White House and DOT issue progress update on FLOW efforts

Two years after the White House and the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) formally announced the rollout of Freight Logistics Optimization Works (FLOW), which it describes as an information sharing initiative to pilot key freight information exchange between parts of the goods movement supply chain, it provided an update this week on the progress it has made since its inception.

When FLOW was first introduced, the White House said its key objectives were to address what it labeled “supply chain vulnerabilities and congestion,” in tandem with addressing “the longer-term weakness in our nation’s supply chains,” coupled with decades of underinvestment, outsourcing, and offshoring.

And it described FLOW as “a first-of-its-kind private-public partnership created and led by DOT that creates a more complete, shared picture of the U.S. supply chain for members, which include the nation’s busiest container ports, major ocean carriers, and some of the largest retail importers.” Some of FLOW’s key stakeholders include: Port of Long Beach; Port of Los Angeles; Georgia Ports Authority; CMA CGM; MSC; Fenix Marine Terminal; Global Container Terminals; Albertsons; Gemini Shippers; Land O’ Lakes; Target; True Value; DCLI; FlexiVan; FedEx; Prologis; UPS; and CH Robinson.

Among the objectives the White House laid out for FLOW included

• ensuring early return dates are consistent across partners;
• measuring more accurate chassis availability and understanding aggregate dwell time throughout the supply chain; and
• the principles of the pilot include a voluntary, secure national exchange for freight information available to participants who share data, and it is sustained by supply chain operational improvement

And now with some time having passed since its introduction, the White House’s DOT laid out some examples of the progress FLOW has made, including: publishing data on inland freight hubs, including rail terminal and warehouse end destination data to help FLOW members in having an enhanced view of future container import volumes and traffic.

“Two years ago, we launched FLOW, the first public-private platform of its kind to share data on supply chains in order to help goods move quickly and cheaply,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. “The Biden-Harris Administration's efforts to strengthen American supply chains have helped reduce inflation from pandemic peaks—and today, with the expansion of FLOW, we expect to see even greater benefits to American families and businesses.” 

What’s more, the White House pointed to progress it has made going back to February 2021, when President Biden rolled out what it called a “whole of government approach” in order to tackle pandemic-driven supply chain disruptions. It explained that through the White House’s focus and efforts on improving supply chains in the short-, medium-, and long-term have resulted in various benefits, like lowered consumer costs and lowered inflation, while citing an analysis published by the White House Council of Economic Advisors whose key takeaway pointed to “supply chains normalizing in some form explain more than 80% of the disinflation the U.S. has experienced since 2022.”

In describing how FLOW works and its data is used and leveraged, the White House explained that DOT collects, aggregates, and anonymizes key information shared by participants on inbound containerized freight, first with importer purchase orders, and then aligning future demand volumes against current regional capacity to move ocean containers. This information is based on data from the five largest U.S. container ports, seven of the largest ocean carriers, and nine of the 20 largest retailers by imports, and more than 60 companies in the onboarding process.

Feedback from FLOW member participants was positive, with many of them citing how a collaborative effort, through public-private partnerships, has made major supply chain-driven inroads. And one participant noted how FLOW has been a positive in using “data to predict and alleviate supply chain challenges of the future anchored on the aggregation and analysis of diverse stakeholder datasets to provide actionable business intelligence.”

While FLOW appears to be making strong inroads, initial feedback on it from supply chain stakeholders could be viewed as mixed.

One comment provided to LM by an industry stakeholder when FLOW was first introduced, blasted the White House for not including any supply chain software leaders whom could bring much deeper insight and experience. And another one did not expect FLOW to gain much traction, with domestic freight transportation significantly under-represented in thet list of 18 initial FLOW partners, coupled with actual surface transportation infrastructure representing a larger supply chain problem than digital infrastructure.

Other stakeholders struck a more positive tone, with one noting that anything the DOT can do to support better supply chain visibility among shippers, ports, and logistics providers is a plus, adding that it could develop predictive models to identify and plan for potential supply chain disruptions and bottlenecks.

It is obvious that when it comes to federal government-driven initiatives (especially those related to the supply chain) not everyone is going to be happy with the end result. Whether or not one fully supports FLOW, some credit needs to be given here, for, at the very least, the awareness, effort, and commitment being made to drive supply chain throughput and productivity. It was not all that long ago that supply chains received a lot of attention on a global stage for the wrong reasons, in some cases, fair or not. Going forward, it will be very interesting to see how FLOW fares, in terms of driving further and future improvements.