Situation
The German TIER1 automotive supplier with ten thousand employees worldwide had hired two transport experts and managers to analyze inbound transport costs, implement a transport management system in Europe and train all logistics employees at nine production sites in Europe as well as their main suppliers in the use of the transport management system. They selected a number of forwarding companies that bid for the transports. The customer achieved savings of twenty to thirty percent per trip.
As a next step, the customer wanted to save transportation costs in its 1 billion US market. The customer therefore commissioned a transport expert from Cerius Executives. He was to analyze the transport organization in the USA and increase efficiency and ultimately save costs.
Main tasks/challenges
- You take part in all meetings relating to transportation management
- Cooperation with transport logistics and with controlling, accounting, purchasing (conducting interviews, recording status, minimum requirements and expectations)
- Evaluate the efficiency of 4PL transportation services against pre-agreed targets. If there are no targets, they use US industry benchmarks
- Identify roles and responsibilities that currently exist in the 4PLs organization and at the customer (from transport demand to transport assignment to delivery and payment)
- Identify transportation logistics budgets and plan ahead, find existing measures and/or define improved measures. Identify past and current cost-saving initiatives and their results.
- Review the reporting of the 4PLs and submit suggestions or improved reports (content and format) on a monthly basis or as required
- Review the connection, support and collaboration of 4LPs with the entire client organization
- Evaluate the invoice control process (external company) and outline its tasks and results
- Assess whether all tasks along the transportation management process comply with the associated legal and contractual regulations, professional duties, responsibilities and agreements
- Develop new ways to optimize the purchasing of transportation services based on market intelligence and link such proposals internally
- Proposal for a state-of-the-art procurement and management approach for US transportation services
- Identification of important transportation service platforms (B2B) and assessment of their feasibility for customer demand
- Propose an organizational structure to improve transport management
- Propose a process map for managing, controlling and monitoring overall transportation performance to increase efficiency and maximize service, performance, value and savings
Action
The US transport expert noted that there is room for improvement and savings in inbound transport activities. He was in close contact with the German transport experts, but found out that the new European transport strategy for the inbound trips was not the right solution for the US activities. He focused on improving the existing organization and processes.
Result
Ultimately, his work led to savings that will pay for themselves in twelve months. The savings were much higher than his fees. The client hired a new permanent transportation expert and the Cerius Executives expert trained him.
