X

DSC Logistics, a third-party logistics (3PL) provider, has grown from a single facility in Chicago to over 50 logistics centers with more than 20 million square feet of space and over 3,000 employees. The company faced the challenge of providing customers with accuracy, damage-free and on-time delivery, safety, and low costs. To meet these challenges, DSC Logistics needed to optimize its systems and gain complete visibility to be effective and efficient at every step. The company's goals were to become experts at managing its labor, ensure that they are the low-cost provider when it comes to labor, raise the level of accountability for everyone in the company, and gain the ability to analyze labor cost impact on ROI for prospective technology initiatives.

JBS Swift & Company, the world's largest beef producer, was facing a challenge with its warehouse management system. The company operates in multiple countries and had three US-based warehouses running different systems. This lack of a common platform was causing inefficiencies, communication issues, and a lack of visibility. The company was already using JDA at one of its warehouses and, after extensive research and consultation with industry analysts, decided to upgrade the JDA solution at its Grand Island, Nebraska site and implement it at the other two facilities. The company chose JDA because the technology was a good match for their needs and the system provided flexibility for process change. JBS Swift & Company has complex supply chain needs, with each warehouse acting as an extension of the manufacturing facility. The company needed to track and manage inventory from receipt in the processing plant, throughout processing, into the warehouse and on to its final retail destination. The company also had to meet additional safety and traceability requirements due to its operation in the food industry.

FleetPride, the largest independent distributor of aftermarket heavy-duty truck and trailer parts in the United States, was facing a significant challenge with its inventory management. Approximately 70% of their inventory, which includes a wide variety of items from small nuts and washers to transmissions and axles, sells less than one unit per month. This resulted in a high level of excess and obsolete (E&O) inventory, particularly at the local branch level. Traditional forecasting methods were not effective for these slow-moving items, as they often represented forecasts as a fraction, creating a misleading picture of demand. FleetPride was using work-arounds to support their slow mover business needs because purpose-built slow mover solutions were not previously available.

Airgas, Inc., the largest distributor of industrial, medical and specialty gases and welding equipment and supplies in the United States, faced unique supply chain challenges due to its large business network. The company had set ambitious goals for growth and profitability, implementing an aggressive business strategy driven by organic growth and numerous core, product line and strategic acquisitions. However, the company’s rapid, acquisition-fueled growth was not supported by its existing systems. Airgas used a mixture of legacy systems and industry-specific solutions to manage demand, but these systems were not integrated and could not scale to keep up with the company’s growth. Each of the company’s 12 regional operating companies ran its own version of a demand management solution, further complicating the need to manage almost 3.5 million items in a complex wholesale distribution environment. As a result, Airgas lacked the enterprise-wide view of supply and demand needed to optimize inventory, reduce costs and drive customer satisfaction.

Avon, the world’s leading direct seller of beauty and related products, markets to women in 143 countries through 4.8 million independent sales representatives. Avon’s products are sold with widely varying product offerings in different countries and through multiple channels including direct, Internet, catalog and outlets. Consolidation and globalization of both competitors and customers and the rapid growth of developing markets has also increased the complexity of the business. As a result, this highly promotions-driven market produces fluctuations in product demand and a complex supply chain. Although Avon’s operations expanded considerably in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) in recent years, there was no single central planning function that was responsible for demand, inventory, and supply planning. Production planning at Avon’s three factories — in Poland, Germany and the United Kingdom — was highly manual, inflexible, unresponsive to customers’ requirements and could not support Avon’s planned growth into new markets.

Martins Comercio e Servicos de Distribuicao S/A (Martins), the largest wholesaler in Brazil, operates a vast and complex distribution system. The company sells 13,000 individual stock-keeping units (SKUs), covers more than 34 million kilometers annually, manages 165,000 square meters of warehousing space, and operates a state-of-the-art fleet of nearly 1,200 delivery vehicles. Despite its size, the company operates on slim margins, making it crucial for Martins to work as effectively and productively as possible. The company needed to optimize every aspect of its operations, from purchasing from vendors to delivering to customers, to maximize its tight profit margins. One of the key areas identified for optimization was inventory management. The company realized that it could save a significant amount of money by minimizing overstocks and optimizing its inventory.

Cummins Global Logistics (CGL), a unit of Cummins, a leading global provider of diesel and natural gas engines and related technologies, was facing challenges in improving the efficiency of its warehouse operations to provide better aftermarket support for its customers. The company's in-house warehouse management system (WMS) was outdated and provided less automation than what was required to support the company’s growth. The company was in need of a sophisticated distribution network that could fulfill orders quickly and accurately to support customers in approximately 190 countries.

El Palacio de Hierro, a Mexico City-based upscale department store chain, was facing a period of rapid growth, with predictions of a 521 percent increase. Their existing warehouse management system (WMS) was outdated and frequently experienced downtime, which was impacting their service to customers and stores. The company was supporting deliveries of omni-channel orders to customers and its over 200 stores from a 430,000 sq. ft. distribution center (DC) in Mexico City. The outdated WMS, servers, and database resulted in capacity and response time issues, as well as frequent downtime. With the predicted rapid growth and goals for improved customer service, including delivery of everything from e-commerce orders to major appliances, El Palacio de Hierro needed a new WMS to support all DC functions efficiently with 100% product availability and 99%+ order accuracy.

Coca-Cola Bottling Company Consolidated (CCBCC) was facing challenges in managing dynamic sales volumes, maintaining customer service levels, and providing better visibility into demand drivers across different shapes, sizes, and flavors of refreshment in real time. The company was also struggling with the complexity of dealing with more suppliers and their specific packaging constraints. The need for a higher degree of micro-marketing at the channel and chain-store level further complicated matters as each side fits into different package categories.

Würth International, a global wholesaler specializing in the sale of fastening and assembly materials, was facing challenges with its supply chain. With warehouse locations all over Europe and many separate suppliers, the company had very limited transparency into demand across its day-to-day operations and could not support its growth initiatives. The company was experiencing stock shortages and extended delays as goods passed through its supply chain, known as the “bullwhip” effect. To reduce these issues, the company realized it needed a new solution in order to gain much-needed insight into customer demand and a more efficient, automated replenishment process. Würth International required an approach that would increase demand visibility and allow the company to garner the resulting benefits, including inventory reduction, decreased product obsolescence, improved customer service levels and purchasing, as well as achieve material management efficiencies.

The hospitality industry is facing a new price war due to market transparency and the rapid growth of Internet bookings. This has created significant challenges for hotel operators, including Carlson Hotels, which is constantly looking for ways to differentiate itself and maximize its revenue in this competitive, price-driven environment. Traditional yield management is only sporadically effective when market conditions lead to fewer sold-out nights. Carlson Hotels identified a need for a more sophisticated method of matching rates to actual demand so they could measure their success based not only on occupancy rates, but also on the revenues generated by individual bookings and the value of 'missed opportunities' caused by quoting higher prices during a low-demand cycle.

American Airlines Cargo, a division of American Airlines, manages more than 36 million ton miles of freight and mail weekly on approximately 180 wide-body and more than 3,200 narrow-body flights each day. The company provides cargo lift capacity to more than 240 cities in the United States, Europe, Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, Latin America and Asia. However, calculating available cargo capacity on a passenger flight is not as straightforward as it may seem. Not only are there obvious factors such as passenger and baggage forecasts, the amount of fuel on board and equipment weight to consider, but there are also external factors such as airport limits on takeoff and/or landing weights or ground-handling capabilities for tight airport connections that have to be taken into account. The most important factor that affects capacity forecasting accuracy is customer behavior. Bookings on passenger flights are often cancelled, amended or under/over tendered at the last minute. Therefore, forecasting customer tendering behavior is a critical factor that needs to be modeled, using overbooking algorithms to predict the optimal adjustments to capacity in order to minimize spoilage or offloads.

Owens & Minor, a leading distributor of medical and surgical supplies, launched OM HealthCare Logistics (OM HCL) to enhance its leadership position in healthcare supply chain management. OM HCL is a full-service, third-party logistics (3PL) and business process outsourcing business unit providing end-to-end supply chain solutions for the medical device and pharmaceutical industries. To establish a best-of-breed 3PL capable of addressing healthcare manufacturers’ toughest supply chain challenges, they needed a technology partner that offered best-in-class productivity solutions. As a healthcare-focused 3PL, OM HCL would be supporting a diverse client base within healthcare with varying and unique requirements. These varying requirements created a demand for an infrastructure that was more adaptive and more flexible to meet various clients’ needs beyond the capabilities of the current operating system supporting the Owens & Minor core business units.

Doosan Electro-Materials, a Korea-based company specializing in the production of high-quality copper clad laminate (CCL) and flexible copper clad laminate (FCCL), faced significant challenges with its inventory management. The company's large stocks of inventory were inhibiting cash flow, hurting profitability, and creating complex supply chain issues. The fast pace of innovation in the electronics industry, where Doosan operates, leads to rapid component obsolescence, making high inventory levels particularly risky. In 2007, Doosan's management team decided to initiate significant changes to optimize its supply chain processes and implement new demand management and product planning strategies. The company's inventory problems were exacerbated by difficulties with its demand forecasting systems, which could only make a demand plan for the next four weeks.

Ambev, a leading South American brewer and PepsiCo International, Inc.’s bottler outside of the U.S., experienced a significant spike in order volume across its operating regions. This led to the company's decision to search for better transportation solutions that could handle increasingly complex demands from the company’s growing business. In addition to cost and efficiency concerns, Ambev also needed to ensure that customer service levels kept pace with increasing demand. Therefore, the company sought to improve asset utilization and processes while also positioning itself for continued future growth.

Goya Foods, Inc., a global food company with over $1 billion in annual sales, was facing challenges with its supply chain processes. Despite its growth and success, the company was still holding on to a small business mindset and associated supply chain processes that were limiting its growth. Many of Goya’s processes remained manual when they could be automated to achieve greater efficiency. In addition, Goya’s supply chain model and associated technology systems were based on a transactional approach that focused on inventory purchases instead of beginning with consumer demand and an integrated forecasting process. The company was seeing 5 to 6 percent out-of-stock levels due to its enormous product diversity and lack of an integrated demand planning process. Executives wanted to see that measure fall to 2 percent.

Kimberly-Clark, a global leader in the consumer products industry, was seeking ways to improve its transportation management process with the aim of reducing overall freight costs, improving service, and gaining efficiency. The company challenged its business support groups, including transportation, to drive additional savings across the organization. The transportation executives at Kimberly-Clark considered a number of software vendors to solve these challenges before ultimately choosing JDA Software’s Intelligent Fulfillment™ solutions. The company was looking for a solution that could provide the best optimization capabilities to drive the type of freight savings needed in the transportation organization at Kimberly-Clark.

São Paulo Distribuição e Logistica (SPDL), a strategic venture between two of Brazil's largest newspaper groups, O Estado de São Paulo and Folha de São Paulo, was facing the challenge of continuously optimizing their distribution costs in the face of skyrocketing fuel costs and the proliferation of online news sources. SPDL's transportation network serves more than 900 cities, as well as 700,000 last-mile distribution locations, with 1,250 vehicles traveling more than 100,000 kilometers each day. Despite having a mature operation, SPDL was seeking greater levels of efficiency. They were relying on spreadsheets and manual analysis techniques, and there were no additional savings opportunities that they could identify. They had systematically and thoroughly reviewed every truck route, using the tools they had available.

HEMA, a leading European retailer with approximately 650 stores across the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxemburg, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, was facing challenges in managing its workforce of over 10,000 employees. The company recognized that effective human resources management was critical to its success. HEMA wanted to implement a new workforce management system to optimize labor costs, ensure high customer service levels, and address all operations that characterize a multi-category retail business across all store formats. Another goal was to encourage collaboration and best-practice sharing among employees in different regions. The company conducted a rigorous process to identify the right technology solution, evaluating 12 vendors before making a selection.

ORSAY, a vertically organized fast-fashion retailer, manages the complete supply chain, from design to production and selling. The company offers an up-to-date product range — a large selection of trendy styles and classical looks that customers are looking for right now. Because fashion trends are always changing, ORSAY is challenged to manage the pricing of its products across their life cycle — maximizing profits, but also ensuring that clothing will sell before it becomes outdated. ORSAY’s goals were to increase revenues and margins via fewer markdowns, reduce inventory costs by clearing stock more efficiently, improve staff productivity, and enhance shoppers’ satisfaction by meeting their merchandise and pricing expectations.

ATL, a fast-growing family-owned business offering mission-critical warehousing and logistics solutions to automotive, food and beverage, and packaging companies, among others, was facing challenges with its existing warehousing management system (WMS). The system lacked the flexibility and systematic traceability required to enable growth in the warehousing arm of the business and diversify in new products that required multi-level tracking. With plans to double business size over the next five years, accurate management and control of day-to-day warehouse operations was critical. The company needed a solution that could improve the speed and accuracy of its warehousing and logistics activities.

LG Electronics, a global leader in technology innovation and market leadership, faced a significant challenge in its European logistics network due to exponential growth over the past decade. The company's logistics control was traditionally outsourced to various third-party logistics providers, resulting in limited visibility and control, and a reactive management style. This outsourcing also led to information bottlenecks and dependency on third parties for any innovation in transportation planning. LG Electronics Europe was also relying on an outsourced manual transportation planning system with fixed routing methodologies, which limited its ability to optimize loads, carriers, and overall capacity. As a result, LG was not able to control all costs efficiently. The company sought to consolidate and upgrade its European logistics operations by bringing control in-house, aiming to proactively measure performance and continuously improve in terms of both service and costs.

KappAhl, a leading Nordic retailer, was facing challenges with its allocation system. The company was performing approximately 3,800 allocations per night on two home-grown systems, which were no longer meeting the demand. The former systems were automated but did not allow the company to work at the lower level of detail required to achieve its goals. With 12,000 unique style/color combinations per season across 400 stores in Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Poland, KappAhl needed greater flexibility and expanded capabilities to improve sales while maintaining margins.

Federated Co-operatives Limited (FCL) is a unique business model based on partnership and collaboration. The organization is owned by approximately 235 retail members across Western Canada who sell a wide variety of products, from petroleum to home and building supplies as well as groceries, including fresh produce. FCL provides central wholesaling, manufacturing and administrative services to these locally owned retail co-operatives, creating volume and price efficiencies. FCL’s complex supply chain includes four regional distribution centers, a fleet of nearly 400 trailers and tankers, a petroleum refinery, six plants that produce animal feed, and 10 propane distribution branches. As operations research director, Richard Krause is charged with managing the in-bound supply chain at FCL. “We support the end-to-end solutions for ordering, replenishment, maintaining our inventories in our distribution centers, and having product available for our stores’ needs,” Krause explained. “We’re a very unique company in that we’re owned by our stores. That makes customer service a special priority.”

Advance Auto Parts, a leading automotive aftermarket retailer, was facing a shift in its retail segment from do-it-yourself consumers to do-it-for-me commercial customers. This shift placed added pressure on Advance to ensure immediate product availability. The company was already using JDA Software’s solutions for space and category management, as well as replenishment, to manage its nationwide supply chain when it decided to embark on a supply chain transformation project. In 2010, Advance made a strategic decision to expand the role of these solutions, add physical supply chain infrastructure, and incorporate new technology solutions and business processes to optimize its warehouse, workforce, execution and performance management. To increase service and availability over a large geographic area, Advance decided to retrofit its existing distribution centers (DCs), while also constructing a new 550,000 square-foot facility that would provide daily replenishments to stores in a targeted rollout region.

United Facilities, a third-party logistics (3PL) provider, was facing challenges with its warehouse management processes. The company's legacy warehousing system was becoming too expensive to maintain, and it was struggling to provide efficient service and savings for its customers. The company was also dealing with an increase in fractured ordering, where customers place the same orders multiple times a day. This was leading to inefficiencies in the picking process, as workers had to visit the same bays multiple times to pull products for the same orders. Additionally, one of its customers had set an ambitious goal of realizing significant savings over several years.

São Paulo Distribuição e Logistica (SPDL), a strategic venture between two of Brazil's largest newspaper groups, O Estado de São Paulo and Folha de São Paulo, was facing the challenge of continuously optimizing their distribution costs in the face of skyrocketing fuel costs and the proliferation of online news sources. SPDL's transportation network serves more than 900 cities and 700,000 last-mile distribution locations, with 1,250 vehicles traveling more than 100,000 kilometers each day. Despite having a mature operation, SPDL was seeking greater levels of efficiency. They were relying on spreadsheets and manual analysis techniques, and there were no additional savings opportunities that they could identify. They had systematically and thoroughly reviewed every truck route, using the tools they had available.

Presstalis, a leading media distribution company in France, manages more than 3,600 magazines and newspapers from around the world. The company needed to ensure that these publications are displayed in a way that promotes sales growth across its customers’ retail outlets in France, Belgium, and Switzerland. This was a complex endeavor as media space planning in these countries is often governed by legal restrictions. In France, every publication title can be placed in retail stores and kiosks due to the freedom of press. This results in a vast quantity and diversity of publication titles, meaning Presstalis had to be very efficient in utilizing every inch of available space in retail stores and kiosks.

Pacific Star, a food distributor based in Mexico, faced a complex supply chain challenge. The company had to store and transport over 7,000 products to various customers across a large geographic area. The products fell into three categories - dry, chilled, and frozen, each requiring specific storage conditions. The company also had to consolidate orders and deliveries to keep costs low. The biggest threat to Pacific Star's profitability was shrinkage, which occurred when warehouse stock passed its expiration date. The company aimed to optimize inventory management practices in four warehouses to increase accuracy and productivity, improve service, manage shelf life, and decrease shrinkage.

Oxford University Press (OUP), founded in 1478, publishes around 7,000 new titles every year, in a variety of formats and up to 40 languages. As the largest university press in the world, it has annual sales of 110 million units. OUP operates its own distribution centre, making it one of the few publishers worldwide to not rely on a third-party distributor. From its warehouse in Kettering, the organization dispatches 36,000 orders every month, 70 percent of which are destined for addresses outside of the U.K. To keep up with growth, OUP sought a scalable warehouse control system to replace their outdated technology which severely restricted how the organization operated and made it reliant on a conveyoring system that was complex and costly to maintain.