Top Container Logistics KPIs for Beneficial Cargo Owners (BCOs)
Logistics Key Performance Indicators, or KPIs, are essentially a compass that can help guide a logistics team toward success, providing quantifiable measurements that reflect the performance of various aspects of the logistics department.
KPIs can help logistics teams understand if they're on track to achieve their objectives or if they need to adjust their strategies to get back on track and achieve their goals.
The Benefits of KPIs
KPIs are often used across various departments, like finance, sales, and marketing, but the logistics department can also use them to evaluate and drive performance. By setting clear, measurable targets, KPIs provide departments and organizations with a number of important benefits.
First, they provide a clear focus for teams, ensuring everyone is working towards the same objectives. This alignment is crucial for maintaining momentum and fostering a cohesive, results-driven culture.
Second, KPIs enable businesses to track progress over time, allowing them to celebrate successes and learn from setbacks. This continuous improvement mindset is essential for staying agile and competitive in today's fast-paced market.
Finally, by providing a transparent view of performance, KPIs foster accountability, ensuring that every team member understands their role in driving the business forward.
What are Logistics KPIs?
Because Gnosis Freight’s primary focus is helping the logistics teams at Beneficial Cargo Owners (“BCOs”) track and manage the full lifecycle of their shipping containers, we’re going to focus on some logistics KPIs related to the shipping container.
Here are some of the top KPIs related to the shipping container that inbound logistics managers and logistics teams should focus on:
- Container Turnaround Time: Measures the time it takes for a container to be unloaded, reloaded, and returned to the port for onward shipment. Reducing container turnaround time can increase the efficiency of the shipping process and reduce detention charges.
- Container Dwell Time: Measures the amount of time a container spends waiting to be picked up from or returned to the port. Reducing container dwell times at the port or distribution center can increase efficiency, reduce congestion, and reduce demurrage and detention fees.
- Load Utilization: Measures the percentage of available container space that is used to transport goods. Increasing load utilization can reduce the number of containers required for a shipment, which can reduce shipping costs and increase efficiency.
- Booking Accuracy: Measures the accuracy of booking information, including the number of containers, destination, and cargo weight. Improving booking accuracy can reduce the risk of shipment delays or incorrect charges.
- Container Tracking: Measures the ability to accurately track containers throughout their entire lifecycle from Gate-in at origin until returned empty to the terminal. Improving container tracking can increase visibility into your supply chain and help facilitate improvements in other logistics related KPIs such as Turnaround Times, Dwell Times, and more.
By tracking these KPIs, logistics teams can identify areas for improvement and make data-driven decisions to optimize logistics processes and help improve overall business results.
Baselines for Container Logistics KPIs
The typical baselines for the five logistics KPIs listed above can vary depending on a variety of factors, such as the size of the company, the type of cargo being shipped, the shipping routes involved, and many others. However, here are some general benchmarks logistics teams can aim for with each KPI:
- Container Turnaround Time: The typical baseline for container turnaround time can range from 2 to 5 days, depending on the port and shipping route. However, some ports with high efficiency and automation can achieve turnaround times of less than 24 hours.
- Empty Container Dwell Time: The typical baseline for empty container dwell time can range from 5 to 10 days, depending on the port and shipping route. However, BCOs can aim to reduce this time to less than 3 days to increase the availability of containers and reduce costs.
- Load Utilization: The typical baseline for load utilization can range from 70% to 80%, depending on the type of cargo being shipped. However, BCOs can aim to increase this percentage to over 90% by optimizing cargo loading and routing.
- Booking Accuracy: The typical baseline for booking accuracy can range from 90% to 95%, depending on the company's booking process and quality control measures. However, BCOs can aim to increase this percentage to 99% by implementing better booking systems and training staff to avoid errors.
- Container Tracking: The baseline for container tracking is that it should be able to provide real-time container milestone updates for all your containers in transit with accurate ETA predictions of +/- one day.
Improving Logistics KPIs with the Container Lifecycle Management™ Platform
Gnosis Freight’s Container Lifecycle Management™ platform is designed to help logistics teams improve the KPIs mentioned above as well as help improve many other KPIs related to company supply chains.
The Container Lifecycle Management (“CLM”) platform is the world’s first logistics software focused on the full lifecycle of the shipping container giving you a single platform to track all of your containers, regardless of ocean carrier or freight forwarder.
Powered by the proprietary Marlo™ container tracking engine, the CLM platform offers the most complete container tracking data available providing accurate milestones from Gate-in at origin until the container is returned empty to the terminal. This includes highly accurate predictive ETAs for both ocean and rail terminals as well as your own warehouses and distribution centers to help improve Container Turnaround and Dwell Times to reduce demurrage and detention charges.
Our CLM Enhancements add powerful supply chain execution tools to the platform to help logistics teams achieve a variety of goals and improve logistics KPIs. Enhancements like Scheduling, Drayage Optimization, and Transload Management further help with container turnaround and dwell times in addition to other potential KPIs.
The Container Builder enhancement can help improve load utilization while the Booking Management and PO Management enhancements can help improve booking accuracy.
This is just a sample of how the CLM platform can help improve logistics KPIs. Reach out or schedule a demo to learn more about Gnosis Freight can help you achieve your company’s objective and unlock the full potential of your supply chain.