Transport logistics systems and methods

• US 6,915,268 B2
• Filed: 07/27/2001
• Issued: 07/05/2005
• Est. Priority Date: 07/28/2000
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Odyssey Logistics & Technology Corporation
• Original Assignee: Odyssey Logistics & Technology Corporation
• Inventors: Clark, James R., Johnston, Doug, Hu, Larry, Michaud, Michael D., Daley, Amy, Phaneuf, Robert, Mueller, Donald H., Riggs, Glenn E., Bainor, Joseph J., Rocky, Joseph F. Jr., Kivela, John H., Shollenberger, Alan D., Brechter, Ralph K., Shellman, Robert H., Nelson, Peter P., Clark, Douglas L., Willett, M. Nadine, Bainor, Stanley M., Indelicato, Louis F., Clow, Jon L., Lohan, William J., Naughton, Michael M.
• Primary Examiner(s): MEINECKE DIAZ, SUSANNA M
• Application Number:
  US09/915,301
• Publication Number:
  US 20020065738A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,439 Days
• Field of Search: 705/7, 705/8
• US Class Current: 705/7.37
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/0631 Resource planning, allocation, distributing or scheduling for enterprises or organisations
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06316 Sequencing of tasks or work
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06375 Prediction of business process outcome or impact based on a proposed change
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/0639 Performance analysis of employees; Performance analysis of enterprise or organisation operations
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/08 Logistics, e.g. warehousing, loading or distribution; Inventory or stock management
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/083 Shipping
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/0833 Tracking
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/0834 Choice of carriers
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/087 Inventory or stock management, e.g. order filling, procurement or balancing against orders
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 20/40 Authorisation, e.g. identification of payer or payee, verification of customer or shop credentials; Review and approval of payers, e.g. check credit lines or negative lists
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/00 Commerce
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0201 Market modelling; Market analysis; Collecting market data
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 50/188 Electronic negotiation

Abstract

A logistics system manages the shipments of goods supplied from a plurality of different shippers by a plurality of carriers. It has a variety of modules integrated with each other to perform various functionalities. For example, it may have a purchasing module evaluating proposals by shippers for respective shipments of goods and awarding contracts for the shipments to the plurality of carriers. It may have an optimization module analyzing the proposals and informing the purchasing module if an opportunity exists for at least some of the shipments to be consolidated, in which case at least one contract awarded by the purchasing module is for a consolidated group of the shipments. It may have a contract administration module maintaining information relating to the status of proposals received and contracts awarded by the purchasing module. It may have a scheduling module scheduling shipments according to the awarded contracts. It may also have a shipment management module tracking the status of shipments awarded by the purchasing module and scheduled by said scheduling module. It may further have a financial module authorizing payments according to the status of shipments tracked by the shipment management module are passed between first and second asynchronous clock domains.

Claims

1. An integrated logistics system for managing the shipments of goods supplied from a plurality of different shippers by a plurality of carriers, said system comprising:

a purchasing module evaluating proposals by shippers for respective shipments of goods and awarding contracts for the shipments to the plurality of carriers;

a contract administration module maintaining information relating to the status of proposals received and contracts awarded by the purchasing module;

a scheduling module scheduling shipments according to the awarded contracts;

a shipment management module tracking the status of shipments awarded by the purchasing module and scheduled by said scheduling module, said shipment management module including or being connected to a relational database logging and storing the shipment records of said shipments, wherein changes to said shipment records in the first relational database are allowed to be controlled and tracked per audit protocols and the history and changes made to/during a shipment are allowed to be viewed;

a financial module authorizing payments according to the status of shipments tracked by the shipment management module;

a network configured to transfer information between said shipment management module and at least one module of a group consisting of said purchasing module, said scheduling module, said contract administration module, and said financial module, said at least one module including or being connected to a second database; and

at least one computer, said at least one computer connected to said network and configured to execute a computer program of said purchasing module, contract administration module, scheduling module, shipment management module, and financial module, to process said information transferred by said network.

2. An integrated logistics system according to claim 1, wherein the plurality of carriers includes ship owners and the logistics system includes a tanker planning module.

3. An integrated logistics system according to claim 2, wherein the tanker planning module includes a partitioned relational database storing collaborative data relating to shippers, freight forwarders and ship owners.

4. An integrated logistics system according to claim 3, wherein access to each partition in the relational database of the tanker planning module is selectively controlled and managed so that contracts between shippers and ship owners can be awarded by the purchasing module without revealing the confidential information of one party to the other.

5. An integrated logistics system according to claim 1, further comprising a data warehouse module storing operations data received from the shipment management module and commercial data received from the financial module.

6. An integrated logistics system according to claim 5, wherein the data warehouse module selects, filters, aggregates and repackages said operations data and commercial data to generate data mining, metrics and predetermined reports, and customizable reports.

7. An integrated logistics system according to claim 6, wherein the data warehouse module includes a front end interface offering secured access and controlled transfer between the data warehouse module in computer readable format.

8. An integrated logistics system according to claim 1, further comprising a carrier management module which tracks the performance of carriers and generates ratings of the carriers.

9. An integrated logistics system according to claim 8, wherein the carrier management module receives information from the front end interface of a data warehouse module.

10. An integrated logistics system according to claim 8, wherein the carrier management module receives metric requirements from a contract administration module.

11. An integrated logistics system according to claim 8, wherein the carrier management module receives exception information indicating shipment problems from an exception queue in the shipment management module.

12. An integrated logistics system according to claim 1, further comprising a regulatory module collecting information from other modules of the system and providing reports related to health and safety or governmental regulations.

13. An integrated logistics system according to claim 12, wherein the purchasing module blocks an award of a shipment to a carrier according to information maintained in the regulatory module.

14. An integrated logistics system according to claim 12, wherein the regulatory module accesses the Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) information maintained in the Enterprise Resource Planning software of a shipper.

15. An integrated logistics system according to claim 1, wherein the shipment management module includes a data management tool managing the viewing and/or updates of the data in the first relational database in a secure change environment.

16. An integrated logistics system according to claim 1, wherein the first relational database in the shipment management module receives information from the shipper and carrier for each shipment, the contract administration module, and the scheduling module.

17. An integrated logistics system according to claim 1, wherein the shipment management module receives or computes position data to audit and/or calculate current information on detention and to validate charges for detention.

18. An integrated logistics system according to claim 1, wherein the shipment management module computes inventory data to calculate the position and amount of inventory in the shipments tracked by the shipment management module.

19. An integrated logistics system according to claim 1, wherein the shipment management module provides information on the location and status of equipment of a given shipper or carrier.

20. An integrated logistics system according to claim 1, wherein the shipment management module forwards an electronic authorization for payments to the financial module according to the shipment records in the first relational database.

21. An integrated logistics system according to claim 1, wherein the contract administration module permits minor changes to a contract awarded by the purchasing module by coordinating change requests and change response messages between the shipper and the carrier.

22. An integrated logistics system according to claim 1, wherein the scheduling module receives electronic data from a shipper for a shipment and forwards said data to the corresponding carrier via a distributed communications network and XML.

23. An integrated logistics system according to claim 22, wherein the scheduling module matches and synchronizes the timing of notification, booking or offer of the shipment with the carrier and automatically notifies the shipper that the shipment has been confirmed.

24. An integrated logistics system according to claim 1, wherein said purchasing modul

maintains carrier information relating to each one of said plurality of carriers;

receives a proposal for the shipment of goods supplied from a shipper, said proposal including shipping information relating to the shipment of the goods and transaction information relating to the contract terms for the shipment;

evaluates the proposal to select a carrier from among said plurality of carriers; and

creates an electronic abstract of a contract between the shipper and the selected carrier for the shipment of goods identified in the proposal.

25. An integrated logistics system recited in claim 24, further comprising:

communicating with the selected carrier to receive a response regarding the electronic abstract of the contract;

creating an electronic abstract of the response received from the selected carrier; and

confirming selection of the selected carrier with the shipper using the electronic abstract of the response received from the selected carrier.

26. An integrated logistics system as recited in claim 24, wherein the carrier information includes qualification information for each one of the plurality of carriers.

27. An integrated logistics system as recited in claim 26, wherein the qualification information indicates the ability of the plurality of carriers to ship different categories of goods.

28. An integrated logistics system as recited in claim 27, wherein the different categories of goods include chemicals.

29. An integrated logistics system as recited in claim 24, wherein the evaluation further comprises:

sending an electronic abstract of the proposal to the potential carriers;

evaluating responses to the electronic abstract of the proposal received from the potential carriers, said responses including shipping information supplied by the carrier relating to the shipment of the goods or transaction information relating to the contract terms for the shipment;

selecting one of the potential carriers for the shipment on the basis of the responses to the electronic abstract of the proposal and the carrier information.

30. An integrated logistics system as recited in claim 1, said scheduling module comprising:

retrieving routing information for a plurality of different transport modes;

retrieving carrier information relating to each one of a plurality of different carriers for each one of said plurality of different transport modes;

determining a routing for the shipment of goods from said origin to said destination based on said retrieved routing information; and

scheduling, via a computer network, the shipment of goods from said origin to said destination based on said carrier information.

31. An integrated logistics system according to claim 30, wherein the scheduled shipment of goods from said origin to said destination is scheduled to use at least two different transport modes.

32. An integrated logistics system according to claim 30, wherein the logistics system is a third party logistics system.

33. An integrated logistics system according to claim 30, wherein one of said plurality of different transport modes comprises truck transport.

34. An integrated logistics system according to claim 32, wherein said carrier information includes information relating to bulk truck carriers, truckload carriers, and less than truckload carriers.

35. An integrated logistics system according to claim 32, wherein said shipment is scheduled using information unique to truck transport.

36. An integrated logistics system according to claim 30, wherein one of said plurality of different transport modes comprises rail transport.

37. An integrated logistics system according to claim 35, wherein said shipment is scheduled using information which is unique to rail transport.

38. An integrated logistics system according to claim 30, wherein one of said plurality of different transport modes comprises containership transport.

39. An integrated logistics system according to claim 37, wherein said shipment is scheduled using information which is unique to containership transport.

40. An integrated logistics system according to claim 30, wherein one of said plurality of different transport modes comprises bulk tanker transport.

41. An integrated logistics system according to claim 39, wherein said shipment is scheduled using information which is unique to bulk tanker transport.

42. An integrated logistics system according to claim 30, wherein one of said plurality of different transport modes comprises air freight.

43. An integrated logistics system according to claim 42, wherein said shipment is scheduled using information which is unique to air freight.