Importance of TMS Software in Logistics

 

One of the major areas that has been hit due to covid-19 is the transportation of goods and services to destinations. Hence Self- sufficiency and flexibility are few characteristics that are needed for the survival of any business in this post covid world. Myself, Elza John would like to explore how one such software known as the Transportation Management System (TMS)  is considered as the new normal.

The transportation service providers are finding a high need to change especially after this pandemic situation drastically affecting this Third-party logistics. The major challenge being the difficulty in planning the fulfillment of orders by many businesses across several industries. There is also uncertainty about the demand for any products , some industries have flourished while others have suffered losses. Issues have also been faced in forecasting capacity and any last-minute changes makes even more difficult to accommodate mode shifts. There has been delay in  delivering the supplies to the shippers leading to more problems.

Some of the issues that are faced  by the transportation industry can be summarized as follows:

·                                   *Shortage of products- product stockouts

·                                   * Product substitutions

·                                   * Uncertainty in consumer needs

·                                   *Withdrawn supply lines

Requirements for the TMS:

v  Flexible

v  Dynamic

v  Real- time  responsive to customer needs

v  Handling sudden spike in demand

v  Automatically make changes rather than with help of software vendor making changes (Any delay might be very costly to the logistics provider)

Cloud based TMS Software have proven to more helpful in these unpredictable times by making it more safe, secure and the ability to set up work from anywhere operations. The high performance software must be capable of handling any uncertainties and coming up with a real-time cost effective way to transport customer goods. Proper optimization must be done to consider the real-world constraints. Companies are also shifting their supplier network and change in warehouse location to more local one. The TMS software can be used to with the what if function to come to a conclusion by evaluating change in transportation costs.