Collaboration key to rail growth
The rail freight sector must work harder to meet customer expectations and not make excuses for service disruption, while at the same time encouraging increased collaboration, according to the outcome of the Rail Freight Group’s (RFG) latest logistics seminar.
Helping customers get on track with rail freight brought together third party logistics firms and customers to discuss the key issues around growth and increased use of rail freight.
Graeme Undy, rail freight operations manager at Stobart Group gave a presentation on its work with Tesco and said: “Customers don’t want excuses. You have to guarantee the delivery on time. The customer does not want to see loads go back to road.”
He discussed how the 3PL had worked in as much flexibility for its client as possible, to ensure they were confident in putting their loads on rail, although admitted that they had to fulfil demanding Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).
Graeme also explained how Stobart sells ad hoc space on its services to ensure it maximises capacity and efficiency of services. “North bound or south bound, we don’t leave trains and we don’t park them up,” he added.
Constant communication was vital to working well with customers and Stobart communicates on an hourly basis right through the service. “Running the train is the easy bit,” said Graeme.
He said round trips were key to fill back loads and make it cost effective and this was where increased collaboration was vital to making rail more cost competitive.
“There have been many attempts that have failed or were not fully operational for the customer,” he said. “That puts a sour taste in the customer’s mouths. We are trying to prove it is not a root cause of rail.
“We have to work together to deliver customers expectations. Road and rail have to work side by side.
“When we first started talking about venturing into Europe people laughed, saying we would never fill it going out, how wrong they were.”
Nick Gallop, Intermodality, agreed with that but said attitudes were changing. He spoke about Breaking down barriers to growth and said attitudes to the sector and running trains were progressing, from just receiving an environmental benefit to both commercial and environmental ones.
He added most diesel locos achieve a 33% fuel saving when compared to HGVs moving the same load. “Real-time track and trace helps to raise standards and was the way forwards”, he said. “Over the last six years, rail has saved over two million tonnes of pollutants.
“We need to challenge the mind set if that is to continue and lift the rocks and look at where the solutions are. It’s not difficult, you just need to get the collaboration right,” he said adding that creativity was necessary to propel the sector forwards.
Nick said a lot of the theory had to be thrown out of the window and companies had to investigate the reality of whether they could just do it and seek critical mass of volumes on both journeys. He urged delegates to seek help from multiple sources and said customers should not panic.
“The mindset is changing, there is a different breed of people coming into the rail industry from the logistics sector with the benchmark being the real world.”
Justin Reynolds, solicitor for HFW, spoke about the international liability regime governing rail freight and the responsibility over cargo in transit. This was a complicated affair for rail services that used multiple carriers for European rail freight operations. He also spoke about a confusion over cargo being transferred from rail to road and where international and national law applies.
Mike Branigan, CEO of TDG, gave a presentation on Sharing supply chains to achieve real results. He spoke about its work with Kellogg’s, Kimberly-Clark and LPR to achieve real cost efficiencies through greater collaboration. While he said this work was within the road sector, the same rules applied to rail.
He spoke about the ‘full fat’ supply chain and how customers were now working toward a leaner supply chain that was sharper and more flexible. He said destocking was changing the shape of the industry and it was not going to go back.
“Multimodal is the next step but we need to create the dynamics turning a supply chain into a rail solution.”
Mike also outlined the process of sharing warehouse space and the benefits to customers in cheaper rates, environmental benefits in reduced empty running and associated fuel savings. He said partners needed to benchmark everything and all the savings and openness was vital and a clarity of purpose with customers.
“People want to continue to push the envelope. We have to have some clarity of objectives to reach. It’s not easy to see who needs to lead the way, we all have to,” added Mike
For further information, visit: www.rfg.org.uk
Published: 19/07/2010
