According to some, the French “NO” will place Europe more then 3 laps behind in the division of economic power between the US, China, India and Europe. But is this really the case?

The Bush administration says, it does not want Europe’s constitutional referendums to fail. With Iraq, China’s seemingly weekly rise, and nuclear weapons issues in Iran and North Korea demanding full attention, the derailing of the European Union’s constitutional project means a trace of undesired uncertainty in the administration’s dealing with the Europeans, although not the world. But officially, and in truth, there will be no flush of schadenfreude in Washington if the referendums in France on Sunday and then in the Netherlands on June 1 are voted down in demonstrations of democracy’s eternal contrariness. For one thing, a negative outcome requiring Europe to rethink its future path very likely means slowing down the entry process of Turkey and Ukraine into the EU - both projects for Europe’s future that the Americans stand behind. The more advanced candidacies of Romania and Bulgaria, both Bush administration buddies, could falter too. All this does not go in the direction of the administration’s notion that an enlarged, coherent EU partner is actually its best possible European play. Still, in terms of American policy, a high administration official said that “relations with Europe won’t change that much” as a result of the referendums, whatever happens.

With a “yes” or a “no”, Europe will continue building its strength towards the other powers, and on the other hand realizes that China and India are moving even faster forward in the economic top ten. But in the past Europe with their current treaties did play their economic game well enough, and it will be not likely they miss the boot completely. The constitution is primarily an internal matter, where the EU should pay attention to the fact that founding members are getting apposed to a constitution.

China is to scrap export tariffs on 78 categories of clothing and textiles in an apparent escalation of a trade dispute with the US and European Union. Beijing introduced the tariffs to try to control bourgeoning Chinese clothing exports, but the EU and US still say too many such goods are being exported. With the EU now threatening to limit imports of such Chinese items, it appears that China is now retaliating. The US has already brought in limits on Chinese textile and clothing imports.

Washington made the move on 14 May against Chinese cotton trousers, cotton shirts and underwear. The EU on Friday asked for formal talks with Beijing over two types of Chinese clothing and textiles - flax yarn and T-shirts. On Monday, the EU’s executive commission insisted that it had grounds to act to stem the flood of Chinese imports and rejected China’s claims that there was no evidence to justify the complaints.

[u]

Global deregulation [/u]

Under World Trade Organization rules, the US and EU can limit annual imports of Chinese clothing and textiles to a maximum of 7.5% more than the levels seen between March 2004 and February 2005. If countries take action to limit textile product exports from China, we will exclude those products from the export tariffs

Chinese commerce ministry spokesman said: “Both the US and EU can evoke this 7.5% safeguard rule until 2008″. The EU can now bring in the 7.5% level if no agreement can be reached with China within 90 days of the start of talks on Monday.

The origins of this trade dispute between China on the one hand and the US and EU on the other was the end of a 30-year global agreement on clothing and textile exports on 1 January. Under the old Multi-Fibre Agreement, countries had annual limits on the amount of clothing and textiles they could sell abroad. Thanks to China’s bourgeoning economy and low costs, it was inevitable that exports of such Chinese goods would boom following the end of the global quotas. But to try to at least control this growth, Beijing in January brought in export tariffs on 78 clothing and textiles goods. It also announced on 20 May that tariffs would be introduced on another 74 lines from 1 June, responding to continuing US and EU complaints.

Source: BBC news

The Amsterdam Container Terminal “Ceres Paragon” will welcome its first client since its opening in 2003. Two weekly Grand Alliance container routes will pass the Ceres Paragan Terminals as from August this year. As from then Amsterdam is incorporated in the latest Grand Alliance schedule “F” wich will be a line between the major Chinese Harbours and Europe. Schedule “A”, which is the second line that will visit Ceres Paragon- is an existing service between Europe and Japan.

With those two lines Amstrdam can make its start with the actual on a weekly basis. Since its opening in 2003 the termial, which has a big advantage that vesssels cabn be (un)loaded from two sides, has rarely been used. With the two scheduled services the activity will be 180.000 TUE a year. The total capacutiy is 1.000.000 TUE per year. Although Grand Allinace -without PO Nedlloyd- uses less then 20% of the capacity per year, it is expected that new clients will follow.

The Glossary of Terms in Logistics & Shipping is the most comprehensive paper-based dictionary and therefore the standard for defining terms used in the area of Logistics and Shipping. Use this powerful tool to expand your professional vocabulary and ensure that everyone on your team is speaking the same language. www.theKnowledgeTransfer.com

paperback student version $ 19,99 hardcover executive version $ 29,99

If you are overwhelmed by your WMS choices, the number of options can be daunting. Here’s how to narrow down the field. The thing that baffles so many people about the market for warehouse management systems is how there can continue to be so many vendors of that category of software. Although the market has seen a large number of mergers and acquisitions recently, a surprising number of providers still remain active. While this variety means that WMS buyers aren’t locked into working with one or two big companies, it can leave them feeling a little like a grocery shopper in the cereal aisle: overwhelmed by all the choices. With so many options?and more coming all the time?how can you ensure that you’re selecting the very best product for your company? Here are nine considerations that can help you shape your decision.

1) Functionality

The perception in the market is that all WMS providers basically offer the same capabilities, and to a degree that’s true. Buyers need to seek out differentiators?that “killer solution,” perhaps, or some function that solves a specific problem. For most buyers, the main consideration will be whether a product includes features that meet their particular business needs.

One way to assess the gaps between your requirements and a WMS system’s capabilities is to run “scripted demos”?the warehouse equivalent of a dress rehearsal. These trial runs can identify a system’s shortcomings, and what it might cost to address them. ” Demo scripts can flesh some of that out.

Conventional wisdom says “best of breed” vendors offer the best functionality. But ERP providers say they’ve greatly improved the functionality of their WMS modules.

2) Integration

Buyers are no longer looking just at the functionality of the WMS, they’re also assessing how well it integrates with other solutions, such as transportation management, order management, and labor management applications.

Buying several solutions from a single provider does cut down on integration and customization costs. Oracle and SAP argue that one advantage of working with an ERP vendor is that both supply chain execution software and back-office solutions will be operating off of the same data, so there are no worries about integration. That’s why many shippers are putting their ERP providers on the short list of potential WMS vendors.

3) Technology Environment

All companies must consider both the operational and the technological sides of an implementation. Every selection team, therefore, should include representatives from both operations and IT.

4) Flexibility

Keeping future needs in mind goes hand in hand with flexibility. When your business changes, will your WMS continue to support your operations? How easy will that transition be?

5) Industry Knowledge

Buyers should also consider how familiar a WMS provider is with their particular industry.

6) Realistic Cost

Before entering into a WMS purchase, you should have a good idea of what kind of price tag you’re looking at. The cost of basic warehouse management systems has dropped, but they’re still not cheap. After adding in all the licenses, hardware, printers, integration, and more, most companies are still looking at a project costing half a million dollars or more.

7) Financial Viability

If you buy a WMS based on price, give equal weight to the vendor’s financial viability.

Internal Operations

Before you even approach a WMS provider, you need to have a solid understanding of your own operations. Often this will require mapping your warehouse operations so you can provide potential vendors with an outline of your business flows.

9) Internal Strategy

Take into consideration your company’s broader vision and strategic direction. Therefore, understanding what logistics means to your company and where it is going is very important.”

According to a study by the Warehousing Education and Research Council (WERC), 55 percent of manufacturing companies do not expect a positive return on investment from RFID adoption. WERC surveyed its members to find out where the companies stand on this emerging technology. Companies that do not plan to adopt RFID cite costs as the prohibiting factor. Companies that are adopting RFID at the pallet and case level report that there are advantages to the technology, but those gains don’t offset the investment.

Company size matters when it comes to the level of investment in RFID, according to the study. Smaller companies are investing the least, while larger companies are spending the most. Surprisingly, only 14 percent are actually implementing RFID either in pilots or ongoing operations. The rest are equally divided between those considering using the technology (44 percent) and those with no current plans to do so (44 percent.)

With the ever increasing focus on cost reduction, product leadership and customer intimacy, the need for Supply Chain Management practices rises across many industries. Over the last two decades Logistics Service Providers have become important players in many chains and industries. New challenges arise due to the emergence of technologies. Data and information can be found anywhere, however, to make the proper decisions we need to have an insight in how decisions should be made, and what is important for the company and what not. In order to do so we sollicited the Key Performance Indicator (KPI) literature -focussing on the areas of general management, supply chain management, logistics service provision and warehousing. In our earlier work we proposed a KPI framework that we here revisit and validate in the Warehousing domain ? through the means of expert interviews.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. called it a wrap Thursday for its fledgling online movie rental business and turned the operation over to industry leader Netflix Inc.

The move represents a rare setback for the nation’s largest retailer, which had only 1% of the online DVD market and never made significant inroads into the business. Wal-Mart instead will continue focusing on selling DVDs at cut-rate prices, a business it dominates with one-third of the market and where the industry’s biggest growth is occurring.

Both companies get something out of their partnership. Netflix will link its movie buffs to the DVD sales area on Wal-Mart’s website, while Netflix gets access to a massive pool of potential subscribers in Wal-Mart customers.

Online renting is growing as customers are enticed by the broad selection and convenience of having DVDs delivered to their homes via the mail with no late fees to worry about. Revenue from video rentals ordered on the Internet is expected to reach $1.3 billion by 2006, up from $866 million this year, according to Carmel, Calif.-based Adams Media Research. By contrast, in-store video rentals are expected to fall 6% this year, to $7.7 billion. Despite its growing popularity, the online rental business has been showing losses amid price cuts and increased promotional spending. In addition, mass merchandisers such as Wal-Mart and Best Buy Inc. aggressively use low-priced DVDs as promotional tools to lure customers into stores, prompting many consumers to buy movies in lieu of renting them.

To support standards and best practices for end-to-end Supply Chain Integration, the Integration Consortium (IC) announced the formation of a new committee chartered with establishing and promoting best practices and industry consensus. The committee will further enable the integration of Radio Frequency Identification Device (RFID) technology and data within enterprise systems.

Inaugural members of the IC?s RFID Committee include representatives from Wipro, Chronologic Systems and webMethods with working groups already being established to address the core requirements for more widespread RFID adoption, such as common technical standards, templates for various business case analysis, and expanded vendor collaboration leading to more uniform, end-toend or partner-to-partner solutions.

?As businesses look to exploit the value of RFID data, the ability to readily integrate this

information within the enterprise is becoming more and more critical. Representing leaders

from across the industry, the Integration Consortium should be commended for taking a

leadership role in addressing these business-critical requirements,? said Andrew Savitz, co-chair

of the IC RFID Committee and Director of RFID Solutions and Industry Alliances for

webMethods. ?Underscoring our commitment to producing tangible results that our members

can immediately employ, we?re delighted by the chance to showcase during the Global

Integration Summit a very real-world example of what?s possible using RFID. Based on

technology from webMethods, Verisign and others, we?re deploying an extremely unobtrusive

tracking system that vividly illustrates how easily and effectively critical information can be

accessed, leveraged and enhanced across multiple touch-points.?

The market where all Global Trade Management (GTM) vendors operates is characterized by early adopters. The market is competitive, rapidly evolving, and highly fragmented. One should only expect the intensity of competition to increase in the future. The competition might come from in-house development efforts, consulting companies, other software companies, logistic companies, customs brokers, forwarders, and third-party development efforts.

The number of standalone GTM vendors is quickly dwindling, because of mergers of SSA Global and Arzoon, TradeBeam and Open Harbor, Qiva, etc., and Kewill and TradePoint (which had previously acquired ClearCross) and one should expect the merging of GTM software technology and managed services to continue. These acquisitions may also indicate accelerated restructuring in the logistics services market is inevitable, given a plethora of point solution providers that specialize in narrow areas, from land cost calculation, visibility, collaboration, export compliance, trading document generation, hazardous material handling, to more complete transportation management capabilities.

There are, however, a number of remaining players in several niches?just enough to muddle the message nibble at the potential revenues of full-fledged GTM players. For example, we could talk about the remaining ITL players like NextLinx, Precision Software, Intermart, Nistevo, MercuryGate, Xporta, Tarrific.com, OCR Services, Importers Software Services, MSR Customs Corp., Questaweb, GT Nexus, and LOG-NET, global settlement players like Bolero.net, TradeCard and S1, and a number of vendors that arguably more specialize in SCEM, visibility and shipment tracking like Viewlocity, Descartes Systems, Management Dynamics (through recently acquired BridgePoint), Timogen, etc. But, none of these vendors handles all the requirements of automating global e-business, and some of these vendors have apparently already merged with or acquired other companies to provide more complete offerings.

Still, some companies that are comfortable with using freight forwarders to handle the details of cross-border movement and which may only want visibility of the critical events, like departed origin, estimated arrival date & time, arrived at customs, cleared customs, etc., may be served well by SCM vendors and stand-alone SCEM and visibility solutions. Namely, both supply chain planning (SCP) vendors like i2 Technologies, Manugistics or Logility and supply chain execution (SCE) vendors like Manhattan Associates, RedPrairie, HighJump and Provia offer visibility and trading partner collaboration components to provide transparent inventory, orders, and shipments across the entire trading network. These systems do not typically have the capability of sharing demand forecasts with suppliers, but, in addition to such products like i-Supply, there are players like OneNetwork, weSupply, RiverOne or Valdero.

Furthermore, to build a complete and fully-functional GTM system, any user enterprise will have to integrate it with transportation management systems (TMS), ERP, SRM, partner relationship management (PRM), and other adjacent enterprise applications. We might be then talking about a full-fledged logistics resources management (LRM) system that would provide total ?command and control? over the entire spectrum of global logistics activities. This would include transportation procurement contracting, shipment planning and optimization, load tendering, trade compliance, customs reporting, shipment and inventory visibility, warehousing, reverse logistics. Additionally, these would be conducted over the Internet, so that all internal managers and trading partners can access information. But, at this stage, there is no such thing as a native LRM application that covers all these bases.

There will be winners and losers in the global 3PL race. The shakeout that is coming parallels what happened in the U.S. during the 1980s after transportation deregulation. Then, a small group of carriers grew rapidly by out-performing the competition. They won market share. Other primarily higher cost companies either went out of business, or retreated to small, defensible niches. In today?s 3PL market, there will be a small group of big operators with global reach and international skills that will dominate worldwide logistics. They will have to grow fast enough to service the largest customers and to avoid being commoditized by those customers. At the other end of the market, there will also be niche players that will often end up working for the global 3PLs. There will be limited room for mid-sized generalists.

Only time will tell who the winners and losers will be. For now, we present in thiis eLog a comprehensive analysis of the 5 3PLs that are leading in the global race, and name the second five in the top 10. This selection has been made on turnover, current coverage, breadth of skills and parent company gravitas.

1. Exel plc Berkshire, UK, London: EXL

3PL Revenue: 8.3bn Parent Revenue: 8.3bn

Coverage: Global (Service to over 95% of World GDP)

3PL Assets: 74,000 employees; 300 warehouses; 5923 tractors, 7544 trailers

Information Systems: Very good; TMS ? i2, RedPrairie, G-Log; WMS ? Irista, Topex, Insight, RedPrairie

2. Kuehne & Nagel International Schindellegi, Switzerland, SWX: KNIN

3PL Revenue: 6.9bn Parent Revenue: 6.9bn

Coverage: Global (Service to over 85% of World GDP)

3PL Assets: 19,000 employees; 50 warehouses

Information Systems: Very good; TMS ? CIEL 4000, KN Road, i2; WMS ? EXCEED

3. Schenker Assen, Germany; (U.S.) Freeport, NY,

3PL Revenue: 6.4bn Parent Revenue: 19.5bn

Coverage: Europe, Asia, South America, Africa, North America

3PL Assets: 36,000 employees; 405 warehouses

Information Systems: Good; TMS ? SWORD, Procars, ILS; WMS ? HTS, SAP, SoLiNET

4. DHL Danzas Air & Ocean Basel, Switzerland, Deutsche Post World Net (U.S.) Newark,

3PL Revenue: 5.7bn Parent Revenue: 49.7bn

Coverage: Global (Service to 99% of World GDP)

3PL Assets: 13,000 employees

Information Systems: Good; TMS ? LOGIS, proprietary; WMS ? ELIS

5. P&O Nedlloyd Rotterdam, Netherlands Euronext: Nedlloyd (Royal P&O Nedlloyd N.V.);

3PL Revenue: 4.8bn Parent Revenue: 4.8bn

Coverage: Europe, Asia, United States

3PL Assets: 10,000 employees; 166 Vessels, 1,000 containers, 2,000 trucks, 6,700 trailers

Information Systems: Good; TMS ? LOG-NET

6. TPG/TNT Hoolddorp, Netherlands, TPG NV / TNT Logistics North America Jacksonville, FL.

7. Panalpina Basel, Switzerland; (U.S.) Foster City, CA.

8. UPS Supply Chain Solutions Atlanta, GA, NYSE: UPS, (United Parcel Service)

9. Nippon Express Tokyo, Japan, Tokyo: / Nippon Express U.S.A., Inc. New York, NY

10. C.H. Robinson Worldwide Eden Prairie, MN; Nasdaq: CHRW

The Glossary of Terms in Logistics & Shipping is the most comprehensive paper-based dictionary and therefore the standard for defining terms used in the area of Logistics and Shipping. Use this powerful tool to expand your professional vocabulary and ensure that everyone on your team is speaking the same language. www.theKnowledgeTransfer.com

paperback student version $ 19,99 hardcover executive version $ 29,99