Issue 2  Volume 1 February 2006

Lee's Logistics

The consolidation of U.S. Army logistical operations at Ft. Lee will bolster the supply-chain sector in Greater Richmond. Expect expanded educational offerings and more opportunity for private contractors. 

by Peter Galuszka

Ft. Lee, named after the South’s most famous general, has long played a major, if quiet, role in defending the United States since its founding just before World War I. Some 134,000 doughboys trained there to fight in the trenches of Europe during the Great War. After a 20-year hiatus, the post prepared quartermasters and other supply personnel for combat service in World War II, Korea and Vietnam.

 

Soldiers from Fort Lee prepare to attach a cable to the underside of a UH-60 Blackhawk during slingload operations.

Once again, Ft. Lee is on the move. The post, located along the marshy banks of the Appomattox River near Petersburg, is on the verge of one of the largest expansions of any military facility in Virginia, a state already saturated with defense facilities.   The number of troops training on any given day at Ft. Lee will nearly double to 9,000, while 3,250 new permanent jobs for military, civilian and contract workers will be added within a few years. “I think this will be one of the biggest shots in the arm for the region for a long time to come,” says U.S. Rep. Randy Forbes, whose 4th district includes Ft. Lee, Petersburg and Hopewell.

The expansion also will cement the Greater Richmond region’s standing as a rising logistics center. Already, local supply chain companies such as CapTech Ventures and Richmond Cold Storage are interacting with Ft. Lee trainees by giving them hands-on experience with radio-based tracking devices. That type of cooperation will likely expand, as will the role of local educational institutions such as John Tyler Community College and Virginia State University that offer expanded logistics management courses to military personnel and civilian students.

With so many more troops being trained locally and with more logistics courses in the mill in local schools, Ft. Lee will become a heavier center of gravity in the supply chain world. It will make the Greater Richmond area a stronger player, says Dr., Marshall W. Smith, president of John Tyler Community College, which will reopen a Ft. Lee office and offer more supply courses. Considering the magnitude of Ft. Lee’s expansion, local supply chain firms can’t help but benefit. “It becomes a very logical thing to do,” he says. More.

Advanous

This Henrico County company applies information technology to help distributors increase profits and boost profit margins.

by Donna Gregory

Like its name implies, there’s a clear advantage to working with Advanous. Since 1999, large and mid-sized distributors across the nation have turned to this company to help improve their bottom line by managing pricing.

Through the use of analytics software called Point to Profit™, Advanous helps companies determine if they’re pricing products competitively and illustrates how to increase profit margins. More.

Synergy Systems

This Richmond-based firm is preparing to go national with its platform to synchronize vendors, vendor partners and distributors throughout entire retail chains.

by Donna Gregory

As a former director of operations for a national grocery chain, Bill Lecznar knows firsthand how difficult it is to juggle a seemingly endless list of distributors. Store managers often depend on sheer brain power to keep track of scheduling, servicing and communication demands. He reasoned there must be a way to leverage technology to streamline the flow of product into retail stores. 

“We developed Synergy Systems to help do that,” he explains.

Synergy Systems is an online solution that gives retailers an efficient platform to synchronize vendors, vendor partners and distributors throughout entire retail chains. With Synergy Systems, managers can request service calls, check the status of deliveries, report problems and handle scheduling conflicts — all with just “the click of a mouse or a single phone call 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” says Synergy’s Web site. More.

Events

Title: "RFID - Not Only is the Elephant Still in the Room, But It's About to Step on Your Chest"

Speaker: Louis "Mr. RFID" Sirico

Topic: Join us for cocktails and dinner and learn how to turn RFID from a cost center into a profit center. ROI is the answer, but how do you get to it? Find out from “Mr. RFID” himself.

Format: Special "live" demonstrations by Captech Ventures and Alpha Systems"

Time: April 5, 2006; 6:30 to 8:30 p.m.

Location: Holiday Inn Koger Center, 10800 Midlothian Turnpike

Charge: $35 ($25 for Active Duty Military and Full Time Students) 

Host: Central Virginia Roundtable, Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals

Register here.

PeakLogix University

PeakLogix has introduced a series of seminars about the material handling business. Attend classes to learn new trends in material handling and facility space planning.

Take a look at the Schedule of Classes. For more information contact Bob Giberson at (804) 302-1504.

NEWS

Shippers Seals Deal with Sonoco. Shippers Commonwealth has licensed its Transportation Management System to Sonoco Products Company, of Hartsville, S.C., after a pilot program demonstrated “highly successful results” with freight cost savings in excess of projections. More.

Overnite Awarded FAST Express for Canada-U.S. Border. Canada’s Border Service has confirmed Overnite Transporta-

tion, a UPS subsidiary, as a participant in both the Free and Secure Trade (FAST) and Customs Self Assessment Programs, effectively streamlining the process for Overnite to move its trucks across the border. The designations provide greater speed and certainty in the clearance of low-risk, transborder shipments. More.

LMR to Support the U.S. Army Quartermaster School. Logistics Management Resources, working as a teammate with Anteon Corporation, has been awarded a task order to provide instructors, training, supply, automation, and administrative support to the US Army Quartermaster Center and School. The task order period of performance is a base year and four one-year options. More.

Port tonnage up. The Port of Richmond has met its goal in the 2003-2007 Strategic Plan to increase landside multi-modal cargoes in fiscal 2004/05. Non- waterborne tonnage rose 55 percent, from 25,178 st. to 38,987 st., and made up 9 percent of the total tonnage, as opposed to 5 percent of the total tonnage in Fiscal Year 2003/04. More.

Products

Jungheinrich Unveils New Forklift. The Jungheinrich Lift Truck Corp., a German manufacturer of forklifts, has introduced the ETV C20, an electric truck designed to move pallets at high lift heights and in confined spaces. It is the third vehicle that Junheinrich’s Richmond operation has introduced into the U.S. market in the past year. More.  

Recognitions

Overnite Website Garners Top Ratings. In a series of surveys conducted last year examining how corporations treat their online customers, Overnite Transportation, a less-than- truckload carrier, received the highest marks of the more than 2,000 corporate Web sites categorized over a spectrum of industries, according to the independent Customer Respect Group. Said Carol Miller, v.p. of information services: More.  

LMR Makes Rising 25 List. Logistics Management Resources, an employee-owned company that provides logistics support to military and government agencies, has been recognized as one of the fastest growing companies in the Metropolitan Richmond area. For the fifth straight year, the Prince George County-based LMR has been named to the Rising 25, an annual list of the fastest-growing companies in the Richmond area.