| |October 20149CIOReviewAn all-encompassing solution can open up doors to new methods, processes, ideas and resources that can be utilized into best practices for any given logistical efforthad over 1000 carriers and over 200 shipping locations. In essence, we knew that more than 1000 of our carriers covered items such as courier, local pick-up and delivery, full truck loads, domestic and international air, as well as ocean shipments to and from approximately 57 countries around the globe. The issue was capturing our spend because we failed to note if shipments were going inbound or outbound. In order to find a solution, we began with a "human TMS" which was conducted through the utilization of a third party logistics provider that would work with our sites on routing, rating and capturing data. We then utilized a freight payment company for all our bills paid in the U.S., which made up 45 percent of our business. We continued to rationalize our supply base and take our international carriers from 249 in 2006 to four in 2014. This helped us set the bar for the data we required from these four carriers, which was much easier to manage and set necessary standards on an as needed basis. We created a similar standard with our small pack carriers and trucking companies. Due to these tweaks, we now have the ability to collect necessary data in order to begin creating our own IT solutions by channeling through our freight payment house.Through our collaborative effort, we built a web-based domestic and international freight rating tool. This allowed us to systematically capture our global data which gave way to building a dashboard, allowing each of our global sites to see what, where and with whom they spent their shipping budget. We were then able to cascade this data to individual business units.Although it has taken us a little over eight years to get this IT solution implemented, the end result proved that this "home built" solution was exactly what was needed to sustain our logistics needs and meets our customers' requirements. Our logistics team continues to collaborate on an ongoing basis in order to find improved ways to progress and enhance our global logistics program.
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