How efficient is your freight management system? Is it operating at peak performance, driving customer satisfaction and business results on all fronts? These can be difficult questions to answer. Consider these core freight management key performance indicators (KPIs), from a CLX Logistics infographic, as a great starting point.
There are six critical indicators to consider when looking into your freight management system:
- Safety – Ensures freight activity is performed appropriately, and in compliance with regulations and requirements.
- Service – Confirms that customer expectations are being met, increasing customer satisfaction.
- Freight costs – Tracks trends and issues in freight rates, ensuring your spend is competitive with others in your market.
- Efficiency and productivity – Delays in loading or unloading, last minute order changes, and suboptimal shipment size are just a few areas of focus
- Route guide compliance – Confirms that what you expect to happen with your shipments is happening; lack of compliance impacts cost and service.
- Sustainability – More and more of your customers are becoming aware of environment impacts and expect you to be aware of your own footprint.
Within the critical KPI areas, there are specific areas of focus in order to affect meaningful improvement:
- Service defect analysis
- Equipment utilization
- Order planning lead time
- Carrier compliance
- Shipment transit times
Lastly, by evaluating the direct causes behind each KPI, your company can identify the key areas for improvement to drive end-to-end supply chain performance. By increasing functional efficiencies and customer satisfaction, streamlining operations, saving time and money, setting industry standards while gaining a competitive advantage, companies can reduce operational costs and create savings in bulk, truckload, LTL, rail, intermodal and international shipment modes.
