Logistics

PLS Logistics Services Acquires D&L Transport

PLS Logistics Services | September 23, 2021

PLS Logistics Services, a leading, technology-driven, third-party logistics company has acquired D&L Transport, a transportation brokerage headquartered in Overland Park, Kansas.

D&L Transport will continue to operate under its authority and remain an independent subsidiary of PLS, leveraging PLS's advanced technology and national carrier network while maintaining its independent operations. Brian DeFrain, a 10-year veteran of D&L Transport, will remain in the role of President of D&L. All existing management and employees will remain with the organization following the acquisition.

Greg Burns, Chief Executive Officer of PLS Logistics, said, "D&L Transport through its national agent network has developed a broad range of services, with particular strength in the dry van, flatbed and refrigerated modes, and an outstanding reputation for customer service."

Brian DeFrain, President of D&L Transport, remarked, "We are excited to partner with PLS Logistics and get immediate access to its broad service offering and industry-leading technology, while maintaining our independent operations."

Founded in 2004, D&L Transport is a non-asset provider of Truckload solutions in North America. D&L Transport brings a strong management team and talented sales agents to PLS, as well as a robust network of shippers and carriers.

Effective with this transaction, PLS will have an annual revenue run rate of $950mm and expects annual revenue of approximately $1.2 billion in 2022.

About PLS Logistics Services
PLS Logistics Services is a leading provider of logistics management, brokerage and technology services for shippers across all industries. PLS handles over a million loads annually across all major freight modes: flatbed, van, LTL, rail and barge, air and ocean. The PLS carrier network consists of over 65,000 pre-qualified trucking companies along with Class-1 railroads and major barge companies.

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The last stage of warehouse development project was completed last year by adding a new 7800 m2 building to the rest of Hegelmann Logistics facilities in Kaunas, Lithuania.


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Supply Chain

Cleo Enhances Ecosystem Integration Platform to Optimize Supply Chain Execution

Cleo | September 27, 2023

Cleo, the pioneer and global leader of the Ecosystem Integration software category and provider of the Cleo Integration Cloud (CIC) platform, today announced availability of multiple new platform innovations designed to help organizations optimize supply chain execution through improved control, automation, and visibility of integrations between their ecosystem and their back-office systems. Cleo President and CEO Mahesh Rajasekharan said, “We’re charting a clear path to frictionless, intelligence-driven ecosystem integration, which will be a cornerstone of our customers’ ability to optimize supply chain execution. CIC 2023 will empower organizations with the insights they need to make better decisions and improve their ecosystem relationships. Our promise to our customers and the market is simple and straightforward: We will continue to push the innovation envelope, with the goal of providing more control to supply chain executives through real-time visibility, automation, AI, and orchestration solutions.” Cleo’s CIC 2023 platform is the company’s most powerful platform release to date and includes multiple enhancements and new functionality to support the design, operation, and management of these ecosystem integrations, including: Improved integration design and deployment capabilities for increased velocity in time to value Enhancements to all Accelerators, which are pre-built, out-of-the-box Order-to-Cash, Procure-to-Pay, Grocery, and Warehousing integrations for automating X12 EDI transactions between a company’s trading partner ecosystem straight into core business applications like Microsoft Dynamics 365 SCM and BC, Oracle NetSuite, SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Shopify, and Amazon Seller Central among others. Ease-of-use updates to several connectors including eBay, Shopify, and Amazon to rapidly build ecosystem integrations. Portfolio expansion for infrastructure and business connectivity with new and enhanced connectors including Amazon, Shopify, Microsoft SharePoint, Google Cloud Storage, and RosettaNet Implementation Framework (RNIF). Increased visibility and control to improve supply chain operations Launched a workload prioritization solution that allows organizations to put business priority first through granular control over business-critical and time-sensitive transactions (by document type or trading partner) that ensure key customer commitments are never missed. Enabled stronger, more informed, and more confident decision-making through flexibly customizable reporting timeframes which promote tighter alignment between reporting needs and business operations Released advanced message search capability to discover messages faster. Enables operations to improve customer experience during troubleshooting and monitoring of ecosystem transactions. Enhanced exception management for faster issue handling and prevention More robust certificate management that translates to proactive measures to ensure seamless business continuity with key generation, certificate generation, and rollover Advanced troubleshooting and granular drill-down capabilities enabling operations teams to reduce error resolution time by up to 20% -- resulting in improved ecosystem relationships. Deeper automation and improved configurability allow integration operations personas to ensure timely delivery of transactions through automatic retries & concurrent sends of errored processes Reimaged integration development experience and usability provides a fresh approach for developers Refreshed user interface of the platform integration development environment, allowing a streamlined experience for self-service API and EDI integration. Redesigned business process development experience streamlines updating and orchestrating of integrations, allowing organizations to quickly implement new integrations and make changes as their business evolves. Extensible integration logic with a full range of custom actions that empowers users to drive efficiency through comprehensive local commands executed at the orchestration level Optimizing supply chain execution requires breaking down functional silos, automating critical, time-sensitive business processes, increasing visibility and insights to make better decisions, and providing every organizational persona with control they need to complete day-to-day operations. The key lies in deploying end-to-end ecosystem integrations that bring together different components of a supply chain into a cohesive and seamless digital backbone. CIC, long recognized as one of the industry’s most powerful cloud integration solutions, is currently used by more than 4,200 logistics, manufacturing, distribution and retail companies throughout the world. About Cleo Integration Cloud Cleo Integration Cloud (CIC) is a cloud-based integration platform, purpose-built to design, build, operate, and optimize critical ecosystem integration processes. The CIC platform brings end-to-end integration visibility across API, MFT, EDI, and non-EDI integrations, giving technical and business users the confidence to rapidly onboard trading partners, enable integration between applications, and accelerate revenue-generating business processes. On the platform, businesses have the choice of self-service, managed services, or a blended approach – ensuring complete flexibility and control over their B2B integration strategy. About Cleo Cleo is an ecosystem integration software company focused on business outcomes, ensuring each customer’s potential is realized by delivering solutions that make it easy to discover and create value through the movement and integration of B2B enterprise data. Cleo gives customers strategic, “outside-in” visibility into the critical end-to-end business flows happening across their ecosystems of partners and customers, marketplaces, and internal cloud and on-premise applications. Our solutions empower teams to drive business agility, accelerate onboarding, facilitate the modernization of key business processes, and capture new revenue streams by reimagining and remastering their digital ecosystem through robust application, B2B, and data integration technologies.

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Supply Chain

New Coupa Solution Modernizes Supply Chain Collaboration

prnewswire | September 29, 2023

As companies continue to wrestle with supply chain risks jeopardizing their business-critical revenue streams, Coupa Software, a leader in Business Spend Management (BSM), today announced a new solution to improve supply assurance and business continuity. Coupa's Supply Chain Collaboration empowers companies to avoid risk while driving profitability, increasing agility, and improving communication between buyers and suppliers. Coupa's unified platform drives agility, transparency, and resiliency across supply chains, so products and materials are where and when they're needed. This new solution creates better collaboration between teams and suppliers and provides the ability to quickly assess sourcing alternatives and balance trade-offs ranging from changes to delivery dates to item quantity. "Ensuring supply chain continuity is a top priority for businesses everywhere. We heard from companies around the globe that existing market solutions for supply chain collaboration were falling down. Forcing companies to resort to spreadsheets and emails to track critical supply that would keep factories running and retail stores operating," said Raja Hammoud, executive vice president of products at Coupa. "Those days are over. Coupa Supply Chain Collaboration was co-innovated with the world's leading supply chain companies to deliver modern, consumerized experiences and effortless collaboration between businesses and all their trading partners." Coupa's new Supply Chain Collaboration Suite will help businesses with purchasing, forecasting, inventory, and quality control as the suite expands. Key benefits available today include: Streamlined Communication: Through real-time communication supply chain planners and suppliers can easily share instant updates to quality, price, delivery dates, and more to avoid unwanted surprises or delays. Intuitive, Unified Approach: Integrates with ERP, MRP, and Supply Chain Planning solutions to provide a connected, unified view to all suppliers/trading partners and buyers. Improved Working Capital: With more predictable operations, businesses can reduce inventory carrying costs and minimize carrying excess capacity due to unplanned downtime to better optimize working capital through a single platform for direct and indirect spend. Increased Agility: With real-time notifications and alerts, businesses can act smarter and faster to resolve issues for direct materials without time-consuming, error-prone manual reviews. "Supply chains are highly complex and current collaboration technologies aren't always easy to use, leaving many businesses no choice but to rely on manual approaches and phone calls," said Simon Ellis, Group VP at IDC. "Seamless collaboration is critical to effective supply chain management and resiliency. Organizations need full visibility into both their suppliers' operations and their own, as well as a simple method for working together. Coupa has a history of prioritizing user adoption with easy-to-use tools to drive efficiencies and savings and this suite is no different." Purchase Order (PO) Collaboration, the first component of the solution that is now generally available, ensures supply assurance by providing bidirectional visibility into POs for planners and suppliers. Suppliers can confirm quantities, prices, and promise dates at a line-item level. This ensures buyers and suppliers have accurate, real-time information while automatically communicating any necessary actions. The entire purchase order lifecycle from PO generation to advanced shipping notice to receipt of goods is managed through Coupa's platform. About Coupa Software Coupa is the cloud-based Business Spend Management (BSM) platform that unifies processes across supply chain, procurement, and finance functions. Coupa empowers organizations around the world to maximize value and operationalize purpose through their business spend.

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Supply Chain

Everstream and Slave-Free Alliance Partner for Ethical Supply Chains

Everstream Analytics | September 15, 2023

Everstream Analytics and Slave-Free Alliance (SFA) have partnered to protect global supply chains against modern slavery. Everstream brings multi-tier supplier discovery and AI-powered risk monitoring, while SFA provides forced labor intelligence. Together, they aim to expose and eliminate these risks and enhance supply chain capabilities. Modern slavery affects 50 million people worldwide, and its complexity makes supply chains vulnerable. Over forty percent of these victims are imprisoned in upper-middle-income to high-income nations, highlighting the universality of this issue. Everstream is committed to eradicating this issue as SFA's global strategic and exclusive technology partner. According to Slave-Free Alliance, 77% of companies expect to find modern slavery in their supply chains. The intricate and opaque nature of contemporary global supply networks exposes companies to substantial risks of forced labor. Within the United States, the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, the German Supply Chain Due Diligence Act, and the imminent EU Supply Chain Law establish a framework in which manufacturers bear responsibility for any instances of exploitation within their supply chains, irrespective of their prior awareness of such occurrences. Noncompliance may lead to hefty fines and reputational harm. This strategic partnership empowers enterprises with deeper visibility into potential risks and facilitates swift issue resolution, ensuring compliance with evolving regulations. Tim Nelson, CEO of Hope for Justice and Slave-Free Alliance, commented, This partnership will advance our ultimate goal of bringing an end to modern slavery in supply chains. With the help of Everstream's technology and our team of forced labor experts, we will create global strategies and provide thoughtful solutions to protect people and supply chains from the threat of modern slavery. [Source – Business Wire] Everstream and Slave-Free Alliance's collaborative efforts extend beyond their partnership. They are committed to sharing their insights and expertise on modern slavery risks and mitigation strategies at prominent events like the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). With this partnership, the two companies will empower organizations globally to construct ethical and compliant supply chains while contributing to the fight against modern slavery. By combining their resources and knowledge, Everstream and SFA are dedicated to significantly impacting this critical issue and helping companies uphold the highest ethical standards in their operations. About Everstream Analytics Everstream Analytics, a leading force in the global supply chain, is committed to redefining industry standards. By harnessing artificial intelligence and predictive analytics capabilities, Everstream Analytics empowers businesses with insights and risk analytics, glorifying an era of innovative and environmentally conscious supply chain practices. Its renowned solution seamlessly integrates with procurement, logistics, and business continuity platforms, providing a comprehensive information ecosystem and astute analysis. Leveraging a vast proprietary dataset, Everstream Analytics ensures precise predictions, enabling businesses to optimize their supply chains and transform them into invaluable business assets.

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Supply Chain

Interos Multi-tier Catastrophic Risk Enhances Supply Chain Resilience

Interos | September 22, 2023

Interos, the AI-first operational resilience company, has introduced an innovative solution, Catastrophic Risk visualization and monitoring. This technology takes a proactive approach to supply chain resilience by allowing organizations to pre-plan months in advance, strategically mitigating the potential impact of a wide range of catastrophic risks, from hurricanes and wildfires to grid failures and disease outbreaks. This significant announcement from Interos comes at a pivotal moment, marked by an alarming increase in climate-related disasters, resulting in substantial financial losses and human impact. In the United States and globally, 23 billion-dollar disasters total $57.6 billion in losses, as reported by NOAA. Interos' groundbreaking technology addresses the financial aspect and aims to protect lives by shifting enterprises from lagging to leading indicators. It provides early assessments of suppliers exposed to various hazards, including weather patterns, climate fluctuations, communication vulnerabilities, infrastructure challenges, and healthcare capacity constraints. By combining immediate and seasonal hazard intelligence, businesses can proactively detect and prevent seasonal disruptions and disaster-related issues within their extensive supply chains. This innovative solution establishes Interos as a key player in enhancing supply chain resilience and mitigating unanticipated disruptions. Jennifer Bisceglie, Interos Founder & CEO at Interos, said, "Leaders throughout industries recognize the need to take control of risk in an environment where resilience delivers competitive advantage. If you think about large-scale, multi-year programs, enterprises need the ability to project where things are going with respect to weather, inflation, energy crisis and other trends to make better-informed business decisions based on impact to their supply chains ongoing operations." [Source – Cision PR Newswire] Organizations lacking sub-tier supplier visibility face substantial financial consequences, incurring a collective annual loss of $45 million due to delayed catastrophe response. This figure rises to $82 million, encompassing multifaceted supplier risk factors. Interos' recent report highlights a 33% increase in disruptions since 2022, spurring enterprises to prioritize early preparedness and crisis mitigation, potentially saving $37 million annually. Interos' technology reshapes supply chain risk management by integrating proactive resilience measures, expediting critical supplier processes and ensuring comprehensive risk management at scale. Through the continuous mapping and monitoring capabilities offered by Interos, enterprises can proactively and effectively navigate the complexities of risk, ensuring supply chain resilience is upheld at both speed and scale. Interos' transformative technology equips organizations with the tools to safeguard their supply chains in an increasingly intricate and interdependent risk environment. About Interos Interos is an AI-driven operational resilience company dedicated to helping clients attain Resilience by Design. Leveraging innovative scoring and relationship discovery technologies, Interos empowers customers to streamline risk assessment, detection, and response. As the world's inaugural and sole automated supplier resilience platform, Interos excels in the comprehensive mapping and monitoring of physical and digital supply chains on a grand scale. This proactive approach safeguards organizations against a spectrum of threats, encompassing regulatory violations, unethical labor practices, cyber threats, financial instability, catastrophes, and other systemic vulnerabilities.

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