Q&A: Jannine Miller, Director of the Georgia Center of Innovation for Logistics

LM Group News Editor Jeff Berman recently caught up with Jannine Miller, the new director of the Georgia Center of Innovation for Logistics, which is a statewide resource for fueling logistics industry growth and global competitiveness that works to address the needs and opportunities of companies of any size involved in logistics and freight transportation. A 12-year transportation and finance veteran, Miller perviously held leadership positions in the supply chain group at The Home Depot, and the Georgia Regional Transportation Authority. Berman and Miller discussed various aspects of the logistics landscape in Georgia, and the Center’s 2015 Georgia Logistics Summit, which takes place in Atlanta from March 31-April 1. A transcript of the conversation is below.

Logistics Management (LM): What makes you most excited about your new role at the Center?
Janine Miller: The first thing that comes to mind is that I get to serve Georgia’s businesses in a logistics framework in a state I really love.

LM: Georgia is the transportation hub of the Southeast, with a lot of access to truck and rail hubs and ports, too. How would you describe the transportation and logistics market there and in the Southeast overall at the moment?
Miller: The data points and related aspects we all know well include the Port of Savannah, which is the fourth largest in the country and the fastest-growing port. And as global commerce grows, which it will at hopefully a pretty large rate, that port essentially serves as the portal for the Southeast to the rest of the world and vice versa. The connections we have there and at the Port of Brunswick are so efficient, well connected, and reliable, and both have a rail and a roadway network. The availability to the rest of the Southeast is unprecedented from any other port. We also have a very low-cost way of doing business here that gravitates not just to companies who import and export in and around these ports, but to the rest of the country. We also have 1,200 miles of interstate highway that has a superior east-west, north-south connection, with 80 percent of the population east of the Mississippi within a two-day truck ride. Atlanta is also the second-largest home of inland ports for intermodal transfers between truck and linehaul. We also have an award-winning workforce here that is responsive to so many businesses and attracts many people to do business here.

LM: What makes the area so attractive from a low-costs perspective?
Miller: Taxation is a major reason as Georgia has a very low corporate tax rate and low property taxes compared to the rest of the U.S. as well. Those low property taxes are especially beneficial for things like inventory carrying costs and rolling assets, too.

LM: Looking ahead to the conference next month, it has a lot of known speakers and a full itinerary. What are your expectations for it, as well as the focus on its key themes like e-commerce, intermodal, and perishables?
Miller: As has been the case over the last six years, attendees will have a lot of networking opportunities to meet logistics needs on the shipper side and logistics providers can meet with each other on how to best increase their logistics offerings to their customers. Attendance at the Summit has increased five-fold since it first began, and last year we had 2,200 attendees and are shooting for more this year.

LM: What are some of the most notable educational sessions at the Summit?
Miller: There are several. Getting to hear from the operators of our transportation systems at our rapid-fire sessions with focuses on managing and planning transportation operations at GPA, GMTA, GRA, HJAIA, and GDOT, which is always popular.

LM: What can you tell me about the Summit’s focus on its key themes of e-commerce, intermodal, and perishables?
Miller: E-commerce is one of the five fastest-growing industries, and we are all using the Internet more to buy things, of course. But the challenges and opportunities that creates for logistics in both the distribution space, in terms of where to locate distribution operations, be logistically responsive to customers, as well as the delivery aspects of that. E-commerce provides a very unique opportunity for the customer to interact with the supply chain in ways it has not happened before for how and when things are delivered and how much they are willing to pay. This, in turn, creates many challenges and opportunities for shippers and logistics service providers.

LM: What about the perishables market?
Miller: Perishables is always something that creates a great deal of interest because it is always about getting product to market at its freshest point possible. Agribusiness is very big here in Georgia, and we have some pretty exciting cold chain pilots and growth, and we will be hearing from people at the Summit about cold chain storage and related developments.  We are seeing a lot of opportunities, not only to transfer these perishables, but also the processing that occurs during the transport, with products sitting on shelves in their freshest state, but it also reduces time where getting things to market is key to turn around cash flow. 

LM: And what about intermodal?
Miller: Intermodal is always a hot topic for shippers and providers. The more we try to squeeze out costs from the supply chain, which translates into less handling and fewer transfers between modes, it has resulted in a 5-to-6 percent increase in intermodal traffic in 2014. There are tremendous opportunities, given the challenges the trucking industry is dealing with. Shippers are looking for reliability and capacity that intermodal can provide for them, so that will be an interesting topic at the Summit, too.

LM: In regards to the Center, what are some of your goals or objectives in the way of new initiatives and key things you are focusing on?
Miller: The main thing we will do is build on the foundation that has been established over the years, which is the connection between logistics problem holders and logistics problem solvers. Over the years, the Center has become a go-to source for people to find and make connections on that front and will continue to do that, which is vital going forward. And there is a paradigm of really tremendous growth in the Southeast from an economic standpoint, as well as the port expansion we are going to see over the next 5-to-ten years and making sure our service logistics network infrastructure and people are ready to take on the extra load coming to us.