carriers Should Envision an Image Enabled Supply Chain

At Smart Gladiator, we work continuously to improve our product. As part of that exercise, we recently decided to install a sensor in our product. Having finalized a product choice on the sensor, we ordered it from the vendor who was glad to send us the devices through UPS. We wanted to install, test, and deploy them to a customer as soon as possible.

We are a technology company located in the heart of Atlanta, within the Georgia Tech campus, part of this Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC) that the state of Georgia supports. We work in a big building that house several companies like us. All of these companies go through a vetting process that verifies that they strive for innovation. Most are working to commercialise technology developed at the university by professions involved in cutting edge technology. Many dignitaries stop by our building and we get to participate in discussions with them.

Caption: At a round table meeting with Treasury Secretary Jack Lew and Mayor Kasim Reed at the ATDC.

This location is famously called the Tech Square. In addition to small innovative companies, the areas home to innovation centers of much bigger conglomerates such as Home Depot, Coca Cola, Southern Company, and most recently NCR. I say all this to make it clear: I am not in the middle of nowhere. I am right in the heart of a major metropolitan area.

Despite that, I struggle to receive a shipment through UPS to our office. There is a clear protocol. If we are not in the office, the delivery person should leave the package on the third floor mailroom (one floor up from our offices). However, it often doesn’t happen. Remember those sensors we ordered? The vendor overnighted these critical components to us and yet it was not delivered to our office nor to the mailroom. On that day, we stepped out of the office for an hour to take care of some business and missed the shipment. On our return, we were greeted with the familiar UPS notice on the door.

UPS2

I checked with the administration folks in the building. They reported that, although other carrier services had delivered packages to the mailroom, that UPS had a reputation for being less than consistent in following the procedure. I called UPS and found that I had three options to get my delivery:

  • Pay an extra $7 to have the package left at a UPS Access Point location close to my office.
  • Receive the delivery the next day.
  • Pick it the package personally from customer services center about a 30 minutes drive from my office.

I chose option #3. I crossed my fingers and hoped that it would be returned by the delivery to the center before it closed at 9pm.

UPS told me that they would call me with an update in an hour. After more than an hour, I called to check the status. They told me to wait another hour. At 6:30, I was no closer to knowing the fate of my package. I posted my dilemma on the UPS Facebook page and heard a similar story from another entrepreneur in the area. The UPS team monitoring the page also responded, but didn’t solve the problem.

By 7:30, I start home to get dinner and when I walk in my door, I find an email saying that I can pick up the package in the morning since the center will be closed. I call UPS again—and they promise to call me in the morning. To make a long story a little shorter: I finally got to pick up my important package from the distant customer service center at 1PM on the second day.

26
Mar 2018
By Puga Sankara133 Comments
Author:
Puga Sankara
About:
Puga Sankara is the Founder, CEO of Smart Gladiator LLC. Smart Gladiator designs, builds, and delivers market-leading mobile technology for retailers, distributors, and 3PL service providers. So far, Smart Gladiator LoadProof has been used to ship, receive, and scan more than 100 million boxes. SG LoadProof is a patent pending Centralized Enterprise Photo/Video Document System on Cloud for Supply Chain. SG LP is built on the fact that photos & videos are vital docs as important as POs/SOs/Legal Contracts/Fulfillment Orders that reside in ERP/WMS/TMS systems, that serve as compelling, conclusive, unequivocal proof of crucial, critical, vital operations executed in Supply Chain within/across orgs when fulfilling customer orders as well as meeting contractual obligations between orgs as merchandise is transferred between different parties that partake in Supply Chain functions & operations. And these photos/videos data should not be stored in someone’s Smartphone or Email Inbox or in their personal/work Computer, but should be stored in a Centralized Enterprise system, where such data can be pushed into super-fast, stored securely, accessible to all stake holders (CFO/Sales Reps/Customer Support/AR/AP) in an org, as well as facilitates super-fast retrieval/sharing. LP is an Enterprise System of record for Photo/Video docs & is as important as an ERP which is an enterprise system of record for POs, SOs, Legal Contracts between parties etc. that have huge legal ramifications, also as important as a WMS (Warehouse Management System) that hold indispensable shipment & fulfillment data on orders. Like how Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat etc. have evolved into social media platforms/systems that enable individuals to showcase their beauty/pretty clothes/lovely cosmetics/hep coolness etc., LoadProof is an Enterprise system that holds similar photos/videos, but for a different reason, not for show off, but to serve as compelling, conclusive, unequivocal & indisputable system of record and proof that can be presented even in the court of law, when there is a dispute between parties while they execute many facets of the Supply Chain functions & operations. SG LoadProof is also an Enterprise System of Record for Photos, videos and any other digital documents for your Supply Chain Network. A system of record (SOR) or source system of record (SSoR) is a data management term for an information storage system (commonly implemented on a computer system running a database management system) that is the authoritative data source for a given data element or piece of information. The need to identify systems of record can become acute in organizations where management information systems have been built by taking output data from multiple source systems, re-processing this data, and then re-presenting the result for new business use. In these cases, multiple information systems may disagree about the same piece of information. These disagreements may stem from semantic differences, differences in opinion, use of different sources, and differences in the timing of the extract, transform, and load processes that create the data they report against, or may simply be the result of bugs. The integrity and validity of any data set is open to question when there is no traceable connection to a good source, such as a known System of Record. Where the integrity of the data is vital, if there is an agreed system of record, the data element must either be linked to, or extracted directly from it. In other cases, the provenance and estimated data quality should be documented. The “system of record” approach is a good fit for environments where both: 1. there is a single authority over all data consumers, and 2. all consumers have similar needs Here, LoadProof is the System of Record for pictures and videos for all the entities in Supply chain who uses pictures and videos to track using any Supply Chain System infrastructure. 1. LoadProof provides accurate, thorough, complete, and latest information in pictures and videos related to any entity in the Supply chain that is tracked. 2. LoadProof is the single authority on pictures and videos related to any entity in the Supply Chain that is tracked 3. LoadProof doesn’t let any external system to copy the records being stored in it, which eliminates the data being duplicated in multiple places to preserve the data integrity and credibility. 4. LoadProof has a secured login procedure which lets only users with select level access to view the data and modify the records which helps in maintaining LoadProof is becoming the Industry Standard System for Photo & Video Docs for Supply Chain Smart Gladiator is located in ATDC - Advanced Tech Dev Center (tech Incubator) in Georgia Institute of Tech. Click for a demo - https://loadproof.com/apply Puga is a supply chain technology professional with more than 25 years of experience in deploying capabilities in the logistics and supply chain domain. His prior roles involved managing complicated mission-critical programs driving revenue numbers, rolling out a multitude of capabilities involving more than a dozen systems, and managing a team of 30 to 50 personnel across multiple disciplines and departments in large corporations such as Hewlett Packard. He has deployed WMS for more than 30 distribution centers in his role as a senior manager with Manhattan Associates. He has also performed process analysis walk-throughs for more than 50 distribution centers for WMS process design and performance analysis review, optimizing processes for better productivity and visibility through the supply chain. Size of these DCs varied from 150,000 to 1.2 million SQFT. Puga Sankara has an MBA from Georgia Tech. He can be reached at puga@smartgladiator.com or visit the company at www.smartgladiator.com. Also follow him at www.pugasankara.com. [Read More]
More articles by: Puga Sankara

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