5.0 INDUSTRY
Optimizing logistics flows to reduce transportation costs
ALTEN helped a European synthetic foam manufacturer reduce its transportation costs between Poland and Germany by 50% by assisting the company in optimizing logistics flows between its suppliers and distributors.
Project Highlights
Industry: Synthetic foam manufacturing
Region : Belgium
Client Challenge: Optimize logistics flows between suppliers and distributors to reduce transportation costs.
Achievements: Optimized management of logistics flows, enabling their redistribution through the acquisition of a new plant in Germany and achieving a 50% reduction in transportation costs between Poland and Germany.
Our Client’s Challenge
Our client, a European manufacturer of synthetic foams, sought to optimize its logistics processes in order to reduce transportation costs and become more competitive in the market. In light of this, ALTEN was contacted to conduct an assessment and identify areas for improvement to minimize the costs associated with shipping goods across Europe..
Our Solution Tailored to the Project’s Challenges
To conduct a thorough assessment of the situation and provide an appropriate solution, we first analyzed the data in SAP regarding our client’s and its distributors’ products and storage locations. We then set up an analytics dashboard using Power BI, a tool our client was already using.
Throughout the project, we relied on a Lean Manufacturing approach to streamline data and optimize transport flows.
Measures Implemented
- Interviews with internal stakeholders across multiple sites
- Consolidation of product, process, and logistics data for all products (over 1,000 SKUs)
- Cleaning and enrichment of source data
- Analysis of logistics flows
- Creation of a Power BI dashboard aggregating 10 databases to analyze data, study cause-and-effect relationships, and propose solutions
- Analysis of constraints and non-value-added activities, and proposal of an action plan aimed at optimizing flow management
The Benefits of the Project
For this project, we provided our client with a report analyzing costs and margins for each shipment, broken down by shipment type and by client.
Thanks to our support and the solutions we implemented, our client saw its transportation costs between Poland and Germany drop dramatically by 50%. During our engagement, we found that 67% of the logistics flows passing through Belgium were actually destined for Germany. With this key new insight, our client was able to make an informed decision to acquire a new factory in Germany to reduce the flow of goods and the associated costs.
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