How to Optimise Medical Freight with the Right Freight Partner
The freighting of medical supplies across Australia is a specialised area of supply chain logistics.
Medical freight is sensitive. It’s at risk of damage due to changes in temperature or physical shock and it’s also time sensitive, with certain types of medical freight needing to get where it’s going urgently.
Whether you get it right, or wrong can literally mean the difference between life and death.
So how do you make sure you’re optimising your medical freight experience?
Here’s you should be looking for in a Medical Freight Partner.
Medical Freight Optimisation through Carrier Performance
The first way to optimise your medical freight experience is to work with the right carrier based on the level of service you need.
Some carriers are great at air freight. Some are great at moving the bulky pallets that are common in the medical industry. Some are better in certain locations.
No carrier is good at all types of freight, all across Australia. Working with a freight partner who can advise the best carrier to use based on the service delivery you need is essential to making sure that your freight gets where it needs to go, on time, every time.
Medical Freight Accreditation
You also need to make sure that the carriers you choose to work with have the appropriate accreditations for moving the type of medical freight you’re dealing with.
Some receivers have specific requirements. For example, if you’re delivering a pallet of goods to a pathology lab on the third floor of a hospital, there will be specific equipment you need to take to make that delivery.
Accredited carriers will know what that equipment is, and how to use it to make sure that your freight arrives safely.
Using Technology to Optimise Medical Supply Chains
Technology and the Internet of Things (IoT) are playing a huge role in improving the delivery performance of medical freight.
Your medical freight provider should be able to deliver technology that will streamline warehouse management, deliver dynamic data, reduce risk and help you move away from third party logistics.
Streamlining Warehouse Management
With current pressure on the labour market in Australia, we’re seeing less experienced warehouse operators coming in to help meet increased medical freight volumes.
Warehouse staff don’t always have the commercial knowledge around your customer to be able to make the right decision when it comes to freight management.
But if you’ve got technology in place to streamline your warehouse management, you’ll be able to rely on the system to do the thinking, reducing the risk on your outward bound deliveries and gaining efficiencies across your supply chain.
Ask what technology your freight provider uses and what it can deliver in terms of risk mitigation, automated allocation to certain carriers based on freight type or customer requirements, measuring delivery performance, business intelligence and efficiency.
Dynamic Freight based on Real Data
When you’ve got the right technology in place with the right freight partner, you’ll be able to establish dynamic business rules within the system, removing the risk that comes with doing everything manually and ensuring that information is communicated clearly in your warehouse.
To achieve this, you want to start with a team that can understand your business rules and how to articulate them within the technology so that it does what you need it to do.
Then you need to make sure that you have a process for continually updating those rules as customer requirements change – and any good freight partner should help you to achieve this.
Moving away from 3PL
The right technology will also allow you to move away from third-party logistics.
When you use a 3PL provider to move your medical goods, that provider gets to define the freight, which you then have to pay the bill for.
Technology will allow you to gain back control and protect your service delivery to your customer, because you’ll be able to manage all your own dynamic business rules and manage freight yourself in a streamlined and efficient way.
Freight People are Medical Freight Experts
With more than 30 years’ experience, the team at Freight People are medical freight experts.
We’ve got Market Leading Technology
Our leading freight management technology, Cario, will simplify your freight requirements and give you access to a huge selection of carriers across Australia. It’s the ultimate in carrier optimisation, along with streamlining your warehousing and invoicing processes.
We deliver Business Intelligence Reporting
Our technology can give you real-time data that will help you manage your customers more efficiently.
You’ll be able to know how much it’s costing you to serve a particular customer (and incorporate that data into your tenders), as well as tracking almost any other freight related metric you can imagine (like cost per cubic metre, who your top 10 customers are and how your freight performance is stacking up).
We’re Agile
Because you’ve got access to real-time data, you’ll have an agility you don’t currently have with your medical freight. By making tweaks to your carrier mix based on performance data, you’ll be able to optimise your medical freight experience and budget.
Looking for a Medical Freight Partner?
We can help you find the best carrier, with the best service and the right accreditation for your medical freight requirements.
When we’re your medical freight partner, we’ll to help you make better freight decisions and meet the performance requirements of your contracts.
Get in touch with us today to find out how we can help you optimise your medical freight.