The Challenge
Our customer, the leader in its industry, approached Noatum Logistics with the request to streamline its global transportation system. Significant growth through gain of market share and acquisitions had left our customer’s transportation system highly decentralized, with autonomous processes for many business units. The customer used a transportation network that included too many providers, which decreased efficiency and control over shipments and increased shipping costs. At the same time, the tracking and reporting system for shipments and related transportation costs was suboptimal and unsatisfactory. A lack of corporate-wide processes and compliance standards increased already high variability in the operations between the customer’s large vendor and customer bases. Those operations were connected to over 40 global origins and destinations. Being in a deadline-driven industry, our customer needed to add visibility and control over shipments while quickly realizing a significant impact to the bottom line by streamlining its logistics system.
The Strategy
Relying on open interaction, Noatum Logistics analyzed the customer’s sourcing and distribution patterns, its cycle times, demand forecast, and performance metrics. Additionally, Noatum Logistics assessed the internal and external flow of data and compared it to information needs for decision support and business reporting.
The Solution
Based on a thorough analysis, Noatum Logistics proposed a solution to the customer, generating a positive impact to the bottom line. This solution included:
- Origin consolidation process
- A network of preferred international shipping partners
- A process for vendor compliance to the shipping network
- International freight forwarding
- Destination deconsolidation
- Domestic distribution
- Implementation of internal and external compliance standard and performance metrics
- Implementation of processes and procedures to capture shipment information
- Concise, business-oriented reporting on shipment details, transit times, exceptions, and other customer-specified critical information
The Results
The solution presented and implemented by Noatum Logistics reduced the number of providers significantly, resulting in better carrier management, higher service consistency and reliability, and better cost containment. Newly-established compliance and performance standards improved communication with suppliers, and enabled our customer to manage its large vendor base more efficiently. Additionally, Noatum Logistics designed a consolidation process to reduce the number of shipments, which resulted in greater control over the shipment flow and lower transportation costs. Ultimately, our customer realized a $2 million reduction in overall transportation costs within the first 18 months. The solution is flexible enough to adjust effectively to seasonal shipping needs and to the different processes of various business units.
Noatum Logistics assisted the customer in introducing a tracking and reporting system for all shipments worldwide. At the same time, this system allows identifying and controlling problems in the customer’s supply chain. This reporting functionality enables the customer to report effectively on performance and business metrics.