FedEx has signed an alliance and made a strategic investment in supply chain visibility company FourKites to give customers more robust real-time visibility. FourKites will use its machine learning and artificial intelligence capabilities with data insights from the FedEx network – which reaches more than 220 countries and territories, and makes over 16.5 million shipments daily – to create a new end-to-end supply chain intelligence platform called FourKites X.
FourKites X will provide tools and insights to help large shippers and logistics providers mitigate the impacts of sustained challenges through dynamic planning and pre-shipment, enhanced visibility and proactive alerts and supply chain optimization insights.
FedEx’s Dataworks business unit will support development of FourKites X.
The platform will help large shippers and logistics providers identify areas of opportunity, such as improved planning to address empty shelves and manufacturing slowdowns; using data to turn supply chain crises into chances to improve the customer experience; and optimising supply chains for growth and efficiency.
FedEx Dataworks chief executive Sriram Krishnasamy, said: “This is an exciting collaboration between two industry leaders and innovators coming together to unlock new opportunities for our customers. If the last two years have taught us anything, it’s that companies need to work together in order to work smarter and faster.
“Our collaboration with FourKites creates a data ecosystem that will deliver a new level of predictability and visibility to help businesses build smarter supply chains in today’s unpredictable and complex business environment.”
FourKites founder and chief executive, Mathew Elenjickal, added: “Together, we are working to pave the future of global supply chains, built on a foundation of data and machine learning to deliver new value to those global supply chains.”