Foton Daimler, one of the world’s largest automotive manufacturers of quality heavy commercial vehicles is in partnership with oTMS to digitalize its logistics operation. oTMS will bring about efficiency and intelligence to the Foton Daimler parts distribution operation by providing end-to-end visibility and digitalized management of all its logistics service providers (LSPs). This initiative echoes Foton Daimler’s values to continuously improve its business and strive for customer experience excellence.

Founded in 2012, Beijing Foton Daimler Automobile Co., Ltd (Foton Daimler) is a joint venture that marries European cutting-edge production technology with Chinese manufacturing prowess and China’s growing need for state-of-the-art heavy commercial vehicles. Foton Daimler has nationwide sales and service coverage throughout China with more than 1.2 million users, 800 dealers and 2,000 accessories stores. 

The oTMS x Foton Daimler partnership is for the parts logistics business unit. oTMS aims to solve two key pain points:

1. Foton Daimler’s is experiencing large volumes of parts transport orders, and the continuous volume growth poses a challenge for the Foton Daimler team to accurately monitor shipments manually. 

2. Foton Daimler’s nationwide distribution is complex with distribution from their CDC to multiple cross-dock locations. The multi-party (Foton Daimler, LSPs, Customers) and manual communication (Emails, Calls, WeChat) of shipment status creates inefficiencies in its ever-growing distribution operations. 

oTMS Solution and Impact

1. oTMS will provide connectivity by integrating with the Foton Daimler’s Production Management System (PMS) to automatically create transport orders ready for planning optimization and/or allocation to LSPs.

Impact: It ensures accurate information is disseminated to LSPs and their drivers, thereby increasing productivity. The 2-way integration closes the loop on all sales orders on the Foton Daimler PMS. 

2. oTMS will create all the workflows to automatically consolidate all LTL transport orders to ensure they are optimized and automatically allocate transport orders to LSPs based on the lanes they are awarded and/or most competitive rates and services.

Impact: Optimizing all the LTL transport orders and automatically allocating all transport orders to the right LSPs will bring about significant logistics cost savings, while at the same time streamlining communication between Foton Daimler and their LSPs.

3. oTMS will be able to provide real-time visibility (RTV) of all transport orders by equipping all drivers with the oTMS Driver App. All parties within the logistics chain will be able to receive RTV on all transport orders.

Impact: All parties are able to take prompt action based on shipment status and plan resources accordingly. Focusing on exception handling will help to close gaps and increase customer satisfaction.

4. oTMS will allow Foton Daimler’s customers to receive transport orders via sign-on-glass and leave remarks for all transport orders. 

Impact: ePOD will remove the need to process paper PODs. The POD information will be immediate and accurate. Foton Daimler’s customers can provide feedback on the delivery service. All these reason codes will be consolidated for Foton Daimler to have better performance conversations with their LSPs.

5. All logistics data collected via the oTMS platform will be displayed in a structured and meaningful manner on the oTMS dashboards and reports. 

Impact: Make better informed business decisions based on actual data collected. From ensuring your logistics setup is aligned with your distribution network, managing LSPs performance with the power of data and continuously improving by addressing gaps highlighted by your data. 

oTMS is excited to have Foton Daimler onboard our platform.  

Clarios has appointed oTMS as the TMS of choice to connect, optimize and automate its logistics operations.

Clarios (a subsidiary of Brookfield Business Partners) is the leading advanced automotive battery solutions with one-third of the vehicles powered by Clarios batteries worldwide. Clarios has a mission to create the world’s best batteries, essential for the evolving future of transportation.

The automotive industry is one of the industries with the most challenging supply chain. With highly complex networks and a Just-in-Time business model. Clarios recognized the importance of a well-run logistics operations and the need to digitalize its logistics to remain competitive.

The appointment of oTMS as a TMS provider shows Clarios continued commitment to sustainability through adoption of oTMS, an enterprise Saas TMS technology that will bring about optimization within its internal logistics operations.

The implementation of oTMS will help solve Clarios critical pain points and deliver on impacts that are in alignment with Clarios’s business goals.

Connectivity

oTMS will connect multiple systems through 2-way EDI integration with Clarios’s ERP and WMS.

This will completely eliminate the time needed to exchange information and data entry. It also ensures 100% information accuracy across all systems.

Best Practices in Procurement

With the oTMS RFQ, contract management and rate management module, Clarios will be able to make the best procurement decisions at a glance, ensuring carriers who provide good service and are cost-efficient are rewarded.

Optimization through Automated Transport Planning

Clarios can now optimize its entire transport planning across multiple plants, distribution centers (DC) and across different logistics workflows (spare parts, finished goods, milk-run and ad hoc) and ensure cost and carriers are optimized while keeping to Just-In-Time (JIT) delivery service level agreements (SLA).

Multi-party Logistics Workflow Execution

With the oTMS carrier platform and driver app, oTMS connects all parties within the logistics chain to ensure everyone receives and provides prompt information on every transport order. This allows all parties to focus on solving exception handling and achieving their target KPIs.

Freight Audit and Payment

Auto-rating of all freight bills against rate tariffs not only saves time but eliminates errors from manual rating and puts a stop to potential logistics spend leakage.

Make Better Business Decisions with Insights

The oTMS Dashboard and Analytics allows Clarios to have better insight of their daily/ monthly/ quarterly operations allowing for better conversations with suppliers, customers, carriers thereby facilitating continuous improvement (CI) in its operations.

oTMS is excited to embark on this logistics digitalization journey alongside Clarios.

SHANGHAI, CHINA– April 25, 2023: oTMS, a leader in cloud transport management platform in China, today announced that it is mentioned as a Notable Vendor in 2023 Asia/Pacific Context: ‘Magic Quadrant for Transportation Management Systems’* published by Gartner, Inc.

According to this report, “The annual spend on supply chain execution (SCE) software in APAC to exceed $850 million through 2026, up from nearly $600 million through 2021. The annual TMS software spend in APAC will be approximately 28% of that on SCE, or $160 million through 2021. The forecast indicates that this will exceed $220 million by 2026, growing at a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7.2% in constant currency terms (base 2020).”

At the meantime, customers’ transportation management needs are also evolving. Gartner mentioned in the report that “Organizations within the Asia/Pacific market have historically looked for transportation management solutions that are execution-focused. Capabilities such as transportation planning and route optimization are not typically prioritized by shippers. Those capabilities are highly desired by 3PL organizations and logistics service providers. With the increasing demand in retail and e-commerce, there is some shifting in this regard. This is especially true in countries such as India, China and Vietnam. Companies within those countries are starting to investigate planning and route optimization capabilities to better support customer demands, particularly for last-mile deliveries in urban locations.

There is also increasing interest among companies in the region to have transportation and logistics technologies integrated. In response, vendors in the region often offer a suite of logistics-focused capabilities. This can include TMS, dock scheduling, yard management and warehouse management. Many companies prefer to work with a single technology vendor that offers multiple solutions in an attempt to unify their logistics processes.”

We believe these trends have also been noted by oTMS when serving its clients. Since the launch of oTMS’s transportation management system, it has been recognized by many large and medium-sized shippers because of its pioneering SaaS TMS + APP model and transparent and visible features. It connects manufacturers, carriers, drivers, distributors & retailers on the same platform to manage carriers, shipments, freight billing and performance analysis. Today, oTMS is one of the leading TMS vendors in the Asia-Pacific market and has more than 9,000 carriers and 650,000 active drivers on its platform.

In 2022, oTMS Singapore entity established and oTMS launched an international edition of SaaS TMS independently deployed in Singapore, dedicated to helping enterprises in the Asia-Pacific region to accelerate the digitalization of their local and international logistics and transportation management systems, effectively supporting the continuous growth of their business in the Asia-Pacific region.

Mirek Dabrowski, oTMS, CEO and co-founder, commented: “Since we setup our Singapore company to focus on Asia Pacific expansion last August, I am excited that  we have already started operation in Indonesia and Thailand and planning to add another 3 countries this year. Transport market nature in some of these markets offers higher potential for planning and optimization features than China.”

In the future, oTMS will continue to lead the way, providing customers with outstanding solutions, accelerating the digital transformation of the industry and making transportation smart.

* Asia/Pacific Context: ‘Magic Quadrant for Transportation Management Systems’ by Brock Johns, Oscar Sanchez Duran. March 28, 2023. This content is part of a larger body of research on this topic. Magic Quadrant for Transportation Management Systems

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