CC&S - News

CC&S and MIT conduct research with 15 Global carriers to discover new opportunities for profit

2010-08-09T14:25:00Z

Consultants from MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Management) joined with us to identify the factors that would yield the most significant improvements in operations and cost reduction, and also reveal untapped opportunities for incremental revenue.

Research included in-depth studies with 15 global carriers to better understand their needs, challenges and expectations for improving empty container management.

Output from the MIT study was used to develop and enhance MvFleet 2.0, now ready for use.

In this challenging environment, we know that maximizing asset productivity is essential. We are pleased to offer a 21^stcentury tool for significantly improving container management.

CC&S is proud to serve the shipping industry and wishes to thank MIT and the participating global carriers for their invaluable contribution to these ongoing improvements for our customers.

For further details of the MIT study and more information on how to get back to being profitable, click here.

An industry balancing act: Mv-Fleet enables lines to work together in filling empty containers and minimising trade imbalances

2009-07-23T23:36:00Z

Necessity has long been considered the mother of invention and, in difficult times, containerlines are desperately looking for solutions to solve the notable inefficiencies in the industry.

Globalisation, with all its benefits, has brought with it huge challenges – none more so for the container industry than balancing the significant imbalances in global trade.“On average a container remains empty for over 56% of its lifetime,” says Harm Jansen, chief executive of Container Consultants & Systems, the Panama-based company dedicated to providing its partners with important cost-saving tools.“The opportunity for cost reduction is huge. For instance, saving 10 moves per day means a saving of around $1m per year,” he says.

Its Mv-Fleet project acts as a single and common planning platform for a growing group of container operating companies.The pilot testing period of the service allowed optimisation that resulted in a reduction of $200,000 a month for each of the lines involved.

Some 20% of all container shipments are empty containers, says Mr Jansen, who set up in Panama to be at the heart of more than 150 trade lanes and to take advantage of incentives offered by the Panamanian government to technology firms.

Operating from the City of Knowledge close to the Miraflores locks of the Panama Canal, the company has started to plug more clients into the powerful combination of Panama’s electronic as well as maritime connectivity.

It is in the planning departments of the major lines where costs can be drastically reduced, he says.“We also offer the opportunity that from now this area of the company can also deliver revenues to shipping lines,” says Mr Jansen.

“Look at how 95% of global container shipping lines do their empty container repositioning work. Operations departments spend hours planning routes and, after changes in real the world, they take extra time fixing those plans and solving the problems that arise from lack of vessel space, expensive moves and timing issues among others,” he says.

Mv-Fleet, he says, does not require a change in procedures other than providing information gathered in the company’s daily business to feed the Mv-Fleet system.

“The system does not change the way they work, it is only needed to feed the system with everyday data and the system processes the data through our algorithms. This shows in advance where there are going to be problems,” he says.

Solutions
Once problems have been identified the group offers solutions where lines can share equipment.
By reducing the number of empty moves, the system not only helps reduce costs but also limits the industry’s carbon footprint.

“When container rotation is improved, carbon emissions are reduced,” says Mr Jansen. But beyond that it is difficult to quantify the impact that these measures can have in environmental terms.
“Our company is working together with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Center for Transportation & Logistics to develop such measuring methodology based on the current algorithms of Mv-Fleet,” he concludes.

Read source news from Lloyd's List website >>

Shipping Agencies welcome Mv-Fleet™.

2009-06-25T17:29:00Z

Standarization for instructing empty container moves is key for the container industry to cut costs, improve productivity, get advantages from interchange and charter agreements and increase the benefits of being a part of carrier alliances. Shipping agencies are becoming aware of this and are seeing in Mv-Fleet^TM a simpler and faster way to reach this goal. Broom Group, a shipping agency serving several carriers in South America, took a step ahead and implemented Mv-Fleet^TM this month for its daily equipment operation work-flow.

Aconcagua Ventures invests in CC&S.

2009-05-15T17:31:00Z

Aconcagua Ventures, a high-tech venture capital firm and co-founders of Core Security, have invested in CC&S. This investment will assist CC&S's team to realize their vision of creating a platform to assist container operating companies in the management of empty container flows and cost reduction through the 'compete and share' concept.

CC&S' CEO Harm Jansen said that "It makes us proud that Aconcagua Ventures believes in CC&S and decided to support us in our mission to make freight transportation more affordable through innovation and collaboration. The financial and technical support of Aconcagua allows CC&S to develop powerful tools to reduce the costs for container operators and consequently for the freight industry as a whole".

CC&S' MvFleet^TM is emerging as the global standard for empty Equipment repositioning Communication and proving to be the most effective way to reduce costs and create business opportunities among carriers and providers.

Aconcagua Venture members are also founders of Core Security which develops strategic solutions that help security-conscious organizations worldwide. The company’s flagship product, CORE IMPACT^TM, is the first automated penetration testing product for assessing specific information security threats to an organization. Penetration testing evaluates overall network security and identifies what resources are exposed. It enables organizations to determine if current security investments are detecting and preventing attacks.

Aconcagua Ventures website

Mv-Fleet's full committed user jump in profits.

2009-05-13T17:38:00Z

US liner operator Seaboard reported a jump in profits for the first quarter and indicated that it was evaluating the purchase of additional vessel capacity.

The Miami-based carrier which provides liner services between the US, Caribbean, Central and South America, reported a racy 81% ...

LLoyd's List spotlights CC&S office in the Singapore of the Americas.

2009-01-30T17:40:00Z

Panama is successfully luring major international companies to set up operations on its shores as it attempts to become the predominant maritime hub in the region.

Other technology companies lured by the prospect of fiscal incentives have set up operations in Panama's City of Knowledge in the former Clayton army base. They include Container Consultants & Systems, a company working to reduce the cost of repositioning empty containers.

MIT and CC&S add "Green value to the box".

2008-09-22T17:42:00Z

Keeping supply chain costs under control has been a difficult challenge during last years for container industry players. Now shippers and carriers are facing another challenge: limiting the environmental impact of the international goods movement.

Container Consultants & Systems (CC&S) will be working together with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Center for Transportation & Logistics (MIT-CTL) on a research initiative that CC&S has called 'Green value to the Box'. MIT-CTL research, initially sponsored by CC&S, will find out how optimization of the current container movement processes can reduce the actual carbon emissions of the movement of goods. The result of the study will contribute to finding the best options to reduce emissions during the entire circle of containerized cargo transportation. An example of similar research is the empty container movement optimization possible through the implementation of Mv-Fleet^TM, an innovative system to reduce empty container movements through collaboration developed by CC&S and implemented by several shipping lines. These studies will help shippers and carriers to communicate to customers and other stakeholders their efforts on carbon footprint reduction.