Achieving Transportation Excellence by Focusing on Daily Improvement

When first engaging in a partnership, shippers and their logistics providers have certain objectives in mind.

It may be to reduce transportation costs or centralize their transportation management but, unfortunately, over time, daily activities often fail to directly connect to those original objectives.

In order to achieve the desired ROI and deliver on the promises made during the sales process, both parties need daily activities to align with that objective.

By taking a strategic approach to managing operations and applying an OGSM (Objectives, Goals, Strategies, and Measurements) model, shippers and logistics providers can:

• Better define their overall vision
• Set tangible goals
• Build strategies in order to focus their daily efforts on achieving those goals
• Establish benchmarks to track and assess their progress

By clearly defining the objectives, goals, strategies, and measurements from the beginning, everyone involved – from the top down – can be focused on achieving the commitment promised in the contract/statement of work each and every day.

Then, if there are shortfalls, they can be identified on a daily basis and day-to-day accountability can be assigned to specific individuals for remedying those shortfalls.

While this approach isn’t going to magically solve or fix anything, it does limit the period of time where issues can linger and lead to greater potential for risk and service disruptions.