Situation
This major manufacturer’s overall goal was to reduce total logistics cost. The customer set specific secondary goals such as moving from a chaotic to planned flow of materials, reducing lead time to four hours, reducing cycle time variability, improving quality from suppliers, reducing dock congestion, improving utilization of carrier assets, and reducing inventory at point of unload sites.

Solution
The customer retained Transfreight to help them solve their supply chain problems. We saw several additional challenges such as different and inconsistently followed standards at each point of unload, outdated / inaccurate data, no key performance measures, supplier-controlled freight, and unleveled production. Specific Transfreight-recommended improvements included:

• selecting window times for large-volume carriers,
• more building-specific lanes,
• dock team member staged loads,
• semi-scheduled, time-measured material shipments, and
• improved utilization of available travel and floor space.

Results
After Transfreight applied its customized lean logistics solution, more than 80% of all freight was turned in less than four hours, meeting the customer’s goals.