ESP’s Solution to the Supply Chain Challenge
4/11/23
Supply Chains continue to face challenges, whether it’s from the lack of available resources or the geopolitical challenges of today's world. Every cargo owner struggles with the goal of ensuring the efficient movement of goods. Because of this, the supply chain industry has started to focus on visualization as a key component of properly managing their supply chain. What exactly is visualization? Visualization is the ability to track goods in transit by digitally viewing the activity of those goods. As visualization becomes more popular, there’s increasing recognition that it falls short of the needs of many supply chain companies and their cargo owners. Having visibility is a great way to know where something was or even where it is now. However, it lacks forward looking information that supply chain professionals need to make better decisions and to minimize the risk of movement, given it only represents past and current data.
Insert ESP Logistics Technology. ESP provides our customers with a capability we call ‘beyond visualization’ by creating a network of data that extends beyond where goods are today, empowering users to unleash the power of forward-looking analytics and providing predictive intelligence against the flow of goods. We call this our ‘Space and Time Network’, a network that focuses on the use of location and is overlayed with a series of customer focused data (bill of ladings, containers, warehousing, distribution and even sales forecasting) and Esri data layers enabling the ability to anticipate issues within a supply chain. Esri data layers provide key geographic indicators (risk, geopolitical boundaries, global weather, and many other sources) giving businesses a better understanding of threats and challenges within the movements of assets. The ESP Space and Time Network allows for many different dimensions of the supply chain to be analyzed simultaneously so our customers can look at pending challenges and consider alternate movements, anticipating cost and sales impacts and pending future distributions. ESP’s Space and Time Network can be quickly adapted to many workflows and with many different assets and movements.
ESP was created by combining over 20 years of supply chain and logistics expertise with technologists that have focused on the science of location and location analytics, the practice of layering geographic data along with business data to extract valuable insights. The advantage that our customers have with ESP is the ability to access and capitalize on a continuously growing infrastructure that enables more focused location-based analytics, helping the supply chain become smarter. ESP has designed a Space and Time Network which enables data (real-time, historic and near real-time) to be consumed, analyzed, viewed, and translated into action. Critical to our customers’ success, our network enables the analyzation of data sets that are beyond typical supply chain data, resulting in more accurate and actionable information.
Advantages of ESP’s Space and Time Network
Maximization of the use of Internet of Things (IoT)
Investment in real-time sensors and IoT technologies, specifically around location-based data, is expected to quadruple over the next 5 years. Trends in the industry include indoor mapping (3D representation of an indoor space showing assets, people and movements), container tracking, chassis tracking and the movement towards edge computing (ability to make decisions closer to the data source). To keep up withthese digital trends, Supply Chain experts need a technology company that is already prepared for the continued digitalization of assets and is at the forefront of these advancements in technology. That company is ESP.
Most current solutions have been designed to primarily look at relational and unstructured data, while placing location and real-time data as secondary data sources. While ESP also uses relational and unstructured data, our platform also creates location data and applies the data sets to our Space and Time Network. This gives our customers more than points on a map, it provides intelligence by capitalizing on Esri’s Geographic Information System (“ArcGIS”) technology to better understand where the asset is, where it is going, and what might hinder its ability to get to the destination. We go beyond predictive analytics i.e., predictions of future events, into prescriptive analytics, using the analytics to prescribe strategies for efficient future supply chain movements.
Collaboration
ESP has defined a vision of a supply network that looks beyond the current workflows and provides the ability to combine and view multiple workflows to better understand the entirety of the movement. This capability will enable cross-organization collaboration, because, let’s face it, without collaboration there will always be challenges within the supply chain and a struggle to hit the goal of a complete and encompassing supply network. As ESP’s customers continue to adopt our solution(s), they get access to the ability to collaborate across multiple workflows and organizations to better manage their movements.
Configurable, Agile, and Targeted
The ESP platform has been developed to enable multiple types of solutions through configuration and workflow customization. This allows our customers to enjoy a proven data and analytics platform, along with the ability to configure the user experience to best capture the user’s daily workflow. Our strategy is to provide complex analytics in a simple straightforward way, while enabling our customers to get the information, alerts, and knowledge they need without having to learn new software that offers only a limited workflow. Our platform is versatile and enables our customers to access the data they need through a configuration-based User Experience, providing quick actionable insight without having to excessively mine for data and information.
An Integrated Solution
Many companies complain about having to go to many individual technology platforms to get an end-to-end view of their supply chain, a TMS (Transportation Management System), an Ocean AIS, an ERP (like Oracle or SAP) or a WMS (Warehouse Management System) as examples. This is a headache for any supply chain manager. By bringing together these disparate data sets, the ESP platform provides customers with access to the information they need all in one place, allowing them to focus more of their day on analysis and enabling them to manage their supply chain more effectively.
The ESP platform has been in place for over 8 years, enabling real-time data monitoring and analytics on assets of all types. Our expertise is developing a platform that modernizes the use of location methods while providing our customers with a location strategy that optimizes their supply network. Unlike other technology companies in the supply chain space, ESP not only has experts in advanced analytics, but have also owned and operated trucking, drayage, and warehouse companies. This combination of supply chain asset owners and technologists provide ESP with an advantage over other software solutions; we understand the supply chain inside out and build solutions to directly solve challenges using this “insider” knowledge.
ESP Key Capabilities
Real-time asset tracking and monitoring
Real-time location-based alerting and messaging
Solutions for yard security, drayage to yard optimization, and other optimization analytics
Configurable dashboard, maps, and workflows
Integration with Esri's ArcGIS, the world's most powerful GIS Platform
ESP provides the capabilities of visualization with a deep-rooted Space and Time Network that will grow to better understand the supply chain through machine learning, turning the glass pipeline into a collaborative network of assets, companies, and workflows.
ESP is a better way to Supply Chain.
AUTHOR
Brian Smith, Chief Product Officer
Brian has more than 22 years of GIS and Spatial IT experience. He has developed innovative approaches to solving 4th industrial revolution challenges by applying GIS, spatial techniques, reality capture, AR/VR, and BIM models to illustrate and report on existing conditions, future conditions, data feeds, and data sharing.