Perhaps it all stems from a renewed pride in America’s manufacturing heritage or nostalgia for life on a rural family farm, Wangler surmised. Whatever its cause, the movement he defined as “a blend of computer hacker culture with the skills of traditional craftsmen and inventors, designers and tinkerers.”
TMW Systems and parent company Trimble understand this “because that’s what we do, day-in and day-out,” said Wangler, who is president of the transportation management software provider. He was not just talking about making software, however.
“It’s easy sometimes for people to pigeonhole transportation as just a service industry, like real-estate or accounting. Because we don’t make anything, right?” he asked.
“Yet nothing could be further from the truth,” he continued. “We are an industry that makes the most of time. And time is one of the most precious commodities for any company.”
Time for business intelligence
In one of the 300 classroom sessions held at the event, an attendee lamented about the time he spends creating reports for his employer, a 150-truck bulk carrier based in Utah. It takes about six hours a week to pull information from separate databases to create custom spreadsheets, he said.
