DHL Supply Chain South Africa has introduced a Central Control Tower, providing customers with a bird’s-eye view of all transport needs.
As fleets grow in size, there is a greater need to understand where vehicles are, what the conditions are of stock loads, and whether or not drivers are performing as well as they are expected to under tough road conditions.
Marco Teixeira, DHL Supply Chain’s Automotive Director for South Africa, says: “the time between an order sent in to a logistics provider and the load being delivered to its destination, has traditionally been completely “blind” for a transport manager. The industry is now realising that it has to take a more holistic approach to transport and start to implement technology systems that can give transport managers full end-to-end visibility, with as granular detail as possible.”
With regards to performance management, it’s a difficult task to manage if relevant statistics are not available in real-time.
Paul Stone, CEO Africa and MD South Africa says, “DHL is committed to delivering the optimal transport offering to our customers by utilising technology and our global expertise to ensure service excellence.”
DHL’s Central Control Tower takes all the systems that provide information around orders, planning and execution, health and safety, driver behaviour, fleet management, electronic POD’s, and pulls it into one system to manage it from a central location, ultimately becoming “the heart of South African transport and any company’s transport operations”, says Teixeira.
The platform provides full visibility of customer orders, detailed track and trace information, monitoring of driver behavior, and a report on the conditions of the order.
For DHL customers, it’s a value-added service and allows for the creation of additional relevant product. “We can now offer managed transport services, which we weren’t able to do in the past, becoming the trusted transport advisor to our clients who don’t use DHL vehicles.”
Lowering the cost of supply chain for customers
For companies that do not have a transport division or the technology to manage it, DHL Supply Chain is now able to assist with advising on, planning, execution and reporting of the customer’s fleet.
Teixeira adds that, “by using our Central Control Tower, clients are able to track their own vehicles or third party vehicles, giving them planning, tracking and reporting services. Ultimately, it’s all about creating efficiencies, which in turn lowers the supply chain cost for customers.”