A New Process Model for the China-U.S. Trade Lane

Stanford University and TradeBeam, a provider of global trade management solutions, have announced the results of their joint study on the benefits of global trade automation, “How Enterprises and their Trading Partners Gain from Global Trade Automation: A New Process Model for the China-US Trade Lane.” Click here to see Stanford’s Research Summary: http://tradebeam.com/landing/stanfordpaper-200912.shtml.

Co-authored by Hau Lee, of the Graduate School of Business, and Warren Hausman, of the Department of Management Science and Engineering, as well as experts from TradeBeam, the study provides estimates in key benefit categories, based on input from supply chain practitioners from the U.S. and China. Based on more than a year of research, the results demonstrate that companies stand to gain by implementing global trade best practices and accompanying automation, enabling improvement in profitability from 10-40% or more, as well as delivering improvements in other benefit categories, such as cycle times.

A key result of the study is a new global trade process model which enables enterprises and their trading partners to systematically analyze trade lanes, and find and eliminate inefficiencies. The initial model focuses on the China–U.S. trade lane, but can be applied in other geographic and industry contexts.

“This report demonstrates that companies can gain substantially by automating their global supply chains, probably much more than they have estimated to date,” says Warren Hausman, professor of operations management in the Department of Management Science & Engineering at Stanford University. “By creating a new process model attuned to global trade, we hope to help companies make improvements that will help them thrive in the global economy, not just with short term gains but over the long term as well.”