Transplace Hosts Shipper Symposium; Shippers Learn of Collaboration Successes, Share Opinions On Industry Issues and Efforts

    PLANO, Texas--June 18, 2003--A panel of 22 Transplace shipper customers and other leading shipper organizations convened in Plano, Texas, at the 2003 Transplace Shipper Symposium in June. The theme of the symposium was the impact of collaboration and the steps to continued collaboration success. Attendees included several top executives from Fortune 500 companies representing industries such as consumer packaged goods, paper and forest products, building materials, chemical, specialty retailers and mass merchandisers, cosmetics, and office products.
    Transplace President, Chairman and CEO Jun-Sheng Li kicked off the meeting by challenging the audience "to express their true needs, think creatively, be champions of change and look at the entire supply chain to find opportunities in collaboration initiatives."
    The shippers spent several hours conducting brainstorming sessions to explore timely transportation and logistics topics, including Collaborative Transportation Management, Organizational Change and Performance Metrics.
    "This type of input from our shippers is critical to create an accurate roadmap for development of the right technology at the right time," said Frank Armstrong, executive vice president of Transplace. "It enables us to focus our efforts on the new services and logistics technology features that fill the largest needs of our shipper community, and the needs of new clients as well. It's the easiest way to define what real customer service fulfillment will be in the future."
    Transplace executives updated the attendees on key initiatives in the transportation industry and the collaborative successes of the shipper network within Transplace's DNE platform. Since 2000, Transplace shippers have seen their transportation cost reduced by more than $100 million per year while improving on-time performance to 98.5 percent.
    Key components of this success has hinged on employing savvy industry experience and deploying Transplace's DNE operating platform that identifies dynamic continuous moves, collaborative engineered tours, and carrier optimization through the freight bid and selection process. As the freight network has grown, Transplace shippers and carriers have executed thousands of collaborative opportunities. The relationship Transplace has cultivated with carriers in turn provides capacity preference to Transplace shippers, creating improved balance and access to reliable, service-sensitive carrier capacity.
    Transplace also provided updates on other initiatives, including the impact of the New Hours Service of Regulations, New Cargo Security Regulations (C-TPAT, FAST), and Motor Carrier Insurance trends. Transplace chairs the Voluntary Interindustry Commerce Standards Association's Collaborative Planning, Forecasting and Replenishment (CPFR(R)) committee on Collaborative Transportation Management (CTM), and attendees were filled in on the work with leading industry practices and initiatives.
    Guest speaker Narendra Mulani, senior partner with Accenture's Supply Chain Group, provided insight into leading organizations and their efforts in "How Collaboration Builds a Competitive Advantage."
    "It's good to be in a room with other businesses that Transplace has also helped achieve increased supply chain performance," said a director for a leading manufacturer. "But I really thought Transplace was my best kept secret!"

    About Transplace

    Transplace (www.transplace.com) is a lead logistics provider for transportation logistics solutions through a fully integrated web-based transportation platform of services allowing customers to collaborate on transportation logistics strategy, planning and execution. Transplace offers a full menu of logistics and transportation management services, ranging from complete outsourcing, as a third-party logistics provider and load control center, to a single source for shipment transportation assistance. Transplace also has a Fleet Services division that provides web-based technologies and services to effectively and economically manage information for compliance and safety and process efficiency.