Flex in the maritime supply chain (II)

As stated in my previous blog posting, organizations with multiple processes/activities can be setup in Flex Maritime logistics. Sometimes these organizations have divisions or entities that take care of these activities and processes. In these cases we use of the multi company setup of Dynamics AX 2012. We are fully compliant with Microsoft’s Dynamics AX 2012 new structure and licensing policies.

In our maritime logistics solution we look at activities as perspectives, which can be defined as a point of view towards processes, data and functionality. It is possible to setup each entity as the same, a different or even as a mixed perspective. The idea here is that many times the solution handles the same data, but from a different perspective and that data because of that can flow through the application from entity to entity. Many possible situations can be considered:

• the booking from a forwarder towards a liner agent
• the booking of the liner agent towards a principal
• the booking data of a vessel operator flowing through an owned and self-operated terminal
• the creation of bookings from multiple entities on one vessel / voyage

Because Flex Maritime logistics is  a supply chain solution, this means that we have to consider the fact that organizations can be single, multi or mixed perspective and that this can be in a single or multi entity environment. In other words, we always keep in mind that there are no fixed roles in the supply chain. Many companies need  the same kind of functionality but for different reasons.

A good example in Flex is the support per perspective for stripping and stuffing of containers:

• Forwarder, optimizes revenue by consignment of LCL shipments into the FCL container
• Terminal, as a service for vessel operators or forwarders, in combination with storage and other warehouse services
• Vessel operator, for ships convenience reasons, or to be able to accept LCL shipments
• Bulk logistics provider (3PL), receives FCL containers and strips them as a service to the customer before storing the cargo in their warehouses

In a single perspective situation processes are clear and as Flex maritime logistics, a single best of breed solution could handle this perfectly. However, in complexer situations best of breed solutions can no longer solve the case by itself.  We see more and more operational software islands, different vendors, complexer interfaces, data warehousing solutions etcetera. 

Flex maritime logistics is delivered as one integrated package to span multiple entities, perspectives, activities and processes. This means that all perspectives will be available to the customer, whether for use within one or multiple entities and eliminating the need for one or multiple best of breed solutions. Because of this almost any supply chain scenario, from origin to destination, or from factory to grocery, can be handled by Flex. If situations are non-standard then existing functionality can be reordered or reused (object oriented) and, in certain situations, maintained by customers themselves (open source code), building on the software library that comes with AX / Flex.