Profit from technology, no sweat

摘要

Don't get carried away by the latest developments in information technology, just decide how best to use them to your fleet's advantage. Speaker after speaker drove home the message at the 2005 BTAC seminar. Tim Blakemore was there. Never has the pace of change in the logistics and distribution business been as fast as at present. The observation was made last month by John Ratcliff, chairman of The Ratcliff Group (page 6) and SOE patron, as he welcomed delegates to a one-day Loughborough University seminar on "delivering more profit with less stress", organised by BTAC (the British Transport Advisory Committee). Anyone who started the day wondering exactly what he meant by the comment was surely in no doubt by the end of it, after speakers had explored transport engineering developments under topics as diverse as fuel-saving bonuses for drivers, through solar panels on semi-trailers, to affordable telematics and the relative merits of exhaust gas recirculation and selective catalytic reduction in the battle to clean up exhaust emissions.