Posted On December 4, 2019

In a little over a month, the calendar will read 2020.

It’s a year that sounds futuristic enough to be a movie title, all on its own.

Those of us who work in transportation management and logistics enter the year eager to know which technologies will significantly impact the supply chain of tomorrow. Will it be driverless trucks? What about blockchain? Or expanded usage of artificial intelligence?

Time will tell.

For now, we know the path to a better supply chain is built on the foundation of a few old- school values.

1. Transparency

Visibility isn’t typically thought of as an old-school value, but transparency is.

A truly visible supply chain allows customers and shippers to know exactly where their package is and when it should arrive. Supply chains that lack visibility also lack transparency.

Fortunately, the best transportation management systems (TMS) on the market deliver transparency through visibility.

Visibility might not be the flying car we all imagined would exist in 2020.

But if you manage a supply chain, visibility is still pretty cool.

2. Determination

In the age of Amazon, efficient supply chains are a strategic advantage.

Some companies got a head start on being competitive in a same-day delivery era when they realized just how important innovative transportation management would become.

You might not be one of those companies.

Instead, you might be one of the companies choking on the dust of a once-equal competitor, simply because of an ineffective, inefficient supply chain.

If that sounds like you, 2020 is your year to turn things around.

The day it’s too late to redesign your supply chain is the day you go out of the business. Until then, if supply chain management is your weakness, change it.

Fight for your share of the market, and make sure your business is around in 2030.

3. Excellence

At the Flat World Holdings family of companies, we base our culture of excellence on the following principles:

• We strive to create an environment that makes our employees proud to be part of our family.
• We believe in hard work, because what we do matters.
• We are responsive to customers and to our team members.
• We are transparent and honest in all our interactions.
• We require our team to be forward-thinking, innovative, and entrepreneurial.
• We focus on identifying solutions, not problems.
• We make a positive impact in our community, as individual leaders and as a company.

That’s how we define excellence.

Your team likely has a different definition of the word, but in the end, excellence means doing everything you can to make yourself, your team, your company, your family, and your community proud of your contributions.

An employee, a shipping department, and a company that truly strive to achieve that definition of excellence will always succeed. They will, in the end, weather every storm that comes their way.

Technology is ever-changing. The year 2000 once sounded equally futuristic, and yet a discussion of technology at the beginning of that decade wouldn’t have included smartphones, social media, or most of the other technologies that dominate much of our daily lives today.

At the Flat World family, we can’t wait to see how technology will evolve to serve supply chains in the coming decade.

And we can’t wait to work with clients and partners who believe the best foundation for that technology is a few old-school values.