The competition for shipping space today is stronger than ever. Most vendors still plan their FCL shipments manually today. At TradeLink Technologies (TradeLink), we observed that this manual planning causes the vendors problems with optimal containerization and potentially results in more freight costs. For years, TradeLink has been collaborating with many leading logistics companies for lightweight trans-loading solutions at origin and destination locations. From that experience, we have designed a vendor-oriented Container Loading Optimization (CLO)—as part of our packing and shipping compliance solutions. CLO is available at no cost to our customers.
We believe that optimized shipping starts at the equipment level. The first step in our optimization process is the selection of the shipping container. TradeLink’s CLO provides suggestions for container sizes so that vendors no longer have to decide manually which type of container they should book. How does our CLO make these suggestions? It has access to the packing statuses of cartons at the shipment level. CLO works in tandem with TradeLink’s existing RFID or GS1-128 barcode scanning solution at vendors’ packing stations. Our ‘Scan & Pack’ software ensures carton accuracy and uploads packing data from the vendor’s coming shipments into the vendor’s TradeLink portal. The packing progress on this web portal is always visible to shippers to have an idea of container utilization long before the container needs to be reserved. When the shipper decides to book the equipment, CLO will assemble current shipments at the carton level and make recommendations for the best equipment type.
See more: GS1 Vietnam CLO Article
At TradeLink, we continually strive towards providing a seamless supply chain process for all our different buyers. Our CLO solution is another tool to save freight costs and maximize our customer’s supply chain.