PROPELLED BY LOGISTICS
With more than 70 years of third- party logistics experience, ABW remains a Georgia standout by offering clients a distinct competitive advantage through its singular focus on providing an optimal customer experience in the 3PL industry. Services include supply chain management and integrated warehouse management systems or proprietary systems provided by its customers. ABW offers an additional asset: Colonial Cartage Corporation, an in-house carrier that provides comprehensive transportation services throughout the Southeast, Southwest, Midwest, and the Great Plains. Tº¿Ã¶·µÄ Sµ·Å¹Âµ¼: ABILITY TO ADAPT In uncertain times, Georgia’s logistics providers have demonstrated an exceptional ability to adapt. For Taylored Services, which marked its 30th anniversary in 2022 as a leader in 3PL warehouse, distribution, and ful llment services, exibility has been a key to success. With both East Coast and West Coast locations, the company added new luster to Georgia’s logistics landscape in 2022 when it opened a new distribution site near the Port of Savannah. Although the pandemic created challenges and caused a few shifts in the way the company operates, including an increased focus on digitalization driving enhanced ef ciency and cost savings, Taylored Services has thrived. In addition, demand for contactless delivery has increased signi cantly due to associated health and safety protocols. This has led Taylored Services to increase its use of virtual signatures and contactless delivery methods, and to focus more on technology to ensure timely and safe deliveries. Companies providing logistics services have improved overall through their innovative responses to change. All companies have been forced to create more exible and resilient supply chains in order to respond to changing customer demands and deliver high- quality products.
The bright side, Justice says, is that Georgia is coping as well or better with national economic challenges than other parts of the country. The major distribution markets of Los Angeles, Chicago, and Dallas, as well as the states of New Jersey and Pennsylvania, are all experiencing the same challenges. FORGING AHEAD ABW has found that increased automation and an expansion of engineered standards—wherein workers’ time management is carefully measured—have enabled the company to maintain its history of success. “Demand for storage capacity and warehouse services remains strong,” Justice says. “We focus on improving productivity, selective automation, and con guring our WMS (warehouse management system) to improve or streamline our internal work ows.” For its WMS, ABW relies on Blue Yonder, a leader in digital supply chain transformations and omni-channel commerce ful llment. Through such efforts, Justice says, ABW has effectively dealt with the issues intrinsic to the “new normal” of logistics operations management. Likewise, these initiatives have enabled ABW to minimize price increases to its customers—an especially notable bene t in the food industry, where the effects of in ation have hit particularly hard.
Hal Justice, vice president of sales and operations for Atlanta Bonded Warehouse (ABW), says Georgia’s business-friendly environment is especially helpful to businesses struggling to attract and retain quali ed workers. “Georgia is doing everything that it can and should to get people to move here,” he says. “The state has done a terri c job in making Georgia attractive for business. We’re exceptionally pro-business.” For logistics businesses like ABW— the Southeast’s leading provider of temperature-controlled and ambient warehousing, co-packaging, and LTL/ TL transportation services—Georgia’s “very positive in ux of new residents” helps soften some of the impact of labor shortages, he says. LABOR PAINS “I can speak for the whole industry, not just Atlanta and not just Georgia,” Justice says. “Everybody is dealing with the same pains. Number one is labor and number two is cost—the cost of labor and the cost of rent.” ABW compensates its employees at the “higher end of the market,” yet the challenge of lling positions remains. “The gig economy has hit the logistics business,” he says, and the situation is aggravated by in ation. “We’re all subject to the same market forces. There’s a lot of hand-wringing over the economy.”
Atlanta Bonded Warehouse is a leading provider of co-packaging, temperature-controlled and ambient warehousing, and LTL/TL transportation services in the Southeast. The company has streamlined workflows through meticulous time management and automation.
66 Inbound Logistics • March 2023
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