Briefs

Staff -- Purchasing, 10/7/2004

• The Council of Logistics Management will become the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP), effective January 1, 2005. "The decision to become CSCMP was made for one reason—to meet the changing needs of our members and our profession," said Elijah Ray, CLM president. "People in our profession now have an expanded and more critical role within our companies than we did 10 or even five years ago. We interact with more people within and outside our organizations. Our roles have evolved, which is why CLM is changing to reflect what's happening in the supply chain. The organization will also become more inclusive to others that play important roles in the supply chain."
• Lockheed Martin has established a Focused Logistics Enterprise, an organization specifically created to align the company's logistics capabilities with its business requirements. Peter Cuviello has been named vice president and managing director for the new organization, which will be part of Lockheed's Integrated Systems & Solutions business area. The goal of the new horizontal integration team will be to "leverage Lockheed Martin's considerable strengths to provide innovative logistics management solutions that don't exist today," according to Stan Sloane, executive vice president for IS&S.
• Results from a recent survey conducted by Cargo Portal Services found that respondents expect a nearly 20% increase in online bookings by mid-2005. Today 40% of respondents are booking more than a quarter of their shipments electronically and expect to substantially increase this with a full 60% expecting to be doing the majority of their bookings electronically by mid-2005.
• Los Angeles-based private equity firm The Yucaipa Companies has acquired TDS Logistics, a material handling and logistics solutions provider to the automotive industry. TDS has become a preferred vendor for some of the major automotive OEMs including BMW, DaimlerChrysler, Ford Motor Co., General Motors, and Volkswagen.
• Logistics service provider RailRunner has put its RailReach short-haul intermodal service into commercial operation, bringing low-cost rail intermodal container shipping to the short-haul rail market and, potentially, to hundreds of smaller cities and towns throughout the U.S. The first RailReach service, carrying containerized traffic by rail between Fort Wayne, Ind. and Jacksonville, Fla., began in mid-August.
• The American Trucking Associations and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration each filed District Court appeals August 30 to gain an indefinite stay of the effective date of the decision overturning the current hours-of-service regulations. If granted, the stay would keep the current rules in effect while the FMCSA addresses the court's concerns with the new rules in a further rulemaking proceeding. If denied, the old HOS rules could come back into place almost immediately.