Press Releases
01/22/2004
Horizon Lines, Microsoft Team Up on Hawai'i Services
Horizon Lines, the U.S. flag ocean carrier (schedules), and Honolulu Freight Services, a multi-modal freight carrier to the Hawaiian Islands, have implemented one of the first applications built with Visual Studio .NET 2003 and the Microsoft .NET Framework in the global ocean shipping industry.
The new application, called FreightTracker, will streamline operations by reducing the flow of paperwork and manual data entry of containerized shipments.
"XML has allowed us to unlock efficiencies in our operations, and the Microsoft .NET Framework has been our strategic technology for leveraging XML," said Tom Beaver, vice president of Honolulu Freight Services. "Honolulu Freight is using the .NET Framework to integrate our entire supply chain, including trucking, steamship, and agent delivery partners. We tie all this data together into our FreightTracker Web site, offering customers a single information source for their shipments with HFS."
Designed for HFS by Seattle-based TVC Consulting Group with help from Horizon Services Group, FreightTracker is a .NET Framework-based tracking and customer service application that includes a Web application and a Web service. The new system incorporates customer freight status information using XML data interchange technology, allowing Horizon Lines to integrate information seamlessly into their enterprise management system.
Horizon Services Group, the information technology subsidiary of Horizon Lines, helped TVC integrate FreightTracker into Horizon Lines's systems.
"When Honolulu Freight Services needed a solution to allow for seamless exchange of information with Horizon Lines, we knew that Microsoft technologies would do the job versus the traditional methods of data exchange such as electronic data interchange," said Duncan Wright of Horizon Services Group. "The new front end now allows for real time data exchange, ultimately cutting costs and reducing expenses."
