LeanLogistics designs new decision support system to reduce costs

LeanLogistics is looking to a new decision support system to arm member companies of its collaborative transportation communities with instant access to the who, what, where, when, how and why of supply chain events.

Designed to cut costs throughout the communications process, the system, called LeanAdvisor, is a decision support tool that can be used in event monitoring and Proactive Exception Management (PEM).

The web-based technology allows users to define notification events or parameters for acceptable transactions as shipments move through the LeanLogistics transportation exchange. LeanAdvisor can also search networked enterprise or transportation management systems for the additional information, identifying problems at the source, and alerting at the time of exception.

“We view LeanAdvisor as a significant addition to our value proposition, says Dan Dershem, LeanLogistics president, “and an integral element in a lean philosophy that allows trading partners to cut costs by managing only those events that are critical to their value stream. Our ability to extend LeanAdvisors reach up and downstream outside our system makes this technology a critical tool in exception management.”

Traditional alert systems access only the data that resides or moves through the host. These systems require a great deal of administrative effort to maintain a current database of all recipients, according to LeanLogistics and this makes for a significant drawback in larger, collaborative networks were decision support systems are most valuable.

LeanAdvisor is claimed to solve this problem by allowing the main user to offer the notification service to all trading members, presenting a set of events they might want to subscribe to, and then allowing these members to customize their event profile.

Examples of LeanAdvisor use include:

*alert all subscribed members within a collaborative community with messaging for events that occur outside of defined business process rules;
*notify purchasing and transportation communities of inventory and delivery issues;
*permit carriers to identify specific loads as they become available, eliminating the need to monitor multiple exchanges;
*confirm delivery of important shipments;
*identify root-causes of supply chain performance problems.

LeanAdvisor can issue messaging via web interface within the LeanLogistics system, e-mail or XML. For additional information, visit www.leanlogistics.com.

LeanLogistics is an Internet-based transportation solution company that provides a seamless exchange of mission-critical information between shippers, carriers and consignees.