Similar problems characterize civilian transportation and distribution.
In the manufacturing arena, the component of blue-collar costs as a percentage of the final cost of the manufactured product has declined very significantly during this century. Reduction of the former component will significantly enhance the competitiveness of U.S. goods, and this proposal attempts to meet this goal. Both of the above problems can ultimately be traced back to the absence of a national transportation and logistics information infrastructure. Each of these companies has its own database system, which differs radically from that of a competing company in terms of hardware, operating systems software, application software, data formats, access codes, conventions, and other system characteristics. By incorporating the capability to access information in these disparate information sources, one can significantly reduce the overhead involved in transportation, distribution, and logistics operations.