Hub Group heralds new visibility and shipment-level ETA offering

Freight transportation and logistics services provider Hub Group announced today that it has rolled out enhanced end-to-end visibility with real-time shipment-level ETA (estimated time of arrivals).

Hub said that this will improve visibility and accuracy for real-time arrival data access via its Hub Connect customer portal, API, or EDI feeds. And it added that this is done through leveraging its fully GPS-equipped container fleet, railroad data and a combination of artificial intelligence and machine learning technology to provide industry-leading accuracy. Machine learning, it said lets the company constantly analyze the transit of freight, considering more than 10 million data points to provide continuous, real-time arrival updates. Hub Group gives customers dynamic, end-to-end visibility into their shipments, arming them with more data about specific routes, and allowing for better and more accurate planning.

“As the supply chain grows increasingly complex, our customers need accuracy and visibility at every step,” said David Yeager, CEO, Hub Group, in a statement. “We’re combining our nearly 50 years of supply chain solutions experience with emerging technology to raise the stakes on what a sophisticated supply chain should look like, delivering the real- time, trusted ETA data essential for our customers’ success.”

Vava Dimond, chief information officer at Hub Group, said that regular discussions about continuous improvement and innovation, has enabled how Hub identifies how it can better help customers to manage their supply chain

“A critical need from all customers is to have up-to-the-minute knowledge about the status of their freight, which in turn allows them to make better decisions in planning other aspects of their supply chain,” she said.

Knowledge, she said, is power, which she labeled the chief benefit of this announcement.

“When you have a complicated supply chain, knowing the estimated arrival time, early, late or right on time, can help sophisticated shippers to keep their supply chain moving efficiently,” she said. “The benefit is being able to have visibility throughout the lifecycle of all shipments and being able to make adjustments based on that knowledge.”

The data points used by Hub to provide continuous real-time arrival updates are done through models that analyze more than 10 million data points, explained Dimond.

“This includes all of the data coming from our GPS-enabled fleet, information from the rails, truck speed, traffic conditions and weather conditions,” she said. “All of these inputs are continually processed and updated in the system – it’s that dynamic.”