Manhattan Associates introduces new transportation management offering

Atlanta-based supply chain software provider Manhattan Associates said late last month that it has released a new transportation management (TMS) offering, entitled Manhattan Active Transportation Management.

The company said that this cloud-native offering reduces the time and effort required to optimize very complex transportation networks and added that this is an industry-first self-configuring and self-tuning system with optimization speed with up to 80% faster solve times.

And it added that this updated offering is a single, intuitive experience designed for transportation planners to visualize and optimize their entire network, coupled with a new multi-modal optimization core that leverages cutting-edge, in-memory computing that provides shippers with the needed processing power, in order to quickly analyze and process large volumes of data.

Rick Fernandez, Director Corporate Communications for Manhattan Associates, provided LM with an overview of Manhattan Active Transportation Management.

LM: What drove the need to roll out the Manhattan Active Transportation Management solution? How long had it been planned/in the works?

Fernandez: With delivery windows shrinking, shipment volumes increasing and capacity strained, developing and executing a transportation plan is more difficult than ever. Manhattan redesigned and rebuilt what was already a market-leading transportation management solution because the transportation industry needed a significant leap forward in innovation, agility and scale.

This solution has been in the works for years. In 2017, we released our Manhattan Active platform – a cloud-native set of solutions composed entirely of microservices and architected to work together, be extensible and never need upgrading. Every new product we’ve released since then has been based on this technology.

LM: What are its main benefits for shipper customers?

Fernandez: It is the fastest, smartest and easiest TMS ever developed.

1-FASTEST = Manhattan Active Transportation Management is the fastest multi-modal transportation optimization engine in the industry. Its advanced in-memory processing can calculate about 18 million feasibility consideration every second. That reduces solve times by up to 80%. With the high complexity of recent transportation plans, this can be a significant time savings.
2-SMARTEST = Manhattan Active TM is also the first self-configuring and self-tuning transportation network solver. It evaluates the problem and automatically selects the best route generation technique without oversight from the planner. 
3-EASIEST = And it uses machine learning technology to automatically configure and tune all of the factors that go into developing the perfect transportation plan.  

LM: What does this solution provide that was needed, or missing, from previous versions?

Fernandez: I wouldn’t say anything was really “missing” from our previous TMS. You have to remember, Manhattan’s TMS solution was already considered one of the top in the industry (see Gartner’s 2021 TMS Magic Quadrant). Before we built Manhattan Active TM, we already had one of the most feature-rich and robust transportation management solutions on the market. However, we see the rapid pace of change in the industry and the constraints of traditional transportation management solutions, and we felt we needed to redesign and rebuild our solution with the flexibility, power and agility needed today.

LM: Can you please explain how it is the first self-configuring and self-tuning system?

Fernandez: As I mentioned earlier, today’s transportation plans are incredibly complex. There are many things to consider and many manual adjustments that are made in trying to hone and perfect the plan. Using machine learning technology, Manhattan Active TM configures and tunes these factors automatically to achieve optimal results. 

LM: Can you please provide a basic example of how this solution works i.e. help a shipper be more efficient, work more quickly etc.? 

Fernandez: First, we are seeing remarkable performance improvements from Manhattan Active TM’s advanced in-memory processing capabilities. Complex problems can be solved up to 10 times faster than before. For example, a multi-stop outbound fleet planning problem that might have taken 5 minutes to solve with a traditional TMS, can be solved in less than 10 seconds by Manhattan Active TM.  

Secondly, now that our TMS is on our Manhattan Active platform, it is seamlessly unified with the rest of our supply chain solutions… specifically, our market-leading warehouse management solution. The result is a single application that gives users visibility and control of all operations across the supply chain. This unified approach introduces a new level of agility and flexibility in supply chain execution. For example, in the past you could not change or cancel orders once they have been committed to the warehouse. But, with our new unified solution, an order can be modified in the system right up until the last trailer door is closed.