The 3PL Request for Proposal: Analyzing a 3PL’s IT Capabilities

I talked to two executives from Americold – Kevin Van Belle, the VP of IT Applications, and Daniel Cooke, the Director of Marketing – on the topic of selecting a 3PL with robust IT capabilities.  Americold is a global leader in temperature-controlled warehousing. I gave these two gentlemen a stiff challenge; I told them I was operationally oriented, as are most of my readers.  The goal is to discuss this topic without going so far into the weeds on IT interfacing, standards and so forth, that my readers’ eyes would glaze over. The further challenge was to focus on IT capabilities that would differentiate a 3PL.  Every 3PL, for example, should be using a warehouse management system (WMS).  That would not be a differentiator. One key point was that metrics equal management.  Thus, it is absolutely critical to understand not just what types of metrics a 3PL uses internally, but what metrics they can provide their customers. From an internal perspective, some 3PLs are big enough that they can use the operational metrics from across their own network of warehouses to benchmark themselves.  For example, is the warehouse in Fort Smith Arkansas generating significantly more picks per hour than the norm?  Why? And can that be replicated?  Is the warehouse in Nampa, Idaho performing significantly below norm?  Again why and how can that be rectified? In Americold’s case, they have standardized on a warehouse management system (WMS) from JDA (RedPrairie), which makes it much easier to have the metrics defined and reported in a standard manner. Metrics can also be generated from a labor management system (LMS).  Implementing a LMS that makes use of engineered labor standards is still differentiating.  Americold uses LMS at most of their sites.  They also use JDA for their LMS. When it comes to […]