A Shipping Company Context

While rail offered low transport costs, it also involved larger delivery sizes and longer transit times and thus higher inventories across the supply chain. In addition, waiting to ship loads meant that shippers faced a 

Perhaps it would help to view the decision from the perspective of the shipper. The shipper had to contend with the transport costs, inventory costs, other incidental costs as a total supply chain cost effect. Would it help if ABC enabled customers to evaluate the total supply chain cost of alternatives If salespeople for ABC Rail could get an idea of competitive total supply chain cost by customer route, then ABC could identify how to adjust schedules and decide the number of wagons to wait for in order to beat the competition. Such an approach, repeated over and over across customers, would generate a customer-responsive train freight schedule. ABC had heard of an initiative by Burlington Northern called ShipSmart, which offered a similar service to shippers. Should ABC Rail use such an approach  

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