Shipping for more profit and effective Supply Chain Management

If you lag behind in technology, you are putting your efficiency at risk. Supply chain management is simple if you are shipping one thing at a time, but when shipping multiple SKU orders, they need to be directed to the proper shipping point. A competent software management tool can maximize your direct plant shipping opportunities. It can save you time and efficiencies that will save you money.

Old software would not allow anything but a complete order to be shipped. Sending out an incomplete order became a very difficult task. Too difficult for most companies, so they give up, which inhibits their ability to make up current market share. Introduce AutoScheduler – sophisticated software – which solves these problems and makes handling incomplete orders (to difficult to handle) easier and allows you more options.

But KISS is high cost. On local campuses consisting of a plant and several warehouses, companies like Procter & Gamble have realized there is a better way. In their extensive supply chain management program, P & G uses a distribution master scheduling system called AutoScheduler from Transportation l Warehouse Optimization to optimize their direct plant shipping by:

A. Maximizing DPS by pre-positioning inventory; B. Identify the best place to ship from; C. Ensure the shipment is complete by re-deploying the inventory; D. Define the customer service goal of on-time, every-time and establish the dock and staff schedule to make sure this happens

Effective supply chain management requires more timely decisions. Because many order management systems subscribe to the KISS principle, the creation of optimized rules to determine where orders should ship from is often determined by a strategic location analysis. This analysis, done every few years, looks at average shipments to determine, for example, that Denver is best served from Salt Lake City. However, not all orders are average. What if the order is far from average with the majority of the product being manufactured in Chicago? The stock would travel 530 miles past Denver, only to travel 530 miles back to the customer.

Most tools that exist “over the counter” are for catalog shippers. Those that tackle the more substantial issues of ship point optimization in companies shipping truckloads of consumer-packaged goods, have been custom built. There is an exception – AutoSPA (Automatic Ship Point Assignment). This is also available from Transportation l Warehouse Optimization. AutoSPA is a timely, capacity-balanced optimization tool that performs the right sourcing analysis to determine where the order should ship from and looks at the total cost of delivery.

At the same time, AutoSPA can limit the number of shipments that can be made from any site. For example, if there are 200 shipments to be made in the South East, there is no sense in overbooking the Miami DC when Atlanta is idle. Rather, Miami should work to its capacity leaving some volume for Atlanta.

Savings here are significant for ship-point assignment, up to nearly twice as much as DPS alone. This is huge in supply chain management – well worth doing.

When you consider a transportation consultant, Transportation | Warehouse Optimization have been working with some of the top companies in America, finding practical solutions that have resulted in saving millions of dollars. They take a long-term view and keep the client as top priority. Contact them at www.Transportation Optimization.com for transportation cost reductions or solutions to warehouse challenges. While visiting their website, sign up for their exclusive free Truck Loading Manual that can SAVE YOU MONEY and offer you the perfect Operator Manual for truck operators. Transportation l Warehouse Optimization – Solutions that work. Solutions that save.