One of the largest shippers to the Hawaiian Islands on the West Coast, Honolulu Freight Service (HFS) was able to save countless hours managing the paperwork flow between trading partners, and performing manual data entry by streamlining their operation. HFS engaged partner TVC Consulting to build FreightTracker, a Microsoft ASP.NET Web site written in Microsoft Visual Basic .NET, with Web service interfaces to trading partners. FreightTracker replaced a legacy Unix application, and has reduced HFS’s costs and improved their service.

Situation

Honolulu Freight Service (HFS), a multimodal freight carrier providing ocean transport and delivery from anywhere in the United States to the Hawaiian Islands, has numerous partners. As one of the largest shippers to the Hawaiian Islands on the West Coast, HFS spent countless hours each week managing the paperwork flow between its partners.

A legacy Unix application, Freightdata, helped HFS manage its shipping, but required HFS to manually enter information supplied by its partners. HFS engaged partner TVC Consulting, initially to extend Freightdata, and eventually to replace it with a new, Microsoft .NET-connected application, Freight Tracker.

“Given the diversity of our supply chain network, and of our customer and vendor base, this application clearly was going to have to be Web-based,” says Michael Kneip, a consultant at TVC. “The new tools in [Microsoft] ASP.NET allowed us to deploy a high-transaction application into an HTML front end much more rapidly than we could have using either earlier ASP, or other competing web application development toolsets.

Solution

“As a shop with both J2EE and Microsoft .NET Framework experience, we considered both for this project. TVC Consulting employs Function Point Analysis to measure the size of potential software projects.” Function Point Analysis is a widely accepted objective, comparative metrics-based methodology for software sizing, based on work done by Allan Albrecht of IBM.

Benefits

“In applying Function Point Analysis to the HFS project, we anticipated 40-50% savings using [Microsoft] Visual Basic .NET and the .NET Framework versus Java and J2EE,” says Kneip. “By using the .NET Framework we were able to redeploy those resources to more productive purposes.”

Tom Beaver, Vice President of Honolulu Freight Service, agrees. “We reviewed both the Microsoft .NET Framework and Java technologies during the user requirements phase of the Freight Tracker project. The .NET Framework offered shorter lead times and substantial savings versus Java.”

Freight Tracker is a freight tracking and customer service application that includes a Web application and a Web service. HFS developed the Freight Tracker using Visual Basic .NET development system, with a SQL Server 2000 database. “The .NET Framework is an excellent choice for HFS in that it allows us to deploy next generation, enterprise class XML Services from our Microsoft Windows 2000 operating system infrastructure, using our existing familiarity with the Microsoft Visual Studio development environment,” says Kneip.

“Freight Tracker provides an outstanding real-world example of how Web services can be used to connect trading partners within the supply chain. Honolulu Freight uses the Freight Tracker application and the power of .NET to drive tighter integration with both suppliers and customers, providing a dramatic increase in the service level through the use of real-time XML data exchange.”

HFS employs a number of different partners in delivering freight to Hawaii, including trucking, warehousing, agent, and steamship companies. HFS Freight Tracker incorporates customer freight status information using XML data interchange with vendors, including outside steamship companies, such as Matson Navigation Company and Horizon Lines. “In migrating to Web services HFS has eliminated much of the costly data entry associated with processing customer shipments, redeployed customer care resources to more effective areas, and markedly improved its customer service offerings,” says Kneip.

HFS now provides its customers with direct XML connectivity to the Freight Tracker application. HFS uses the WSDL (Web Services Description Language) page generated automatically by Visual Studio .NET to provide customers with the service description layer of its Web services stack. Customers implement this data into their own Enterprise application, allowing them to draw on the power of Freight Tracker without ever having to leave their own systems.

“The Microsoft .NET Framework gives HFS a significant competitive advantage in the ability to deliver real-time information directly into customer applications,” says Kneip. “Launch customers for this XML based data exchange include HFM Food Service, an international food distributor based on Honolulu and longtime HFS customer, and Brass Western Craft, a manufacturer of plumbing products with a national supply and distribution footprint. For these and other HFS customers, the HFS Freight Tracker application is an important advantage in competing more effectively across the entire supply chain.”

“XML has allowed us to unlock efficiencies in our operations, and the Microsoft .NET Framework has been our strategic technology for leveraging XML,” says Beaver. “Honolulu Freight is using the .NET Framework to tie together our entire supply chain, including trucking, steamship, and agent delivery partners. We tie all this data together into our Freight Tracker web site, offering customers a single information source for their shipments with HFS. The .NET Framework has helped us reach a superior service level.”

Michael
Case Studies