Costco Wholesale Selects i2 FreightMatrix To Optimize Transportation Operations

i2 Technologies Inc. announced recently that Costco Wholesale Corporation selected the i2 FreightMatrix solution in the first quarter of 2007. The company will implement solutions from i2 in order to achieve higher levels of performance while driving down transportation and distribution costs across their transportation network.

After a detailed evaluation process, the company selected i2's hosted transportation solutions to leverage the company's vast logistics domain expertise and bring added service and cost efficiencies to its transportation and distribution network. Costco Wholesale will implement i2 FreightMatrix solutions, which are offered in a hosted, software-as-a-service framework, to decrease total cost of ownership and risk for the company, while accelerating speed to implementation and value. The company aims to deliver its products more efficiently across its distribution network.

"i2 served as a strategic advisor throughout this process, demonstrating its solution capabilities and the benefits of improving our transportation operations with the use of FreightMatrix," said John Thelan, SVP Depot Operations, Costco Wholesale. "Our transportation network is large, and our business rules are complex. We needed a partner with expertise in delivering savings and real business value in our type of environment. We feel the i2 implementation will help us deliver our merchandise at a reduced cost and with a high degree of reliability."

Costco Wholesale will leverage i2's FreightMatrix solutions to establish the strategic framework for optimizing its North American transportation network leveraging leading edge decision support capabilities from i2. Using the solutions, Costco Wholesale will collaborate with its carriers to enable an innovative transportation procurement process. Additionally, the company can enable strategic modeling and what-if analysis capabilities to allocate the optimal carrier base to specific lane volumes while balancing cost and service level requirements.

"The i2 FreightMatrix solution is a very good fit for helping Costco rapidly gain efficiencies in their transportation operations, and we are very excited about working closely with them as a strategic partner going forward," said i2 Vice President of Global Transportation and Distribution Group Razat Gaurav. "As we continue to take the i2 FreightMatrix solution to market, we are seeing more and more industry leaders like Costco Wholesale adopting the software-as-a-service solution model."

i2 FreightMatrix is an Internet-based, software-as-a-service and on-demand solution designed to enable companies to design, procure, plan, execute, monitor and measure freight movements across multiple modes, borders and enterprises. For more information please visit www.freightmatrix.com

About i2
i2 helps business leaders make better supply chain decisions. i2's flexible new-generation solutions are designed to synchronize demand and supply across ever-changing global business networks. i2's innovative supply chain management tools and services are pervasive in a wide cross-section of industries; 20 of the AMR Research Top 25 Global Supply Chains belong to i2 customers. Learn more at www.i2.com.

About Costco Wholesale
Costco Wholesale currently operates 508 warehouses, including 374 in the United States and Puerto Rico, 71 in Canada, 19 in the United Kingdom, five in Korea, four in Taiwan, five in Japan and 30 in Mexico. The Company also operates Costco Online, an electronic commerce web site, at www.costco.com and at www.costco.ca in Canada.

SOURCE: i2 Technologies Inc.