Our top challenge is to promote a culture of best practices, committed to enhancing our supply chain to avoid the issues prevalent in 2020. We will target a timeline to review that extends from the creation of our PO to our customer’s delivery, and then study every step in between. This will be not only a provider analysis, but also an honest assessment of our own internal practices. It is feasible that these internal practices are contributing to problems we often attribute to our external partners.
It is essential to reevaluate and repair our fragile ocean carrier, origin, and trucker relationships. We need to immediately adjust our ocean carrier base and embrace only ethical carriers who recognize the importance of honoring contractual obligations. We need to agree on enforceable contractual KPIs, so arbitrary blank sailings, rolls, delayed booking approvals, and late S/Os have mutually agreed-upon consequences, understood and approved by both parties. These guidelines will nullify the unapologetic, myriad (and disturbingly creative) ocean-related surcharges billed in 2020, despite not being revealed during contractual negotiations.
We will also engage with our key ports and interior point intermodal (IPI) locations, closely monitoring operational performance, turn times, labor issues, and rules related to free time and surcharges. These impact not only us, but also our truckers, another fragile component of our supply chain. Unacceptable port turn times, waiting lines, terminal congestion, chassis issues, and administrative delays cost money — a cost that is ultimately passed to the BCO. More importantly, the delays result in critical out of stock merchandise, lost sales, and permanently disappointed customers.
Internally, we need to possess the discipline to accurately project our TEU volume by port pairs. We will eliminate sloppiness in the booking process, providing proper lead time, eliminating rejections. We will strive to be a “vendor of choice,” displaying operational excellence, consistently turning equipment quickly, and providing responsive communication and flexible yard accessibility to our truckers.