September 2014
CONNECTIONS
News for our clients
IN THIS ISSUE
Cover Story:
Order Management
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UTi Wins Top 3PL Industry Awards for
Performance, Service and Sustainability1
Country Focus: Mexico
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UTi NEWS & NOTES
Turning Visibility into Value
An effective order management program can help you boost
performance from vendors and throughout your supply chain
In today’s competitive global marketplace, you can’t afford to waste time sourcing
suppliers or waiting for information on the status of shipment orders. And to plan and
manage variability, you need more than simple track-and-trace capabilities as your
visibility must extend into supplier domains. You need detailed, complete, real-time
order information to resolve issues and capture opportunities now -- and a flexible tool
to analyze and improve performance later.
A robust order management program -- not just an order management system -- can
help you make those leaps from visibility to value, whether the shipments are moving
into, within, or out of your organization. And while technology is a critical component,
it can’t optimize your supply chain on its own. The people and processes that support
your order management program are equally important to its success.
read more »
Air and Ocean Charter Desks
Streamline Service for Clients
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UTi Wins Flextronics Award
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Stay Current on Customs
5
Delivering Better Lives 5
MEET OUR PEOPLE
We are pleased to welcome these new
team members:
Naran Andreyev
Senior Manager, Trade Services
Shanghai, China
Patrick Bouquet
Country Manager, Mauritius
Port Louis, Mauritius
Paulo Cardozo
Manager, Client Solutions
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Hobart Low
Director, Client Solutions
Singapore
UTi Wins Top 3PL Industry Awards for Performance, Service
UTi is one of only seven supply chain management providers to win a Quest for Quality medal from Logistics Management
magazine in both of its 3PL categories (transportation management solutions and the category of value-added warehousing and
distribution solutions).
Quest for Quality is recognized as one the most important measures of customer satisfaction and performance
excellence in the industry. For third-party logistics providers, the award is based on a reader poll in the areas of
carrier selection and negotiation, order fulfillment, transportation and distribution, inventory management, and
logistics information systems.
UTi also recently earned a spot on the Inbound Logistics magazine list of the Top 100 3PL Providers and placed
among its 75 Green Supply Chain Partners for the third year in a row.
The magazine noted that we help meet our clients’ sustainability needs through carbon footprinting, integrating sustainability into
our certification and quality management programs, and expanding network and route optimization capabilities. Inbound Logistics
makes its G75 selections “by considering a company’s corporate sustainability initiatives, collaborative customer-driven projects,
and participation in public-private partnerships.”
Learn more about the recognition we’ve received from clients, the industry and others.
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Order Management
» continued from page 1
The right program can enable both your
vendors and your supply chain as a
whole to perform better. Here’s how to
think about implementing or upgrading your company’s approach to order
management so that you can meet the
ever-increasing demands of your own
customers more efficiently.
Getting suppliers up to snuff
Let’s start with your suppliers. Chances
are that you’re working with a number of
vendors far from your company’s own operating locations who are interacting with
a variety of carriers, buyers and planners. It’s also likely that some of them are
not as technologically sophisticated or
process-oriented as you would like. Trying to manage myraid suppliers in-house,
however, isn’t an efficient use of your
team’s time, and culture and language
differences can quickly translate into
quality and timeliness issues.
It only takes one communication breakdown with a vendor to set back your supply chain. That’s why it’s critical to handle
tasks such as purchase order routing,
order receipt confirmation, and order
acceptance and revisions electronically.
An automated process decreases risk
and lead-time variability, but that’s only
the beginning. Building a strong order
management program also incorporates
vendor training and compliance measurement to improve their performance and
consistency over time. A well-designed
program should also enable smooth onboarding and integration of new suppliers.
Third-party logistics providers like UTi
can help -- first, by sparing you the cost
and difficulty of trying to build and operate
your own order management program.
Some 3PLs can also provide 24/7 vendor
oversight, working with your suppliers
in their local languages to help ensure
compliance with documentation requirements, scheduled milestones, shipping
authorization criteria and regulatory
requirements.
With a strong order management program, you can clearly and
easily follow and adjust the
progress of your components from any number
of vendors to your manufacturing locations, your
distribution facilities, and
on to final delivery. Such a program also
reduces risk, manages exceptions and
course-corrects as needed. It also builds
an audit trail to measure and improve
performance among production suppliers
and transportation providers.
Gaining visibility to every level
A good order management program will
also provide multiple electronic channels
for you to track your orders, and not only
by P.O. number, but by SKU, product attribute, part number, consignee number,
container number, warehouse number or
any reference number you choose. The
program should also provide role-specific
views of orders and inventory movements.
That means you’ll have the flexibility to
track orders before they’re completed
and shipped, and to make any necessary
adjustments in the flow to relieve bottlenecks or take advantage of consolidation
opportunities, whether among supplier
shipments or within your own dynamically distributed inventory movements,
to accommodate changes in customer
demand.
Such an approach offers several interesting vendor management options related
to the manufacture, shipment planning,
and packaging and shipping of your
goods. For example, with detailed container packing visibility, you can stage,
reroute and prioritize order
shipping, and you can capture container and capacity
utilization details to maximize efficiency, including
consolidating shipments.
MEET OUR PEOPLE
We are pleased to announce new
roles for these team members:
Gabriel Guajardo
Director of NAFTA Transportation
Laredo, TX USA
Roger Kwinda
General Manager, Operations
Johannesburg, South Africa
Mike McClelland
SVP, Contract Logistics & Dist.
Grand Rapids, MI USA
Amaro Medina
Branch Manager
Laredo, TX USA
Nobantu Mqulwana
National Sales Director
Johannesburg, South Africa
Beau Myhre
Area Sales Manager
Chicago, IL USA
Mari Parker
Branch Manager
Los Angeles, CA USA
Stacey Roux
Regional Sales Manager
Cape Town, South Africa
Dino Sarpa
Regional Lead, Client Solutions
Indianapolis, IN USA
Lee Scott
Director, Client Solutions
Houston, TX USA
Dave Swanson
Director, Client Solutions
Johannesburg, South Africa
Hessel Verhage
President, FF Americas
Chicago, IL USA
Shanshan Wang
Regional Solutions Manager
Singapore
continued »
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Join Us at These Events
» continued from page 2
A good order management program will
enable you to drive this process yourself
or in partnership with your 3PL to the
degree you desire.
How might your company ensure freight
is optimally consolidated and routed?
With enhanced visibility and responsiveness, you can aggregate weight
and volume via ground, air and ocean;
for example, by switching from LCL to
FCL and/or 20-foot to 40-foot containers. In addition to improving utilization,
you can optimize routing options and
in some cases bypass your warehouse
or distribution center altogether. Working with the right partner, your order
management program can also help you
shift value-added functions (such as
barcoding, pick-pack, palletization and
quality control) closer to origin, where
costs tend to be lower, enabling you to
make smarter customer order fulfillment
decisions as you approach destination.
Partnering to optimize results
To achieve better results, your order
management program and transportation providers need to work hand in
hand. UTi enables you to do that most
effectively by tying together your vendors, internal operations and customers
with our air, ocean and ground transportation services and our dedicated order
management team. You get access to
our global infrastructure and personnel
to source information across geographies and vendors, leveraging our local
market knowledge and eliminating the
need to find or establish your own resources in multiple locations.
Our dedicated order management
personnel around the world also provide
complete global time-zone coverage to
serve you 24/7. Our people deliver a
program that has evolved with 20 years
of practical experience and has enabled
us to serve a variety of manufacturers and retailers directly as well as to
orchestrate services to them among
multiple 3PLs.
We know as well as anyone that order
cycles and practices vary widely among
verticals. UTi Order Management is
flexible and rigorous enough to play in
all industries. Perhaps most critically,
our system is able to deal with data in
the language of the client -- you -- as an
extension of your business, so that you
can begin reaping the benefits quickly.
Our expertise particularly comes into
play as your shipments flow internationally. UTi’s industry-leading customs
brokerage service is fully integrated with
our order management solution, and we
electronically feed all order management
data into brokerage systems for precapture. This is critical to
enabling you to allocate
against in-transit or onorder inventory, and to
optimize DC-routing and
drop-shipping internationally. Other valueadded options of UTi order management
include support for supplier pay-forperformance models, in which financial incentives are based on improved
compliance.
Stretching your potential and
performance
As we’ve seen, better managing the
order, freight and financial flows of your
supply chain requires more than just
increased visibility. Extracting value
depends on your ability to act quickly
and intelligently on the information, and
to improve the process over time. UTi’s
order management expertise, infrastructure and related resources enable
us to deliver competitive advantage to
your supply chain, and to help you take
a more strategic approach in managing product flows based on quality data,
sound analytics and innovative options.
We also recognize that different companies are in different places on this journey. That’s why our order management
solution is designed to work end-to-end
or by segment, depending on your current supply chain needs, as illustrated in
the images accompanying this article. To
learn more, reach out today to your local
sales representative or the UTi Order
Management team.
We hope to see you at the following events.
Please contact the person listed if you
would like to speak with us at the event.
Supply Chain Asia Forum
02-04 September 2014
Singapore
Contact: UTi APAC Sales Vice President
Pat Cooney
Motor Carriers of Montana
Convention
09-11 September 2014
Billings, MT USA
Contact: UTi Americas Distribution Vice
President Scott Palmer
ICPA Fall Conference
10-12 September 2014
Nashville, TN USA
Contact: UTi Americas Customs Brokerage
Client Growth Director Bob Strbanovic
Commercial Vehicles Turkey
15-16 September 2014
Istanbul, Turkey
Contact: UTi Turkey Automotive Industry
Business Development Manager Cuneyt
Kalkan
Automotive Logistics
16-18 September 2014
Detroit, MI USA
Contact: UTi Director of Account Solutions
David Resetar
IANA Expo
20-23 September 2014
Long Beach, CA USA
Contact: UTi Americas Distribution Vice
President Greg Galbraith
CSCMP Global Conference
21-24 September 2014
San Antonio, TX USA
Contact: UTi Americas Sales Vice President
Mike Valentine
Iowa Motor Truck Association
23-24 September 2014
Cedar Rapids, IA USA
Contact: UTi Americas Distribution Vice
President Scott Palmer
Prologistics
24-25 September 2014
Brussels, Belgium
Contact: UTi Sales Manager Sjoerd Hanrath
BreakBulk Americas Conference
29 September-02 October 2014
Houston, TX USA
Contact: UTi Energy, Mining and Projects
Americas Lead Chris Osborne
IQPC Cold Chain Global Forum
29 September-03 October 2014
Boston, MA USA
Contact: UTi Pharmaceutical and Healthcare
Americas Lead Jayne Profeta
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Country Focus
Mexico offers a new world of opportunities
Mexico has seen it all -- ancient civilizations, colonization, independence, a
revolutionary civil war, and other internal
and external conflicts aplenty. But with
relative stability since the 1930s and
increasingly rapid modernization, the nation now presents both numerous opportunities and some important challenges
for enterprising firms around the world.
infrastructure issues putting the brakes
on Mexico’s otherwise rapid progress.
In response, the country is implementing a wide-ranging set of reforms to spur
productivity and competitiveness and
increase regulatory efficiency; one key
measure will open up the state-dominated energy sector for foreign investment.
If your company is interested in doing
business in Mexico, whether to source
production, to optimize assembly and
distribution, or to explore sales opportunities in the nation’s fast-growing business and consumer markets, you’re not
alone. With labor rates, freight and inventory costs, and in some cases, quality
issues rising for those operating in China
and other traditional hotspots, many
companies are exploring alternatives.
Given Mexico’s challenges and potential,
perhaps nowhere else is it more important to find the right partner to guide your
business. With freight forwarding locations in the three largest markets and 12
contract logistics facilities with a total of
67,000 m2 of dedicated and multi-client
space throughout the country, UTi has
the resources and relationships to help
you succeed.
Mexico might well make sense for businesses also seeking ever-faster time to
market, particularly if you are moving
goods in or out of the United States.
Thanks to the North American Free
Trade Agreement, now in its 20th year,
U.S.-Mexican trade now is almost equal
to U.S.-Chinese trade. In 2013, NAFTA
and the near-sourcing trend enabled
Mexico to become the world’s 10th-largest economy in GDP purchasing power,
according to the International Monetary
Fund, with 3 percent economic growth
expected this year.
As the world’s 11th-largest country by
population, which grew 1.2 percent in
2013 (matching India while outpacing Brazil, China and the other top-10
markets), Mexico is on the move. Foreign
direct investment here in 2013 reached
a record $35 billion, and Mexico ranks a
respectable 53rd (out of 189 countries)
on the World Bank’s ease-of-doing-business index.
Challenges persist, however. Within
Mexico, the largest metropolitan areas
are among the most difficult places to
do business, and the nation overall is
a study in contrasts, with high levels of
inequality in education, health and income; severe crime and corruption; and
Finding the right partner
Our partnerships with the leading air,
ocean, road and intermodal carriers
in-country are supplemented by our
unique UTi NAFTA cross-border service.
Building on our long-term relationships
with the relevant government agencies
to ensure compliance and enable the efficient movement of your cargo, UTi’s operations in the U.S., Mexico and Canada
have joined forces to develop an endto-end solution combining core services
such as customs brokerage, contract
logistics and road freight to provide a
seamless flow of goods throughout North
America.
Throughout the shipping process, our
in-house brokerage services in the U.S.
and Mexico provide complete visibility
and control. With multi-modal options,
distribution centers near primary border
crossings, and collaborative multi-client
freight consolidation, we’re sure to find a
fit that’s right for you.
UTi combines its capabilities to handle
your goods for movement in and out of
Mexico as well as storage and distribution within Mexico, and we provide
logistical support for both inbound manufacturing operations and finished product
fulfillment. Whether your goods are standard cargo or high-value, temperaturecontrolled or dangerous goods, UTi can
LANGUAGE: Spanish
CURRENCY: Peso (MXN)
TIME ZONE: UTC -06:00
TOP EXPORT PARTNERS:
USA, Canada
TOP IMPORT PARTNERS:
USA, China, South Korea
MAIN EXPORTS:
Agricultural products, oil and petroleum products, silver, manufactured
goods, aerospace, automotive, hightech, pharmaceuticals
MAIN IMPORTS:
Automotive parts, aerospace parts,
aircraft, steel mill products, agricultural machinery, metalworking
machines, electronic components
FREE TRADE AGREEMENTS:
U.S./Canada, EU, Israel, Japan,
many Central American and South
American countries
meet your specific needs.
In Mexico, UTi is certified to ISO 9001:
2008, TS 16949, AIB, FDA, GMP, CTPAT, SmartWay, LEED, SOX and BASC.
We are proud to work here with some
of the world’s best companies across a
wide range of industries, and we look
forward to discussing how we can deliver
quantified value and competitive advantage for your supply chain. Learn more
from UTi Mexico National Sales Manager
Antonio Soda.
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UTi News & Notes
Delivering Better Lives
Air and Ocean Charter Desks Streamline Service
To streamline client service delivery by consolidating and leveraging our expertise,
UTi recently announced the launch of a global air charter desk (GACD) in Amsterdam
and a global ocean charter desk (GOCD) in Houston.
“The GACD is staffed by a well-rounded team with global charter procurement and
operations experience working with our regional air leaders,” says Jerry Trimarco, UTi
Vice President, Global Air. “To speed service for clients, the team has already developed a multitude of airline charter relationships and agreements. We’ve also implemented a set of standard tools and processes to make the experience smooth and
efficient for clients.”
Industry expertise
In a similar move, UTi has established a GOCD in Houston that works with regional
desks around the world. Christian Boettcher, UTi Vice President, Global Ocean, says
the benefits include “consistent practice and alignment, as well as minimizing risk
for UTi and our clients.” The move also enables faster and more efficient service for
clients in time-sensitive industries, such as energy, mining and projects.
Collaborating with the global hub in Houston, regional ocean charter desks have been
established in Amsterdam, Johannesburg and Singapore as these are major centers
for gas and oil exploration, drilling, mining and large projects construction. Each desk
is manned by subject matter experts who understand the special needs of these industries and will help drive improved purchasing power for ocean charters by establishing stronger global and regional partnerships with key ship owners in the ocean
chartering and bulk shipping markets.
UTi Wins Flextronics Award
UTi has earned a 2014 Flextronics Strategic Supplier award for
providing the company outstanding performance, strategic valueadd, excellent service and innovation.
UTi provides global air and ocean freight forwarding, customs brokerage, and value-added contract logistics services and solutions
to Flextronics. Flextronics selected only 68 of its 14,000 suppliers
for the award.
Learn more about the award from the Flextronics press release
and see UTi’s other recent honors on our Awards page.
Stay Current on Customs
We’re pleased to provide the latest issue of UTi Customs, a newsletter covering key developments in customs brokerage, compliance and trade from around the world.
The current issues features a roundup of more than 20 recent and
important news items from Africa, the Americas, Asia Pacific and
EMENA, in a concise, easy to digest format.
Both the current and past issues are available in the UTi website’s
Newsroom. Be sure to sign up today to receive a variety of publications and messages from UTi by email.
UTi Charitable Foundation
Aids Education in Vietnam
Delivering Better Lives, the UTi charitable foundation, was pleased recently
to complete its third school construction
project in Vietnam. Like the nearly 100
other education, health care and community support projects that DBL has
undertaken around the world since its
founding in 2006, the new school in Tra
Vinh Province combines direct involvement and efficient investment by DBL
combined with the support of local community and UTi team members to meet
a pressing need.
In Tra Vinh, the challenge is that many
children are not born in hospitals, do not
receive birth certificates, and therefore
are not eligible for public education or
other governmental support. Add to this
the fact that the community is economically disadvantaged and survives mainly
on subsistence farming, fishing and
harvesting, and it’s not surprising that
education -- and the children’s future
economic opportunities -- are often
sacrificed.
UTi Vietnam team members, led by airfreight manager Thao Huynh, decided
to do something about it. In addition
to building the school, UTi and several
business partners have donated food,
clothing, school supplies and toys to the
local children, and the school building
itself also has been used to provide
free free health checks and medicine
donated by area doctors.
The school “will not only provide formal
education for the children, but give them
a chance in life that they previously
never had,” says DBL Executive Director
Glenn Mills.
UTi Connections:
We welcome your feedback. Please contact us with any comments, questions or
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UTi publications.
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