Lesson
Select measures of effectiveness (MOEs) that are measurable based on what is happening in the supply chain operations as well as in the deployment test.
Columbus, Ohio's experience in the electronic freight management system deployment test.
June 2008
Columbus,Ohio,United States
Background (Show)
Lesson Learned
Supply chain and logistics performance evaluation involved comparative analysis between current operations and operations that would be conducted using the information available from CEFM. The following lessons are learned from the evaluation of supply chain performance improvements based on the data obtained from the CEFM.
- Do not rely on the classic MOEs of supply chain improvement in the deployment test itself. As much as supply chain professionals and government officials want to reduce transit time, improve shipment reliability, and reduce dwell time, which are classic performance measures, the live deployment tests cannot be expected to address these measures sufficiently. Tests that are part of existing operations, as occurred with CEFM, are generally only a subset of the shipment activities, and the users and managers must move the freight first, and then provide support to the test. These measures reflect appropriate goals for the supply chain and could be used in performance evaluation only if the participating companies implemented the system in their operations, but they should not be used in the deployment test itself.
- Use precaution assessing the benefits as MOEs. The labor savings was one of the benefits can be accrued from the EFM. The labor savings were expected from reduced efforts verifying inadequate or missing data on the warehouse floor, correcting errors in electronic data interchange (EDI) information, and obtaining information about priority shipments. Also, manufactures would have reduced data entry and staff time because fewer data elements need to be entered to book a consignment using CEFM. Even though labor savings were the most quantifiable benefit, the partners in the supply chain had a difficult time providing estimates of realized savings. This experience tells us that the benefits as MOEs need to be evaluated carefully.
- Manage EFM shipments separately to measure selected MOEs. The evaluation team found that none of the partners thought that the schedules of EFM test shipments were affected, because test shipments were relatively small percentage of the total and no partner made an effort to separately manage those shipments. As the result, it was very difficult to find the indication that EFM had any effect on MOEs during the deployment test.
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Lesson ID: 2009-00472
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