Operator:
All participants will be able to listen only until the question and answer portion of the call. At that time press star one to ask a question. Now I will turn the meeting over to Ms. Jennifer Symoun. Ms. Symoun, you may begin.
Jennifer Symoun:
Good afternoon or good morning to those of you to the West. Welcome to the Talking Freight Seminar Series. My name is Jennifer Symoun and I will moderate today's seminar. Today's topic is Freight Performance Metrics. Please be advised that today's seminar is being recorded.
Today we'll have two presenters - Sam Fayez of Productivity Apex and LTC Leslie Sullivan of USTRANSCOM. I do have a third presenter, Ed Strocko, listed on the slide but he will no longer be presenting today, so our first presenter will be Sam Fayez.
Dr. Sam Fayez is the director of supply chain solutions at Productivity Apex, Inc. He holds a Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering. He developed the first comprehensive Supply Chain knowledge-base. The knowledge-base is an automated supply chain definition and modeling tool that uses the Supply Chain Operations Reference model (SCOR model) as its core. At Productivity Apex, he directed several projects and initiatives for government and private organizations. The span of the projects ranges from research to development in the areas of supply chain and logistics, modeling and simulation, technology assessment, interdependencies modeling and analysis. He was elected to serve on the Supply Chain Council's Technical Development Steering Committee.
LTC Leslie Sullivan is a Distinguished Military Graduate of the Monmouth University, NJ ROTC Program. She was commissioned in May 1987 as an Army Transportation Officer. She has served in various command and staff positions at the company, battalion, brigade, and major command levels in the United States., Europe and the Middle East. LTC Sullivan is a certified joint specialty officer and has vast experience in joint transportation operations and distribution processes. Currently, LTC Sullivan is assigned to the U.S. Transportation Command, Scott Air Force Base, IL where she is a member of the Operations Analysis Branch of the Defense Transportation Coordination Initiative (DTCI) Program Management Office. LTC Sullivan is married, has two children and resides in O'Fallon, IL.
I'd now like to go over a few logistical details prior to starting the seminar. Today's seminar will last 90 minutes, with 60 minutes allocated for the speakers, and the final 30 minutes for audience Question and Answer. If during the presentations you think of a question, you can type it into the smaller text box underneath the chat area on the lower right side of your screen. Please make sure you are typing in the thin text box and not the large white area. Please also make sure you send your question to "Everyone" and indicate which presenter your question is for. Presenters will be unable to answer your questions during their presentations, but I will start off the question and answer session with the questions typed into the chat box. Once we get through all of the questions that have been typed in, the Operator will give you instructions on how to ask a question over the phone. If you think of a question after the seminar, you can send it to the presenters directly, or I encourage you to use the Freight Planning LISTSERV. The LISTSERV is an email list and is a great forum for the distribution of information and a place where you can post questions to find out what other subscribers have learned in the area of Freight Planning. If you have not already joined the LISTSERV, the web address at which you can register is provided on the slide on your screen.
Finally, I would like to remind you that this session is being recorded. A file containing the audio and the visual portion of this seminar will be posted to the Talking Freight Web site within the next week. Due to the size of the file, recorded files are available for viewing/listening purposes only and cannot be saved to your own computer. We encourage you to direct others in your office that may have not been able to attend this seminar to access the recorded seminar.
The PowerPoint presentations used during the seminar will also be available within the next week. I will notify all attendees of the availability of the PowerPoints, the recording, and a transcript of this seminar.
Sam Fayez:
Thank you, Jennifer for this introduction. The presentation I'm going to go through today is actually titled advances in supply chain and logistic decision and support tools, but due to the subject of the seminar will be focusing on the performance metrics and the metrics that are available right now and our experiences on taking these metrics in customizing it for different organizations. As a quick agenda, I will go through one slide to show a the span of the kind of work we are doing at productivity Apex, then I will go through some slides describing in some detail the supply chain operation different model and I will focus on the best practices and benchmarking as well as the performance measures. Then, I will go through related simulation tools because as you go through the SCOR model, it will be very difficult to implement because it is delivered as 500 page document, so we take this to another level by integrating it with some tools to automate the process and instead of giving you a report, it gives you a dynamic report city cannot monitor different scenarios. The simulation tools I will go through something, maybe interesting for some people. However, you will see that I am presenting something related to space, but I want to present something related to NASA, in particular the space transportation system. And some supply tools related to DOT, one project we have done was the for the office of freight management, in particular a tool which is called freight technology assessment tool and a running project that we are doing for DMV and it's called multi cat efficiency study. This is a span of work we are doing for Productivity Apex. We do a lot of work in transportation and supply chain management and also we do a lot aerospace work for NASA. Then we do some work for transportation. We do a lot knowledge discovery and data mining as well as we have a sector of software engineering.
The SCOR model which stands for this supply chain operations reference model was developed byt the Supply Chain Council, and it was founded in 1996. It was founded by two leading consulting firms. PR T M and Advanced Manufacturing Research. Initially the Supply Chain Council included 69 voluntary mentors. As we are talking right now we have over 1,000 corporate members and corporate members are engaged within the Supply Chain Council not only using the output from the council but contributing. What is good about this council is it is not an academic council but it is a council that has been funded by practitioners. They were the building blocks of all the model and the framework of which I we will go through in detail. But also, it includes some of government agencies and software developers.
The main product of the Supply Chain Council is the Supply Chain Operation Reference model. Actually, it is not a model, but it is the same work. The SCOR model is considered today as the gold standard for defining a benchmark in the supply chain. It is a process of free market, but the free-market actually combines three different frameworks and this is where the strength of the SCOR model comes. These three remarks are the business process engineering, so there are standard processes at the highest level of the processes are planned, a source make, and in able so it captures the planning part of your organization and of your supply chain and logistics' activities and the execution in terms of source make deliver which captures the material flow and of course it in able which provides the backbone of all the information and the data and the management of all these execution and planning activities.
The second part of the framework which is actually performance metrics, you can see on the graphics the benchmarking park. These metrics spans over different metrics of details, it's also a high level and can be decomposed down to a very low level so you can query your system so you have data to use and get these metrics and start to measure aggregated at the high level so you can have these metrics across the different organization structure of and a different reporting levels and sometimes if you attach the right technology you can have it real-time. The first part which are the best practices and these best practices have been accumulated over the years, and all the best practice included in the model have been proven and have been used by the best performers and the companies and the enterprises that has the highest supply chain maturity worldwide.
Something I forgot to tell, the Supply Chain Council originated in North America, but now we have successfully opened different chapters worldwide. We have a big chapter in Europe was a lot of annual events, China, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and South East Asia and South America and Africa. It is a growing and these metrics have been growing tremendously. The benchmarking part is now you have this business process engineering and have the benchmarking of the -- You use the different processes provided within the SCOR model. When you go over the level of details, you have over 280 processes you can define any process you have. Have you define the supply chain you can measure the performance of your supply chain. The third step is the Supply Chain Council supplied data of how the best supply chain performing in the market actually did it looks like and then you can benchmark your supply chain against the other ones and you can see the gaps you have to fulfill to increase your supply chain performance and achieve other levels of supply chain maturity. If you find gaps, it provides you also with Best practices, you can see these are the best practice I can implement any can select some of these best practices and implement some of them going through study and analysis to see which best practice will bring you the highest performance.
The good thing about SCOR is all these relationships are pre defined, so you have the relationship between the processes between the metrics and between the practices. One level of details span over all the different levels. This is just to give it a standard the supply chain can be customized published this core models can be customized to any supply chain and give you the benefit of looking at your pet tricks and to and. All the carriers in between. This is the span of the processes and how they are related to each other at the very high level. You have a plan source deliver and return. The process is very important and I pointed earlier that the escort model is a generic model so have three levels of details and these three levels of details, one, two and three are defined in this core Model but we know that every supply chain, every company has its own business practice and has its own way of doing business. So levels four and five are at levels that can be customized from levels three in particular for your company and industry. The KRP, a lot people has different wording for it. Some call it figures of measure. The bottom line, it all means the same. I have a certain system that is behaving there are not so brisk that give me an indication of how this system is behaving. This is the starting point of the metrics. There are two categories of the metrics for any enterprise from the supply chain point of view. The ones that are customer facing and the ones that are in turn only effacing, the customer things these are the metrics that if you are going to work on the customer are going to feel it. There are three categories. One looks at the reliability and the other one for the fix ability. When we go to the mattress one of the customer perfect order fulfilling means all the orders that's going out of my warehouses or distribution center [ indiscernible ] and the output is in terms of percentage. So [ indiscernible ] is designed generic within the SCOR model as you will deliver the right product to the right customer at the right time or the right package of the right shipping documents in the right conditions with the right quality and if you satisfy all of this than this order is perfect. For example, you shall have 100 orders for this customer. Then you can measure the per thickness of each order and say my order for this customer is 80%, means that if you send 100 orders than 20 orders did not fulfill these six or seven. You can measure it for customers by product line, measure if however you want and however your business case is. Another category is measured by cycle time and cycle time is from the time I receive the order for my customer how long it took me an even sourcing from other supplies going to my carriers getting the trucking company to load and so on till the customer receives the order, and the bottom line is [ indiscernible ]. Financial statements and other things. The fix ability process, there are three metrics which are the stability, downsizing and flexibility and this is the measure of if the demand increase, if my customer requires more for me, how long are you going to take me in order to boost up my internal capacity that can be sustained to the new demand and new requirements. These are the metrics that if I would work on I would increase my customer service level. The internal one which is actually impacts my efficiency and how I am working on my costs, and basically the fuss -- book is on cost and asset management deficiencies. If I have a supply chain how much I am paying in order to manage the supply chain and what about the cost of goods sold. MRS level one metric. If we go down below we can go up to 250 metric so you can measure what every need. This is just an example, showing you how this can be measured.
This shows the order fulfillment cycle time. There are two events. The first event is you receive the order from your supplier, then you go through processing the order. Then you go through with filling the order. Others will go through production or sourcing from a supplier then you'll go through shipping delivering and then the second event will be the delivery of the order. After the delivery of the order your customer will [ indiscernible ] will go through testing the product they find is right and going through the payment cycle time. At that time they will be observed in which you can get your payment. You can see that the order fulfillment time measures to order delivery, but then the order to cash cycle time is measured from orders received to payment receipt and you can escalate it from that. From the time you [ indiscernible ]. Which is actually something important on the financial statements and the balance sheet. Just also for example the next level, we use this core Model process to define my supply chain and then start measuring the metrics and I stuck to measure my metrics and I go to some data provided, limited by the supply chain found but it is widely available within other benchmarking companies who actually.
The data. I will just take you to the example of the order fulfillment lead time. The order fulfillment lead time is 38.2 days and the median is 29.5 if you are in the industry. Then you can measure yourself. If you find it is lower than that, that means you're really doing good, if it is more than that, then you have to work on it. The next step would go to the best of practices show how to enhance my lead time and start to work on what best practice our employment, and implementation of deployment and you can't go to the next step and see what is missing. These metrics everybody will say I have different metrics I don't want to use that. There are benefits of using the metric as is because this is standard metrics where you cannot go get data of how your competitor is behaving, you can use it as is. But if you're metrics are different than you can customize it. This is an example of how we took these SCOR metrics for NASA, and we actually make some changes and customize it for NASA and when we do a benchmark we don't to a bench mark and other competitors in the market because the competitors have different business models but benchmark against yourself. How NASA was making the orders and we can enhance this by implementing this.
Of course, I'm not trying to make a sales pitch for the Supply Chain Council but this is what is going behind the scenes to get this model running. Being a member of the Supply Chain Council can benefit you and can benefit your business. It will give a big slice of exposure to the supply chain, it's a Model that actually has some field, it is purely mean, there are no that attach to the mob appeared in of the process, the best practices and the metrics. It will give you -- it is developed and maintained and used by practitioners so it will make a lot of sense to you. A lot of brains and hard work behind the scene. I'm really proud to be part of the working group, and industry groups. It is a not for profit organizations so everybody in the council is somebody who is working and if you want to have something to contribute, and as you contribute you get a lot benefit back. They have also training which is a new thing.
The model is straight forward to use, you get over 250 metrics. Some of the model tools that we provide in the SCOR model are basically all that are simulation model. The one I'm going through his the supply chain simulation. We wanted to go to the implementation of the SCOR model. We wanted to provide a certain tool that you go and define your supply chain and to measure your supply chain and by measuring your supply chain and defining its, it actually mimics their actual supply chain. As the model is validated with your as is that is, you can go and look at the best practices and creating what is scenarios on the simulation model, run it and see how this point to impact the method that you pre defined. Before going through the NASA thing, the supply chain is complicated. It is much more complicated than the supply chain we know here because it has multiple locations and these other locations that no one had ever done before. We have the supply chain to indicate the launch date which is actually sometimes called the space bar truck and heavy supply chain of the payload. In order to have some deliverables from earth back to Russian space station from the international space station to contribute to an exploration mission. In space, it goes through space transportation between different location. It's hot deliverables from space to the customer. You take pictures and send it back to the customer. On the planet service, it becomes a supplier. When the order starts it was actually the shipment of its stars to go and close as all of us has seen, collecting and executing experience and send it back to the deep space network. And at the end, if the mission was successful you will have deliverables back to earth in terms of that information and knowledge and ultimately physical samples appeared just to give a contrast on the scope, this is only the portion on earth around 1500 suppliers and you can see these suppliers are standing all over the United States except [ indiscernible ] and this is just to show you the complexity of how the supply chain spans over this huge geographic area. Just a quick contrast, because everybody on the seminar is actually not into space, just to get a quick contrast of the difference. This is a truck a limit of 80,000 pounds with 60,000 pounds payload. You can travel thousands of miles, have multiple hubs, going to cross-docking, multiple distribution centers, sourcing and getting other things on board. And then you return empty. The maximum speed is the speed limit of those you go through. On the other hand, the space shuttle which is the SPACE-BAR, the total weight is over 4 million pounds. The payload is 53,700 pounds and millions of miles traveled distant which is essentially the lowest distance between Mars and earth and they are close in orbits together. Limited and remote delivery points. At the end there will be a couple of pounds of physical examples. If we contrast any supply chain we know on earth [ indiscernible ]. These are the different features. Now, NASA is going through a change. Is going from the space shuttle going to a launch solution including CLV [ indiscernible ] so this supply chain is getting more complex. When NASA approaches us they ask us to provide them with Best practices, so that we can take the supply chain maturity to another level and take the supply chain performance on another level. We started with the understanding of this supply chain and then getting out and getting definition in means of structure, we use the SCOR bottle and customize it for NASA, the information flow the performance measures and so forth, then we get this different integration and creaked what we call a knowledge base. Them provide a sharing mechanism to be able to share this across the different supply chains of NASA. Then we developed the knowledge to generate the simulation model and define the key performance indicator, run the simulation model and get the commercial practices from the SCOR model and beyond specifically for aerospace, integrate it within the model develop what is in there and run the Model and see how they metrics is going to behave. This is just an example. You'll see a portion of the hit enter dependencies and the complexity of supply chain. This is what we are using is an analysis of what is the metrics? What if we relocate? Instead of having one launch date we have two? How this is going to impact my supply chain and to and kicking what if I change the lead times? What if I introduce [ indiscernible ]? How all this going to be paid? The output basically of the model is time, cost, utilization but then we take these output and we dashboard them at the very high level which actually aggregating these fines and utilization to provide them with the tricks that can be at the strategic or tactical level. Had can be viewed and assist them in decision making and directing the budget so we can achieve maximum of portability, highest performance and sustainability of the program.
Basically, another project which is closely related to the Department of Transportation is the freight technology assessment tool, this was an assessment tool that we developed in conjunction with the Department of Transportation. The tool is you define the supply chain come we is the score from or at the beginning but then we took it out side so we can put any framework you want but still keeping the same relationship, you have process, defined metrics and best practices. The other thing we can define new technologies, then you go through some subjective analysis for qualitative measures and some financial measures and you define it for each technology and each performance metric, then at the end of the planning tour you have a list of technologies so that if it has a certain budget it can actually say okay these are the best technology that will bring the highest performance public and private so I will allocate my budget this way. The last time want to go through is the multi carrier efficiency studying. Basically, we are taking what we have done for the DOT which is the tool to do very focused cost-benefit analysis for private sector so that the trucking companies can see the benefits as well as the benefits. We can see how this impacts the safety and other important matters for the interest of the public. And we want to see the impact technology safety and other public interest from the point of view.
I think that's it and I tried to keep it brief. If you have any questions you can forward them to me. You can see our contact information on this slide.
J. Symoun:
Thank you, Sam. I will bring back up the contact information slide after our next presentation for those of you that want to write it down. If you have any questions for it Sam or for our next presenter please type them into the chat area and send them to everyone and we will get to those after the next presentation. We're now going to move on to Lieutenant-Colonel Leslie Sullivan of US TRANSCOM. I will be flipping Leslie's slide for her, so you will hear her say next slide so please just ignore that.
Leslie Sullivan:
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. For the next 20 minutes I will be providing some information on the defense transportation coordination initiative or DTCI and I promise you I won't use to many acronyms we will see how many at the end of the briefing.
Our mission. Our mission is to partner with a world-class transportation services provider or 3PL to manage a continental United States distribution material for selected services and defense logistic agency shipping locations. We will leverage the winning coordinators' existing commercial business with his best commercial practices and our large volume of DOD freight to achieve efficiencies and distribution associated cost savings. Let me provide you a little bit of background on how DCTI came about. In 2003, the U.S. Transportation Command at Scott Air Force Base, Illinois, became DOD distribution process owner with this DPO designation US TRANSCOM became the single entity to utilize the single distribution system. DCTI is a DPO initiative that contributes to the Defense Department's goal to integrate logistics' and make it more efficient. DCTI as a continental United States freight management system that will increase operational effectiveness. DCTI implementation will reduce cycle times and improve predictability through the use of more dedicated trucked schedules, cross-docking operations better mode selection and mode optimization. DCTI will obtain efficiencies to best business practices such as increased consolidations and mode conversions.
Why are we doing this? Currently, DOD transports the rate for more than 600 shipping locations using hundreds of commercial freight transportation providers to move the freight to thousands of destinations within the continental U.S. This freight transportation is managed by more than 600 transportation officers were assigned various components of the Department of Defense such as the Defense logistics Agency in, the army, the Navy, the Air Force and this authority under the Taylor transportation contract or TTC or to issue tenders for freight shipment. Transportation officers act in a decentralized fashion, rather than DOD efficiency or expense. This freight is moving with no enterprise, no collaboration and no centralized management. This creates a very segmented distribution system. Third-party logistics providers are much more effective in optimization and consolidation of freight, of minimizing the empty miles and improving operational effectiveness and customer confidence. In 2001, DOD conducted a prototype test with a 3PL firm to manage transportation of selected commodities, outbound from the southeast region of the U.S. which highlighted valuable lessons that showed you that the concept could work. It's on the third from the last bullet on DCTI goals, but you'll see that cost savings is an important DCTI goal in addition, to garnering efficiencies. Conservative estimates indicate a net savings in excess of 20 percent of the DOD historical operations and maintenance cost. In dollars, that's about 58 million annually.
Guidance and oversight. Everybody answers to someone and our oversight is provided by the Office of the Secretary of Defense, specifically the transportation and Policy Office, they are a strong lead. US TRANSCOM acquisition and legal communities provide oversight as well as the comptroller. Distribution governance is provided through a distribution steering Group and the combatant commanders council among others. The DCTI Program Manager, Colonel Jim Lovell reports directly to the USTranscom, commander who is a four star air force general. DCTI is partnered with the Services, the Defense logistics Agency and other supporting agencies. There were dozens of industry participants in the proposal discussions we have one on one discussions with 31 industry representatives such as IBM, CH Robinson, Ryder, Landstar, we received a lot of good input from our industry representatives. We also have involvement and have key player rolls from trade associations such as the American trucking Association and the National Defense Transportation Association. This slide is showing the phases of the DCTI site activation plan. DCTI will be phased in three phases using the lessons learned from the prototype to implement a phased safe start approach. Phase I includes Defense logistics Agency and defense distribution centers such as Barstow, California, Corpus Christi Texas and will begin 165 days after contract award. Phase II will start before the completion of phase 1 and will incorporate activities within close proximity of the DLA and DDC distribution Center selected aerial ports and DOD shippers. Phase III will start before the completion of Phase II and rollout will be to all of the other DOD activities and is scheduled to be completed 25 months from contract award.
What will the DCTI coordinator actually do? The DCTI coordinator will arrange, coordinate and monitor and control freight shipment from notification to delivery. The DCTI coordinator will have the visibility of freight movement requirements and access to a network of transportation providers to schedule and fulfill those requirements. He brings a tremendous capacity and a network of carriers to the table. It is the DCTI Coordinator who will manage carrier quality and performance. The DCTI goal is an industry partnership leveraging current commercial capabilities and proven best practices.
What won't the DCTI Coordinator do? The Coordinator will not have anything to do with OCONUS freight movements - only continental United States. It won't handle vender shipments, for example, the DCTI Coordinator won't get involved with large unit moves to Iraq and Afghanistan and other areas of operation. He won't be involved in household good or bulk and missile fuels or small packages, or sensitive and classified shipments or arms ammunition or explosives. With all these exclusions, the coordinator will be responsible for about one-third of DOD freight.
The performance threshold. These are the Key Performance indicators we are going to measure in the QASP or the quality assurance surveillance plan and their associated acceptable performance levels as you can see the contractor will be graded not only on on-time pickup and delivery but we expect a 98 percent loss and damage free shipment and to be able to process loss and damage claims within 120 days, 99 percent of the time. Our market research and industry discussions indicate these thresholds are achievable. The government will also monitor and measure progress toward achieving cost savings. The government's established goals for cost savings is 19.1% by the end of Phase three, for a total of 23.2% under this contract.
How would measure performance? The Quality assurance surveillance plan lays the foundation for evaluating contractor performance while implementing the DCTI performance work statement. It also covers government responsibilities to ensure successful partnership between the government and the contractor. Program management reviews will be held twice during Phase I and monthly thereafter. PMR will be conducted to evaluate current progress and provide government assessment of performance. On a quarterly basis during Phase I the government shipper Quality assurance Representative will compare the shipment data using two sources. The Quality assurance person will take DLA data from distribution standard system and the contractor system. He will compare this data, do the analysis and each shipping location and forward it quarterly to us here at the DCTI P M. o Office for evaluation and adjudication. Following the DCTI office review, the information will be shared with the contractor to help focus management attention and substandard performance. If after adjudication and collaboration of the data and findings, it's determined that the contractor failed to achieve the 98 percent on time pickup threshold, a percentage of the monthly management the will be reduced. There will also be random inspections. We will conduct random inspections of the contractors processes, this internal inspection system and additionally, if he is adhering to the systems' security requirements we've laid out in the performance work statement. Finally, we have a Web based process request system where any user or customer can submit improvement requests. This process will be on our website and it's a method for soliciting customer feedback and recommendations on improving our business processes which we will share with the DCTI coordinator.
This concludes my briefing. We do have a website. I didn't include it in the side but its dtci.transcom.mil. Thanks Jennifer.
J. Symoun:
Okay. Thank you, Leslie. Before we get to questions, I'm going to bring up one side and talk about the freight peer to peer program. I don't see any questions typed in. I do have a question in the room here. We will open the phone line to any questions. I did want to mention the peer to peer program. They're is a slide show on your screen that has the Web address, the e-mail address and the phone number. The program is meant for state DOT and Metropolitan Planning Organization and is meant to facilitate information sharing. If you go to the website you will be able to get more information, or you can call or e-mail appeared with that, I we will go to the question we have in the room. Please feel free to type in any questions.
Crystal Jones:
This is Crystal Jones from the Federal Highway Administration. I was wondering when you all negotiated transit times, did you find yourself making adjustments in metropolitan areas that are highly congested are they fairly standard?
L. Sullivan:
We adjusted for particular areas.
C. Jones:
Is that data public?
L. Sullivan:
No, it is not right now because we are still in source selection.
C. Jones:
I was just wondering in general was congestion a major issue that was discussed with your 3PL provider?
L. Sullivan:
I cannot answer that question. I don't know. I wasn't here when they were doing the one on one discussions, but -- it's not just one provider. I'm sorry, I can't answer that question.
J. Symoun:
Thank you. It looks like another question was typed in for you. When management services are reduced how will that freight be tendered?
L. Sullivan:
Again, I can't answer that one either. It is in our costing arena and I am not a cost/pricing person. I can take the question down and asked around if you can tell me who asked it.
J. Symoun:
The question comes from Ed Miller, and, I will bring up the intro side, if you want to email Leslie with your question maybe she can get back to you with the answer. We don't have any other questions that were typed in. At this point, what we will do is open the phone lines for questions over the phone. Operator if you could give directions for asking a question over the phone.
Operator:
If you would like to ask an audio question press star 1 and record your first and last name when requested. Again, to ask a question press star 1. One moment, please. There are no audio questions at this time.
J. Symoun:
Okay. Thank you. At this time, I don't believe have any other questions. With that, we will go ahead and end early. I am trying to bring up the intro side that does have the presenters e-mail address on it. I want to thank both of our presenters today and think everybody in attendance for attending today's seminar. The recording of this event will be available on the talking freight website and I will send out an e-mail when it becomes available. The next seminar will be held on January 17th. This actually -- today's seminar was the last seminar where you'll be able to register on the WebEx website. Starting in January we will have a different registration process. There will be an e-mail going out that will tell you where to go to register for the January through March seminars. Actually, there also is a link on the slide. You'll see the last bullet says after the conference to register for future seminars, that's where you go to register for the January through March seminars. I encourage you to sign up for these seminars and encourage you to join the freight planning list serve. Enjoy the rest of your day
