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<div class="phx-topic abstract-wrapper">U.S. Customs Service inspectors and federal drug agents will join forces at the world's busiest bord</div>

U.S. Customs Service inspectors and federal drug agents will join forces at the world's busiest bord

<div class="phx-topic">U.S. Customs Service inspectors and federal drug agents will join forces at the world's busiest border crossing as part of the U.S. government's escalated war against drug smuggling, officials announced.Allan J. Rappaport, customs district director for San Diego County, said 92 newly assigned customs inspectors will be at work in a special operations section just established. "They'll be joined by a large number of DEA agents," said Ronald J. D'Ullisse of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.Mr. Rappaport also said he will increase the number of drug-sniffing dog teams from 10 to 24.The customs and DEA inspectors will be headquartered at the San Ysidro Port of Entry, where there are no DEA agents stationed. The drug agents will work with customs agents, and both will be cross-trained to enforce each other's laws."With our agents working with DEA agents, we'll be able to attack this problem the way it should be," said Kenneth Ingleby, special agent in charge of customs' office of investigations.Customs inspectors from the Special Operations Section, which Mr. Rappaport began forming one year ago, will react to intelligence gathered from Operation Alliance, Mr. Rappaport said. Operation Alliance is the code name of the Reagan administration's plan to use increased law enforcement and sophisticated equipment in the war against drug trafficking along the Southwest border.</div>

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CUSTOMS, DRUG AGENTS JOIN FORCES

<div class="phx-topic abstract-wrapper">FINANCIALThe credit markets expect another Federal Reserve discount rate cut in September, b</div>

FINANCIALThe credit markets expect another Federal Reserve discount rate cut in September, b

<div class="phx-topic">FINANCIALThe credit markets expect another Federal Reserve discount rate cut in September, but analysts aren't certain about the effect on interest rates. Page 1A The International Monetary Fund declared Peru ineligible for further IMF loans until Peru settles its arrears.Page 2AThe $130 billion federal bailout of the Bank of Oklahoma, Oklahoma City, could start a trend. Page 3AThe credit markets expect another Federal Reserve discount rate cut in September, but analysts aren't certain about the effect on interest rates. Page 3AThe stock market seems ready to set new highs in the weeks ahead, analysts said. Page 15AThe dollar inched up in quiet trading caused by observance of Assumption Day. Page 15AWEST COASTBUSINESS NEWSDuwamish Waterway has been scuttled as a future site for container terminals under a new harbor development strategy at the Port of Seattle.Page 4AThe spread of stack trains will divert more Asian cargo from all-water services at U.S. East Coast ports to minibridge through West Coast ports.Page 4AA Japanese white paper urged the government to overhaul its economic structure to render it more in tune with the global economy. Page 4ACustoms Service inspectors and federal drug agents will join forces at the world's busiest border crossing. Page 4AHawaii needs to branch out in the Pacific Basin and use its growing expertise in trade, science and technology, Gov. George R. Ariyoshi said. Page 4AWORLD TRADEBrazil recorded a July trade surplus of $1,013 million, its lowest since February.Page 5ATaxi fares rose 45 percent in Mexico City in the first ripple from the recent increase of up to 48 percent in gasoline prices.Page 5ASerious problems cloud Hungary's image as the consumer paradise of the Soviet bloc. Page 5ADenmark predicts first budget surplus in 12 years. Page 5AOntario's consumer minister will present to the Cabinet an extensive ''shopping list" of financial incentives for a mall and amusement park. Page 5APolitburo halts river project, war memorial.Page 5AMARITIMESea-Land Corp. lost about $49.0 million in the second quarter of 1986, compared with net income of $27.5 million or $1.21 a share a year earlier. Page 1AAndean Line Inc., a newly formed liner operation, is starting a 21-day service between Europe, the United States and Central America. Page 18AA Southern California newspaper sued the Port of Los Angeles, charging the harbor commission is withholding information from the public. Page 1BThe House defeated an amendment that would have transferred a Navy ship overhaul program from Philadelphia to the West Coast. Page 1BThe Royal Nedlloyd Group reported earnings of $6.3 million for the first six months of this year, down 64 percent from the same period in 1985. Page 22BCompletion of a controversial subcontract arrangement in Houston has a stevedore company bargaining for union labor concessions. Page 22BLloyd's marine underwriters stall on deciding war-rate premiums on hulls after raising Sirri Island rates. Page 22BMembers of the International Organization of Masters, Mates and Pilots are seeking to block a proposed merger of the union's pension plans. Page 22BJustice rejected the NMU's arguments against relying on U.S.-owned foreign- flag vessels for emergencies. Page 22BWest German police began to investigate the journey that concluded with 155 Sri Lankans floating in lifeboats off the Canadian coast. Page 22BRAILROADSA presidentially appointed emergency board recommended six rail unions accept a 6.5 percent wage increase.Page 6AAVIATIONTransamerica Corp. is searching for a buyer for its Transamerica Airlines unit.Page 6ATRUCKINGA new statistical series provides a comprehensive look at the second quarterfinancial performance of the trucking industry. Page 1ABUSINESS IN SPACEJapan will join the United States, Canada and the European Community in Washington's planned cooperative manned space platform project.Page 3AINSURANCENeed for malpractice insurance for churches and the clergy on the rise.Page 1AA public relations executive criticized the insurance industry for having failed to present its case to the public.Page 16AUnion Mutual seeks approval from 55,000 policyholders to convert to a pubicly owned company. Page 16ASmall business is frustrated by the liability crunch.Page 16ACOALEnvironmentalists say time is running out on their effort to get an acid rain control bill through Congress this year. Page 14AOIL AND GASState and federal panels are moving to lower utility rates by reducing profitmargins to reflect lower interest rates. Page 12AOil prices crept higher throughout last week on the northwest European market but activity subsided toward the end of the week. Page 13ANatural gas producers, distributors and users were told they'll have to change their ways of doing business. Page 13AA natural gas industry official says supplies will meet future U.S. requirements. Page 13ATexas Gas paid 15.7 million for a 76.8 percent stake in Industrial Scotland Energy PLC in the first stage of a takeover. Page 13ADelivered coal prices continue to fluctuate amid talk that if oil prices firm in the mid-teens, coal producers could get some new market momentum. Page 14ACOMMODITIESA three-year program to channel as much as $11 billion into agricultural production was announced by Brazilian President Jose Sarney. Page 15AThe world coffee futures market appears to be in the process of forming a bottom. Page 2BThe Farm Credit System will lose up to $1.8 billion this year and post significant losses next year because of the failing agricultural economy, officials said. Page 3BOPINIONThe Economic Policy Council gives the fledgling private space industry a boost.Page 17APLASTICS/CHEMICALSOwens-Corning Fiberglas Corp. announced it would sell CHR Industries, part of its Aerospace and Strategic Materials Group, to Bundy Corp. Page 14AICI agreed to purchase Glidden Coatings &amp; Resins from Hanson Industries for $580 million in cash. Page 14A</div>

TODAY'S NEWS SUMMARY

<div class="phx-topic abstract-wrapper">A contract has been awarded for the construction of the first three of a fleet of seven ships to tr</div>

A contract has been awarded for the construction of the first three of a fleet of seven ships to tr

<div class="phx-topic">A contract has been awarded for the construction of the first three of a fleet of seven ships to transport liquefied natural gas from Australia to Japan.The three ships will be constructed by a consortium of Japanese shipyards consisting of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Mitsui Engineering and Shipbuilding, and Kawasaki Heavy Industries.The vessels will be of 4,400,000-cubic-foot capacity of the Moss Rosenberg spherical tank design. They will be propelled by steam turbines with dual fuel (gas or oil) boilers.The first vessel is scheduled for delivery in September 1989. The second will be delivered a year later, and the third in September 1991.Two of the other seven vessels in the fleet will be timechartered from Japanese shipowners. They will enter service in September 1989 and January 1990.The final two vessels will be ordered to enter service in the fourth quarter of 1993. They will incorporate any late technology and possible modifications following experience gained in the operation of the early ships.The ships will be used to carry LNG from Australia's offshore North West Shelf project on the northwest Indian Ocean coast to eight Japanese power and gas utilities.Because of their size, complexity and high degree of specialized equipment involved, none of the ships will be built in Australia, despite the depressed condition of the country's shipbuilding industry.North West Shelf LNG shipments to Japan are scheduled to start in 1989. Shipments should reach a peak of 6,000,000 tons annually in the early 1990s.The North West Shelf should have a project life of at least 20 years. It is one of the world's largest LNG operations.The six partners in the venture are Australia's large BHP conglomerate, oil major Shell, Woodwide Petroleum, California Asiatic Oil Co., and Japan Australia LNG (a company jointly owned by Mitsubishi and Mitsui).It came as no surprise that the Japanese shipbuilding consortium contained Mitsubishi and Mitsui.Three of the vessels will be operated under the Australian flag, two under the British flag, and the two to be timechartered will fly the Japanese flag.Central control over ship acquisition and operation is the responsibility of the Bermuda-based Gas International Transportation Co., which was incorporated in April 1986.The shareholders in this company are the six partners in the North West Shelf venture.Total cost of the five new vessels in the fleet is expected to be in excess of US$750 million.</div>

JAPAN WINS LNG SHIP CONTRACT

<div class="phx-topic abstract-wrapper">Japan's foreign exchange reserves skyrocketed to an all-time high of $42.2 billion by the end of Dec</div>

Japan's foreign exchange reserves skyrocketed to an all-time high of $42.2 billion by the end of Dec

<div class="phx-topic">Japan's foreign exchange reserves skyrocketed to an all-time high of $42.2 billion by the end of December, Finance Ministry authorities announced.Ministry officials said the reserves last year totaled only slightly more than $26.5 billion. The new figure represented an unprecedented 62.8 percent jump in just 12 months.The previous record high for Japan's foreign reserve holdings, registered in December 1978, was just above $33 billion, the authorities said.Ministry officials attributed the drastic expansion of the national reserves mainly to massive dollar-buying activities of the Bank of Japan resulting from intervention efforts on the exchanges in support of the value of the U.S. currency.Bank of Japan authorities entered the foreign exchange market repeatedly during the past year in attempts to shore up the U.S. dollar and to cushion the impact of the resulting appreciation of the yen's value on the nation's economy.In private conversations with reporters, however, several Finance Ministry officials conceded that such intervention operations by the central bank had largely failed to prevent the yen's drastic appreciation relative to the U.S. dollar.</div>

CURRENCY RESERVES PEAK IN JAPAN

<div class="phx-topic abstract-wrapper">Japan's depressed economy will bottom out around the end of this year or early 1988 if the governmen</div>

Japan's depressed economy will bottom out around the end of this year or early 1988 if the governmen

<div class="phx-topic">Japan's depressed economy will bottom out around the end of this year or early 1988 if the government pursues proper economic policies over the intervening months, Finance Minister Kiichi Miyazawa said.Speaking to the press for the first time this year, Mr. Miyazawa said the prediction is based on his ministry's plan to front-load spending once again on new public works projects. He said the strategy worked well as an economic stimulus in the first half of the current fiscal year and should do the same for the same period of this fiscal year.The Japanese finance minister conceded that the country's economic prospects for the first six months of fiscal 1987, which begins April 1, are not very bright. His main worry is the nation's steadily rising unemployment figures.In response to questions from reporters, Mr. Miyazawa said he doesn't think the present 160 yen-to-the-dollar level on foreign exchange markets is appropriate. He indicated that a 170-yen level was more fitting and would more accurately reflect current relative economic conditions of the United States and Japan.Some private Japanese financial analysts have been predicting that within the next several months or so the country's currency would appreciate to something closer to 150 yen to the dollar.Although such a development would undermine the competitive standing on world markets for Japanese products, most analysts agree it would not likely result in Japan importing significantly large volumes of lower-priced goodsfrom the United States.Meanwhile, Minister of International Trade and Industry Hajime Tamura said he has ordered the establishment of industrial base readjustment funds in nine specific regions throughoutthe country to promote realignment of the economic structure.Under the program, he said, each region will receive between $12.5 million and $18.75 million in long-term, low-interest loans for investments.Although the specifics remain to be worked out, he stressed that the special funds will go to regional projects and into research and development efforts for new business sectors. Preference will go to those areas hardest hit by the disinflation caused by the sharp appreciation of the yen.In addition, priority will be given to small-scale and medium-size companies suffering the most from the sluggish economy.</div>

REBOUND FORECAST FOR JAPAN

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The world of LTL is slow to embrace change. Business anachronisms permeate current supply chain processes. These vestiges of the way things used to work define the LTL freight transportation procurement process of many modern shippers.David Knuth, logistics specialist at IEWC, a global supplier of cable and wire based in Wisconsin, is happy to have modernized the RFP process, automating the entire LTL bidding procedure with Bid$ense, SMC³’s automated truckload and LTL freight transportation sourcing solution. But when prompted, he can still recall what once was.In his previous job, a large part of his duties were consumed by creating an intermodal bid package for carriers. In a spreadsheet, Knuth detailed the company’s volumes lane by lane, taking care to delete any errant keystrokes or misleading data. He would then email out the information to each carrier, taking time to respond to detailed technical questions about the spreadsheet data. Finally, he had to compile all the results, create an algorithm that would compare the carriers on each lane, and award the business.“It was a huge undertaking. It took about four months to do,” Knuth said of the old process. “It was almost a full-time job for that part of the year, every year.”In his new job at IEWC, he sat down with Bid$ense on day one and was amazed at the capabilities. Knuth had never before used a bid tool. SMC³’s latest versions of Bid$ense automate the process even further, taking truckload and LTL RFPs entirely online. The tool draws on RFP best-practices protocols to streamline the bidding communication process, enabling bidding carriers to respond accurately and promptly to shipper requests. The solution also does all the distribution work automatically, electronically submitting shipper bid data to carriers based on their actual service capabilities and performance records. Carriers are alerted with timely prompts for RFP deliverables, so shippers aren’t waiting by the phone for responses.Another benefit of automating the process is the data-cleansing assistance. When Knuth sent spreadsheets to carriers, data errors might cloud the bidding process; he might have to resend data or simply accept a price that did not truly reflect the costs of doing business. Data cleansing is incredibly beneficial, he said.The spreadsheet technique also made bidding analysis an onerous task. Since Bid$ense automates and streamlines the entire RFP process, intensive examination is now simple. SMC³ knows that each bid has more than one best outcome. With uniform responses from each carrier, shippers can quickly rank results and create an unlimited quantity of what-if scenarios to make the optimal procurement decision.Jesse Burnett of Central Garden &amp; Pet experiences many of the same benefits. Founded in 1980, Central Garden &amp; Pet has spent the last three decades growing from a small garden supply company to a provider of a range of products from dog chews and bird seed to soil supplements and natural insecticides. For much of its life, the company shipped these disparate goods via LTL and truckload carriers to retailers throughout the country, relying on each business unit to negotiate directly with their freight transportation providers. This arrangement worked fairly well for a small company, but as Central Garden &amp; Pet expanded, leadership decided to consolidate decision making.Burnett helped centralize the transportation decision making in 2015 with SMC³’s Bid$ense. Before Bid$ense, every business unit operated independently as far as negotiating with carriers.“There were a lot of different things just floating around,” he said. “We didn’t have master agreements in place; no national pricing at all. The pricing from carriers was just all over the place, depending on where you were.”The transformations he saw with Bid$ense were immediate. Burnett has been using the tool about every other year since its implementation at the company. Central Garden and Pet’s $19.6 million 2019 LTL bid saved the company just more than 9 percent when compared to its historical average. For Burnett, though, bid automation extends far beyond savings.“We knew that we weren’t getting the best pricing offer from our carriers just because nothing was centralized,” he continued. “We knew that if we combined everything from all these business units and paired it with one corporate offering, then it would drive some cost benefit with it.”When the company initially decided to centralize bid procurement, executives researched a number of different methodologies and technologies. In the end, though, Burnett found that Bid$ense was both widespread and well known, and that his carrier partners already knew how to use the application. Burnett also highlighted the data-cleansing process as a major benefit, saying the rigorous process ensures that carriers always return the best price.“It definitely has helped drive savings,” he said. “Any time you go out there and you drive that competitiveness with the carriers and they know they’re in a bid environment, it seems to sharpen their pencils.”Transportation procurement is an integral part of the modern supply chain. With Bid$ense, shippers can develop a strategic implementation plan that saves them time and money, but also helps them create strong relationships with their carrier partners. These carriers appreciate the solution’s data-cleansing process; when carriers receive a complete shipment history and future volume forecast, they don’t have to guess on pricing. Carriers that receive more data from shippers get a complete picture of that shipper’s freight, allowing them to accurately plan instead of simply preparing for the worst-case scenario. Clean data presented through an automated system can lead to both bigger shipment savings and a lasting partnership between carrier and customer.Whether customers are looking to streamline over-the-road transportation bidding by automating the RFP process or create an entirely new, centralized sourcing process, Bid$ense has the analytical horsepower to get the job done.SMC³ 2020 Customer Case Study

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Shippers save money, time with automated transportation bidding tools

If there’s one immutable truth in the world of logistics, it’s this: LTL is an inherently complex form of transportation. Tariffs, rates, DIM weights, transit times — it’s enough to confuse even seasoned logistics professionals. The solution to this knowledge gap has historically been on-the-job training or university supply chain education, but for a variety of reasons there is now a pressing need for third-party, remote LTL training that prepares logistics workers for transportation success. Global Scope Can Overlook Local Intricacies In the past, professionals looking to move into a supply chain career learned about the basics of supply chain from universities. However, many of these college supply chain programs are now global in scope, focusing on worldwide supply chain management instead of the intricacies of specialized domestic transportation. And even these programs, which used to be widespread, are becoming less common. LTL is not an industry of broad-brush strokes; supply chain professionals really need a pointillistic understanding of the logistics of LTL in order to excel in the industry. Accelerating Need for Dedicated LTL Education This lack of specified training put the onus on employers to prepare new hires with the LTL knowledge needed to do their jobs. Dedicated LTL study is a necessity, not a luxury. At the same time, changes in LTL and the broader supply chain world are accelerating. The reliance on e-commerce has ballooned since the start of the pandemic, and last-mile LTL shipments and related e-commerce strains on the supply chain won’t diminish once social distancing abates. That genie isn’t going back into the bottle. So supply chain employers need logistics workers that are fully versed in all aspects of the industry, ready to solve unique shipping and delivery problems based on their extensive supply chain knowledge But why care about LTL? It’s been reported that some shippers in today’s world are no longer concerned with what mode is used to ship their goods. A Multimodal Approach Ensures On-Time Delivery This mode agnosticism means supply chain stakeholders have to be well versed in all modes of transportation. As unforeseen weather events and other disruptions, such as protests, become more common, savvy logistics employees will need to be armed with familiarity of all modes, not just the most popular, to ensure that freight is delivered on time, without damage, and in the most financially expedient way possible. Offerings like SMC³’s LTL online education courses cover a wide range of topics from LTL basics and operations to more advanced concepts like pricing analytics and transportation law. The company also has plans to continually refresh content, adding new expert presenters and taking the feedback of students to make the courses even better as time goes on. Learn more about&nbsp;<a href="https://logisticstrainingcenter.com/smc3-courses/" rel="noreferrer" class="joc_admin__link">SMC³’s LTL Online Education program</a>&nbsp;and view the 2021 hybrid schedule, featuring live industry experts,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.smc3.com/onlinelearning2021/" rel="noreferrer" class="joc_admin__link">here.</a>

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Filling the Supply Chain Education Gap with LTL Education Courses

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