Companies looking to globalize their customer and supplier bases need to beef up their transportation technologies. Today more than ever, companies are looking worldwide to cut costs and sell into new markets. And rapidly developing transportation and logistics technologies are helping drive the processes behind globalization.

"Technology plays a role, but it is really people, process and technology," says Adrian Gonzalez, a consultant at ARC Advisory Services in Dedham, Mass. "Less of the supply chain is under one company's control. The biggest hurdle is changing and automating the business processes."

Jim Papineau, director of supply chain visibility products at Canadian firm Descartes Systems Group, points out that shipments and packages are getting to their global destinations faster every day, but boats, trains, planes and trucks are not moving any faster. The processes among the shipping legs are getting more efficient thanks to technology. Papineau says there are two types of transportation technologies driving this trend. The first is directing the physical side of shipping, which started off with bar coding technologies, and has moved to freight handling systems and tiny shipment identification chips.

"Bar coding blew people's socks off 15 years ago," he says. "Now everyone does that at each dock door." Papineau says in the near future, low-energy identification chips will track whole shipments as well as individual items as they move through the supply chain. The second technology trend involves tracking information that comes with the physical shipment process, and more important, the integration of appropriate information systems. Integration is especially important to companies that have grown by acquisition.

The electronics industry is a good example of using transportation technology to fuel the processes required for globalization. Fairchild Semiconductor of South Portland, Maine currently conducts trade in 45 countries and relies on advanced transportation technologies to track its in- and outbound shipments across borders. When Fairchild was spun out of National Semiconductor in 1997, it became an instant multinational company with virtually no transportation systems of its own (National used a homegrown system). It was time to go shopping.

"We looked at our requirements to conduct business globally and determined what tools would meet our needs quickly and efficiently," says Bob Scribner, senior manager of global logistics for Fairchild. "We chose PeopleSoft for our ERP. We needed trade compliance software, which turned out to be the beginnings of NextLinx, and a carrier integration to provide pickup and delivery, so we partnered with FedEx."

Fairchild begins its manufacturing process at its U.S. plants and then ships work-in-progress to Asia for completion and shipment to customers around the world. Use of the NextLinx system for advance customs approvals and compliance is key to Fairchild's ability to get its work-in-progress shipments around the world for completion.

"It was possible [to do this prior to NextLinx], but the big difference is in the speed and effectiveness of how we do it," Scribner says. Scribner says there are some countries that will not work with the online system and customs papers have to go with physical shipments.

Christopher Shawdon, vice president of logistics solutions at system integrator Unisys Global Transportation in Blue Bell, Pa., says globalization would have happened without transportation technology's development, but it would have happened at a much slower pace. "The most advanced organizations are moving to electronic bookings, saving duplicate data entry, reducing errors, providing earlier visibility of shipments to aid planning and movement and use of time-based proactive event management systems that break a shipment into key milestone stages."

Perhaps no organization knows more about global transportation and its relationship with technology than UPS. In a recent statement, UPS CEO Mike Eskew urged free trade advocates to speak out in favor of globalization. "Globalization is not a renegade force that roams at will and is not above control. Globalization is inevitable. Technology...and the democracy of information, deregulation, economics, and education are seeing to that."

Ramsey Mansour is director of global e-commerce at UPS and says inventory is much more distributed around the world today than ever before and transportation systems are helping track those inventories en route.

Mansour says the Asian market is the best example of catering transportation technology to a booming global marketplace. In Asia, the prevalence of wireless devices is much higher than in other markets. So when UPS entered the Asian market, it developed its tracking and tracing applications for wireless devices, allowing Asian UPS customers to track packages on cell phones or personal digital assistants (PDAs). Mansour expects new international trade zones to form in the near future, with technology leading the way.

"For example, there is a lot of discussion of expanding the Americas trade zone, essentially taking NAFTA and expanding it to include South America. Technology itself will be the entry point. If you want to play in this space, technology will be the minimum requirement. I think that is where you will see new markets or markets that are increasing adoption."