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You may wonder what contribution software can have in the battle against climate change, but the developers of tmWare, the On Demand Logistics Solution, believe there is a lot that can be done.
It is a given that implementing a transport management system will bring about cost benefits for fleet operation, with optimised loads and reduced errors. Although the focus of these implementations are on cost reduction, there is a natural benefit to the environment from reduced vehicle usage and empty loads. So what else can an environmentally aware company look for a logistics management system?
It is widely known that Marks and Spencer have undertaken a campaign to combat climate change, Plan A because there is no Plan B. tmWare is used by several suppliers to M&S and as such tmWare developers have been looking at ways in which they can help with this campaign. tmWare produces all reports in PDF format, which means they can be saved to the desktop or emailed to the relevant people, instead of printing an entire report with numerous copies being made. Traditionally a supplier may have printed off all pallet labels prior to picking and if shortages were found, the quantities would be changed and the entire label run printed again.
A lot of wastage! tmWare allows the user to re-print selected labels, keeping wastage to a minimum. tmWare is an On Demand Solution, which means customer systems are all running on the same server. Research shows that an in house system server is only used to 20% of its capacity in the first 2 years, so with 15 customers running 15 servers, there is an increased use in wasted utilities. With a higher number of customers all connecting to one server, the carbon footprint is massively reduced.
It is clear that this does not just apply to suppliers to M&S, but to logistics companies across the board. There are many small steps that can be taken in the fight to reduce waste. The increasing reliability of the internet provides an ideal platform for running environmentally friendly systems, whilst providing a flexible and accessible tool for managing business critical operations.
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