Our Perspective on Logistics Processes
We provide strategic and implementation counsel to participants in the logistics arena. Clients range from railroad and trucking firms, to shippers, to equipment manufacturers and suppliers of warehousing services, and designers of information systems. We have been active in this sector for the past twenty-five years, providing our clients with imaginative and effective solutions to increasingly complex problems.
Our Corporate History
Our firm began business as a partnership in 1972. Since that date, our efforts have focused on provision of cutting-edge solutions to participants in the logistics arena. We secured a position of leadership in volume forecasting models. That position allowed us to provide improved capital asset utilization for both transportation firms, and their capital goods suppliers.
Clients utilizing our volume forecasting models asked that we turn our attention to improved models of cost allocation. We provided in the late 1970's our first models of activity, and opportunity, cost to both railroads and trucking companies. These models have since grown in specificity and sophistication; they continue to be a key element of our practice.
With the onset of surface transportation deregulation, we found clients desiring improved measures of operating efficiency. We produced such measurement systems, founded on the principles of total factor productivity which we had derived for transportation processes.
A central corollary of transportation deregulation, and enhanced international competition, was improved shipper focus on logistics practices. By the mid 1980's, several large shippers-aware of our work on transport carrier cost models and efficiency measurement-asked that we assist them in the design of complex new logistics networks. Our work in this segment of the transportation arena provided us the opportunity to introduce supplier clients to buyers of transport services.
This last area of practice proved extremely challenging. Our work with both rail and truck carriers indicated significant economies of density and economies of scope in each type of carrier. What was required was a mechanism for efficient interchange of information between shippers and carriers, which would allow the latter to realize potential density and scope economies; and the former to share equitably in the carrier gains.
Our approach to this task was two-fold: First, we designed a shared data base system which would allow carriers to understand the necessary elements of shipper service requirements. We first introduced this system in 1990. Second, we introduced an auction system which would allow carriers to efficiently bid on serving the needs of the shipper. Begun on a trial basis in 1991, we completed our first large scale application of this auction system in 1992. Since that date we have provided a continuing sequence of improved auction allocation systems on an annual basis.
Efficiently matching the needs of shippers with the available capital assets is a complex process. That process will not be sustainable without the construction of carefully designed incentive contracts. We have led the way in such designs, by relying on our special expertise in the underlying economics of transportation service production, and the critical elements of shipper supply chains.
The growing sophistication of logistics services users has generated the need for improved systems of service performance measurement. Working with truckload and rail carriers, and with our growing list of shipper clients, we are setting forth new service measurement systems, and incentive compensation systems which assure improved service levels.
The principals at Jos. Swanson & Co. share a formal educational training in financial management, and applied experience in operations management and information technology. We believe that this background provides us with a unique perspective on logistics solutions. We are able to provide improved architecture for logistics processes, while simultaneously focusing on targeted financial goals. The solutions which we provide are immediately understandable to senior financial managers. And these solutions provide parties on both sides of transportation service contracts with high confidence in financial outcomes.
