AI is neither mythology nor panacea. Visibility and efficiency in transport shipment can be enhanced further, Transporeon’s Bernhard Schmaldienst tells David Priestman.
“Bad processes with AI are still bad processes,” Schmaldienst, Director of Operations – Freight Procurement and Audit, stated when we met at the vast Transport Logistic Munich exhibition. He is a believer in the transformative power of AI – that it will deliver savings, add value and change staff roles for the better. The software market currently serves office businesses (e.g. by SaaS) but in the near future software will be used by other software: AI agent to AI agent.
“Taking a large language model (LLM) and adding a bit to call it AI isn’t true AI,” he says. “Machine learning, rather than just autonomous procurement, is real artificial intelligence. AI now has a conversational style, it feels like how humans interact, not fake but natural.”
Border Status Maps
Transporeon’s new live border status maps, using parent company Trimble’s maps engine, are for enhanced visibility. “We actively track half a million trucks daily, so we can analyse and predict the cause of traffic jams,” Schmaldienst explains. “Machine learning predicts the delays, creating a statistically-aggregated overview. Our products make immediate use of these problems to adjust ETAs.”
What about risk management and random customs checks, like those reintroduced by German recently, causing major backlogs? “We can’t plan for black swan events,” he admits, “but we can predict the length of stops. Bad luck situations and lower probability events are tricky, of course.”
Validate & Monitor
I asked Schmaldienst (pictured, below) about the takeover by telematics giant Trimble. “It’s so complementary,” he reveals. “Trimble serves carriers, we serve shippers, so we’re therefore bringing both sides together, as well as both geographies (North America and Europe). We’ve learned from the maps layer expertise of Trimble.”
Transporeon is working on integrating AI into its transport management platform product suite, for example to issue support tickets to customers. “We’re adding knowledge data. The answer drafts are AI generated, but a human agent then uses this to revert to the customer,” he clarifies. “It’s faster, but checked by a customer service person and the AI learns from that editing or validation. Much of our code is AI generated.”
Cyber security is a hugely problematic challenge for many large businesses right now, including retailers, manufacturers and logistics operators. “The number of hits has exploded,” Schmaldienst states. “The more we automate, the better we should be able to prevent leaks and hacks. We love software, we own it but we need to know what’s going on. We need to know that our AI is good enough before we push solutions out to our customers – for example, a software buying freight slots for the year.”
Explosion of Software
The platform that Transporeon operates makes the company neutral, with no preferences over freight transport and logistics service providers that the product suppliers utilise. This perspective enables the company to ascertain whether the spot market is soft or whether it’s sensible to switch from contracted logistics to spot service. This insight is helpful. “We can help identify patterns,” he states. “For end-to-end supply chain orchestration we have the data you need, can see the green lights on the control panels because of AI.”
Autonomous procurement – AI doing the despatcher role – to optimise routes and delivery drops opens up a new level. “Do we customise too much, not just providing off-the-shelf solutions,” Schmaldienst questions. “It normally takes months to integrate a TMS. Now it’s faster, thanks to this explosion of software. Skilling-up the physical environment, for drivers and operations, will follow.”
Fraud is another major issue in global supply chains and it takes a big effort all round to detect it. “We’re only the platform operator but our customers are uploading insurance and many other documents that need verification. So we need a safe framework for partners,” he tells me. “AI can verify sources and check for fake identities. Maintaining trust for all parties is key, which necessitates examining sanctions lists, publicly available data and registers via the OCR reading of documents. Humans hate reading all that, it’s error prone. ‘Grey cases’ get referred to a human. Vetting partners is also important, and being aware of ‘closed pool carriers’. Do benchmark and check for new trade lanes,” Schmaldienst advises.
Testimonial
The past few years have posed significant challenges for the transport and logistics sector. Transporeon customer Dimitar Vukov, Commercial Manager at Discordia, told us, “with a fleet of over 1500 trucks, we have had to navigate a rapidly evolving market while continuing expansion across Europe. Driven by competitive pricing, optimised routes, and smarter planning, we have remained focused on growth.”
In its pursuit of innovation and operational excellence, Discordia turned to Transporeon’s Market Insights to enhance decision-making and better meet the evolving needs of customers. Integrating Transporeon’s Market Insights marked a turning point. The solution gave the business access to real-time data on transport costs, fuel prices, and rejection trends across key European markets. With this level of visibility, the company was finally able to respond proactively to market fluctuations, rather than react after the fact.
The impact was immediate and substantial. Discordia’s SPOT business now benefits from accurate, market-aligned quotes, enabling the company to stay competitive and respond quickly to shifting demand. With enhanced visibility and agility, the fleet can be reallocated in real-time to high-volume, high-margin routes, significantly boosting operational efficiency and profitability in the dynamic SPOT market.
