AI-Powered Freight Tracking with Watson
Key Points
- Corey Skinner, founder and CEO of Relaunch, offers a smart digital freight platform that lets shippers and carriers connect through a simple yet sophisticated interface.
- Drawing on over a decade of enterprise supply‑chain experience, he launched Relaunch about a year ago to bridge enterprise systems with real‑time logistics visibility from order inception to truck location.
- After graduating from accelerators, Relaunch joined IBM’s Global Entrepreneurship program, gaining access to Watson, IoT, and blockchain technologies to enhance its offering.
- Watson’s NLP and API are used to enable natural‑language queries (e.g., order numbers or bill of lading) that instantly surface traceability data, while the platform’s blockchain layer ensures decentralized, immutable tracking of freight throughout the quote‑to‑delivery cycle.
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Full Transcript
# AI-Powered Freight Tracking with Watson **Source:** [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z98BxCk-26s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z98BxCk-26s) **Duration:** 00:05:55 ## Summary - Corey Skinner, founder and CEO of Relaunch, offers a smart digital freight platform that lets shippers and carriers connect through a simple yet sophisticated interface. - Drawing on over a decade of enterprise supply‑chain experience, he launched Relaunch about a year ago to bridge enterprise systems with real‑time logistics visibility from order inception to truck location. - After graduating from accelerators, Relaunch joined IBM’s Global Entrepreneurship program, gaining access to Watson, IoT, and blockchain technologies to enhance its offering. - Watson’s NLP and API are used to enable natural‑language queries (e.g., order numbers or bill of lading) that instantly surface traceability data, while the platform’s blockchain layer ensures decentralized, immutable tracking of freight throughout the quote‑to‑delivery cycle. ## Sections - [00:00:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z98BxCk-26s&t=0s) **Untitled Section** - ## Full Transcript
hi I'm Amy Vernon I'm here today in
Detroit with the IBM think roadshow here
with ventureBeat and IBM and right now
we're talking with Corey from Rhode
lunch and Cory would you please fully
introduce yourself and tell us a little
bit about what wrote launches sure thing
yeah so hi everyone my name is Corey
Skinner I'm the founder and CEO of
relaunch and roll launches smart digital
freight so what that means is is that we
have a platform that allows shippers and
carriers to connect in a way that's very
simple yet sophisticated um well tell me
a little bit about your background and
how how and why you launched word love
yeah sure okay I think that's perfect
yeah so I spent a whole bunch of time
over a decade or more in the enterprise
space so a lot of supply chain focused I
think demand planning and enterprise
systems for inventory optimization and
then a few years back I realized that
there was a real opportunity to connect
enterprise systems with logistics supply
chain um so think an order and then the
visibility of the order all the way to
where a truck is in real-time and that's
when I started the company roughly about
a year ago
oh okay so a young company very new so
had you worked with IBM before or was a
road lunch the first time you rolled
launch was the first time I didn't get a
chance to work with IBM previously in a
corporate capacity but for my own
company first time and so we we
graduated from a couple of accelerators
and one of those accelerators introduced
us to the IBM Global Entrepreneurship
program that turned into hey we can use
Watson hey we can use the IOT and now
we're working on blockchain forward
logistics you know I was just like I
wanted to get to that but that this
leads very well into my next question
which was I wondered if you could tell
tell me a little bit about how Watson
helps you make your data and the AI
accessible yeah yeah it's an it's an
amazing thing you got to think like if
you're if you're in transportation and
logistics it's just a whole bunch of
moving parts what should be very linear
and simple is pretty complicated it's
messy so we use Watson to allow things
like just um the integration of I have
order number or a document number like a
bill of lading I can now type it into
our system using Watson and we can find
exactly where that is
and all the traceability of where it's
but where it was and where it's going
and we can do that in like a couple
questions so pretty cool mm-hmm yeah so
how are you using the Watson API is
overall obviously that's one one example
yeah so we use it in a few ways the
Watson Studios studio allows us to do
natural language processing natural
language understanding mm-hmm and then
we wrap all that around now the whole
process of quote to order and then from
order all the way to transit and
delivery and now people can say well
where did my docks go where is my
Freight where's my truck and then we can
now wrap all that in a way that it's
completely decentralized and immutable
so how do you um how do you enable your
customers what you know what is this
what does this make you know make it
possible for your customers to do think
about the process like if you need to
source a truck today you open up your
web browser and you say you know do I
have any are there any carriers in this
city say Detroit and even if you find a
list of a hundred of them you now got to
figure out a way to contact them all and
then figure out are they the right one
or are they even available right well we
can take that whole process of six to
eight hours and do it like have it so
you do the whole process in like 30
seconds and then and it's not so bad and
then you actually secure it and then now
it's a piece of furniture like this
table that's going across the u.s. into
Canada or wherever and if you want to
know where it is it's a question that's
all it is and now with blockchain when
we get to the end and we put all that on
a very centralized a centralized set of
steps but a decentralized platform right
we now have the ability for them to not
only ask that question but I actually
have settlement and all the processes
around credit based capital flow
instantaneously oh well so you can trust
them just like you trust a person to
come and pick you up from your phone
right first time ever pretty cool
definitely yeah so how do you enable
your customers what does that look like
for them yeah good good question um
think about it you have a couple of
parties and they need to move stuff
across the world and that could be
pretty complicated so what we like to do
is take the IBM cloud couple that with
IBM for watching and now what we can do
is we can centralize or or take all the
complexity out of the whole process and
so an example like a shipping company
the joint venture with mayor's is
perfect because when a shipping
container leaves say Europe and it's now
across the ocean and it's landing in the
US or Canada or wherever when that truck
backs up to get that free container
world launch is there and so we're
speaking the same language as mayors and
so now you can ask one question see all
the docs see full traceability and now
all of a sudden that complex messy
process isn't so daunting anymore so
what's next what's next for lunch so
right now we're finishing up our next
generation transportation management
system or CMS we're almost done with our
proof of concept for that hyper ledger
the IBM blockchain platform component
right and we should be bringing it to
market in vote for maybe six weeks so
congratulation thank you that's about it
after that at the same time we're doing
a bunch of these other Rhode shows which
is great
gets a chance to get out there and talk
a little bit yeah yeah we're gonna have
a good year
great yeah well thanks so much for
stopping my pleasure thank you so much
okay
you