A New Model for Evaluating Third Party Logistics Providers: Enter Service Oriented Architecture
Michael Bittner - October 3, 2005

Background

The highly competitive third-party logistics (3PL) market is a broad and diverse group of companies that move product over ground, air, and sea, from point-to-point for just about every industry imaginable. Companies like UPS Logistics, Ryder, C.H. Robinson, Airborne Logistics, Cardinal Transport, and Penske Logistics are some of the names from a pool of over 200 logistics service providers in the US alone. 3PLs are notoriously under tremendous pressure to manage costs, while providing a wider range of services to an expanded and diverse customer base. At the same time, 3PL providers need to view themselves as business process managers that can capitalize on today's evolving supply chain management (SCM) technology...