SDCE 100 Names Best Supply Chain Projects for 2018

The 2018 SDCE 100 shines the spotlight on the industry's most successful and transformative projects that deliver value to enterprises across a range of supply chain functions.

Mackenna Moralez

Jun 25, 2018

There are many challenges companies face when trying to manage their supply chain capabilities. A crucial activity for a company is to continue to pursue, develop and implement best practices that leverage well-organized projects that are relevant to strategic objectives. The outcome of these projects provide further insight into the innovation and opportunity for improved operations within supply chains.

The 2018 Supply & Demand Chain Executive 100 shines the spotlight on the industry's most successful and transformative projects that deliver value to enterprises across a range of supply chain functions. The projects featured in this awards program offer a forward-looking perspective for the industry on new opportunities designed to drive operational success.

To see the complete list of SDCE 100 award recipients, please click here. Featured projects are as follows:

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To see the complete list of SDCE 100 award recipients, please click here. Featured projects are as follows:

Enabler: 3Gtms

Customer: Dynamic Logistix

Project Goal: Implement a best-of-breed TMS that provides mid-market customers with a comprehensive solution to address the complete order-to-settlement lifecycle

Solutions: TMS

Business Impact: Dynamic Logistix found success by digitizing its spreadsheets. By using a 3Gtms web-based shared environment, the company is able to pinpoint savings opportunities in areas that had no visibility before. The company can now analyze data and know exactly where to negotiate with carriers to save money.

Enabler: AFS Technologies

Customer: Watsonville Coast Produce

Project Goal: Implement an ERP system with tools to help expand their business in the future

Solutions: AFS ERP

Business Impact: Watsonville now has the ability to construct more creative commission structures to help motivate its sales staff. The company saw an increase in robust commissions, invoicing and credit management functionality. The capabilities within AFS ERP allowed the company to set up commissions, which improved the time for invoicing and made credit management easier.

Enabler: Agistix

Customer: Top 10 Utility Company

Project Goal: Create a single platform for global supply chain visibility, execution, and freight audit and payment

Solutions: Robust suite of REST APIs, web services, EDI integration and automation

Business Impact: As the project continues to evolve, the company saw savings greater than 22 percent.

Enabler: ALOM

Customer: Home Genetic DNA Testing Company

Project Goal: Scale inventory management and order fulfillment capacity to meet projected year-over-year order volume increases

Solutions: Proprietary, infinitely scalable order routing and fulfillment management solution based on SKU customization, inventory position and end-user location

Business Impact: ALOM helped the customer exceed four-times its year-over-year growth forecast and enable continued exponential fulfillment capacity. The supply chain delivered record revenue for the client and set groundwork for continued future growth. This helped the customer establish itself as a leader in the home DNA/health test kit industry.

Enabler: American Global Logistics

Customer: Bassett Furniture

Project Goal: Source materials from suppliers around the globe with cloud-based technology and trim costs, while ensuring prompt movement of goods

Solutions: American Global Logistics’ combination of proprietary technology, logistics services and hands -on support

Business Impact: American Global Logistics worked closely with Basset Furniture’s distribution centers and domestic trucking operations to minimize accessorial fees and shipping delays. With AGL, Bassett earned cargo-owner status, helping it gain better prices on ocean freight. As the company’s sole customs broker, AGL helps ensure customs compliance and timeliness while keeping the company updated on best practices. AGL’s 4PL approach allows Bassett to gain transparency into new suppliers and endpoints while developing creative transportation solutions to meet its high service standards.

Enabler: Arkieva

Customer: Leading Manufacturer of Corrugated HDPE Pipe

Project Goal: Identify gaps in existing processes and optimize the supply chain network

Solutions: Arkieva Demand Planner, Arkieva Inventory Planner, Arkieva Supply Planner (Optimization) and S&OP Dashboards

Business Impact: The company improved the collaborative planning process based on different scenarios of supply, demand and production capabilities in the short and long term. It also optimized inventory levels across different plants and improved customer satisfaction while presenting huge cost savings.

Enabler: BluJay Solutions

Customer: Cooke Aquaculture

Project Goal: Supply chain planning, execution and visibility across global business units utilizing SaaS technology integrated with ERP

Solutions: BluJay Solutions’ Transportation Management for Shippers technology, BluJay Solutions’ Professional Services for implementation

Business Impact: Cooke Aquaculture saw improved carrier management due to enhanced visibility to invoice charges; improved oversight resulted in corrected invoice structure; expanded carrier base resulted in rate savings. Its streamlined processes freed up personnel for more value-add activities and oversight that did not previously exist.

Enabler: B-Stock

Customer: Fortune 500 Home Improvement Retailer

Project Goal: Branded B2B marketplace for returned, excess and other liquidation inventory

Solutions: B-Stock’s Enterprise PaaS, Auction Strategy, Demand Generation

Business Impact: B-Stock launched a branded private B2B liquidation marketplace for the home improvement retailer. Within days of launching its marketplace, the retailer had nearly 1,000 registered buyers competing for truckload-size quantities of its returned and overstock appliances. Ongoing demand generation campaigns have since continued to drive qualified buyers to the marketplace, with up to 300 new buyers registering each month. One of the key drivers of new buyer registrations was adjusting lot size to match buyer demand. In order to do so, B-Stock recommended breaking the lots down so more buyers were able to participate, generating an immediate impact on recovery.

Enabler: Cloudleaf Inc.

Customer: Big Pharma Company

Project Goal: Manage FDA regulatory compliance and reduce losses due to inefficient tracking, visibility and condition monitoring for life-saving drugs and raw materials

Solutions: IoT, Industrial IoT

Business Impact: Cloudleaf continues to help transform supply chain visibility and optimization by solving visibility problems and capturing real-time data from operations using cloud and machine-learning devices. With its technology, the big pharma company was able to increase savings by $6 million per month.

Enabler: Command Alkon

Customer: Wayne Davis Concrete

Project Goal: Manage daily replenishment plans for ready-mix concrete producer to reduce out of stocks

Solutions: Command Alkon supplyCONNECT

Business Impact: Wayne Davis Concrete managers quickly saw the value of visibility once supplyCONNECT was in place. The real-time supply and demand information provided by the software virtually eliminated stockouts. Time that was previously spent manually handling raw material replenishment was now focused on ensuring customers’ deliveries, improving costs by eliminating expensive wait times at plants, efficiently lowering on-hand inventory and allowing them the ability to proactively plan their material sourcing. The company also saw time reduction in gathering inventory information from plants. SupplyCONNECT provides Wayne Davis live inventory levels in one place, helping build confidence within the company. Wayne Davis also saw lower costs due to more efficient use of inventory. With the solution, material demand was automatically tracked and plants were able to prioritize based on material needs. Additionally, the company saw servicing high-production pours with a single tanker. With the visibility into the material demand, Wayne Davis can now accurately determine if they can wait on a delivery being made from the source that is farther away, but at a lower cost. Knowing when their plants will actually need the material allows for more cost-effective decision-making.

Enabler: Demand Management Inc.

Customer: TenCate Protective Fabrics

Project Goal: Improve the efficiency of the forecasting process by moving away from basing forecasts on sales estimates

Solutions: Demand Solutions DSX

Business Impact: TenCate Protective Fabrics saw immediate benefits from implementing Demand Solutions DSX. The company was able to reduce eight man-hours per month with the ability of sales representatives to key forecasts directly into the system. Tencate saw better analytics with the ability to marry forecast data to other data for use in Analytical reporting. Operations and sales also benefitted from the use of the new technology. The hardstock was reduced by $4 million over an 18-month period and forecast accuracy increased 15 percent.

Enabler: Elemica

Customer: Leading Consumer Product Company

Project Goal: Better manage inventory replenishment system with railcars that transport raw materials across global border

Solutions: Elemica Digital Supply Network for process manufacturers, Elemica Vendor Managed Inventory

Business Impact: Future process improvements were made to drive significant enhanced benefits for the customer, including the ability to move from five to seven receiving days per week across several operation scenarios without changing safety stock. The company saw nearly 25-percent reduction in inventory on-hand, 33-75 percent reduction in use of safety stock, 40-60 percent reduction in incidents where stock levels exceed the two-times safety stock level.

Enabler: Fascor Inc.

Customer: Bryan Equipment Sales

Project Goal: Automate warehouse and shipping operations, improve order accuracy and through-put efficiency, while maintaining world-class service levels despite record growth

Solutions: Fascor WMS and Fascor TMS

Business Impact: Bryan Equipment Sales partnered with FASCOR to deliver on their goals in a timely and cost-effective manner. Since implementing FASCOR’s WMS and TMS solutions, it has shipped over 5 million power tools and parts, decreasing error rates by 88 percent. Bryan’s productivity has increased by 68 percent with a slight addition in warehouse man hours. The entire team now has the capability to monitor inventory and warehouse activity in real time using FASCOR’s WebTools performance dashboards, creating crucial visibility that was much needed throughout their end-to-end operations to continuously achieve their goals.

Enabler: John Galt Solutions

Customer: Rug Doctor

Project Goal: Improve supply chain network and over-all profitability through better understanding of customer demand at the store level

Solutions: Atlas Planning Suite

Business Impact: After originally facing difficulties when routing service technicians to their stores, the Rug Doctor now uses Atlas to set routing plans based on real-time demand. The company now sees a decrease in expenses in logistical resources and over time, and has improved customer-service levels while increasing profitability.

Enabler: Kuebix

Customer: Manufacturer of retail and industrial scales, slicers, weigh price labeling equipment, check weighers and software products

Project Goal: Gain control, visibility and lower costs in transportation processes using a TMS

Solutions: Kuebix TMS

Business Impact: The customer has seen tremendous savings across the board since going live with Kuebix in 2017. One of the biggest standout savings is the reduction in the cost-per-pound for shipments. Before Kuebix TMS, cost-per-pound was $.50, but since being implemented, the cost has dropped to $.10 per pound. Since implementing the system, the company has spent $200,000 in shipping costs in the last four months, averaging nearly $50,000 a month. Prior to this, overall shipping costs were $73,000 a month. The company is primed to save over $1 million annually in transportation costs using the Kuebix system.

Enabler: Logility

Customer: Textile Company

Project Goal: Implement an integrated planning solution to increase visibility and manage working capital to profitably grow the business and create a single, feasible plan

Solutions: Logility Voyager Solutions

Business Impact: A global provider of fabric-based solutions for the awning, marine, furniture, protective, military and geo-synthetics industries, realized significant benefits across the organization following its implementation of Logility Voyager Solutions. The company now operates on a single plan to facilitate its Sales and Operations Planning process. Forecast Accuracy measured by MAPE decreased from 42 percent to now less than 19 percent, while the company’s sales volume increased with no increase in overall inventory. Additionally, the company saw on-time deliveries improve.

Today, the supply chain team is able to quickly provide the sales organization with a detailed statistical forecast at multiple hierarchical levels. This allows them to develop an accurate starting position for the annual business planning process. In addition, the company has a monthly standard workflow that helps streamline its supply chain operations.

Enabler: Logistyx Technologies

Customer: Service Lighting/LightBulbs.com

Project goal: Increase Lightbulbs.com’s order fulfillment efficiency by streamlining shipment processes through automating rate shopping and minimize processing the “touches” required to complete a shipment

Solutions: Logistyx Ship-IT multi-carrier shipping software, Rice Lake iDim 3D Dimensioning system and two Size-IT handheld dimensioners

Business Impact: By implementing Logistyx shipping software, integrated with the dimensioners to automatically capture and upload package measurements for carrier rate calculation, Service Lighting eliminated multiple steps in shipment processing and gained a five-times increase in productivity—all while reducing its number of shipping stations by 66 percent. The company was also able to reallocate employees to other areas in the warehouse that needed help. With the new Logistyx solution, LightBulbs.com was able to scale up to meet peak shipping volumes that doubled year-over-year sales without adding staff.

Enabler: mondCloud Inc.

Customer: School Specialty

Project Goal: Improve supply chain agility by reducing vendor and customer on-boarding time and cost, along with increased visibility

Solutions: AS2 server, FTP server, EDI management, Partner on boarding, Perfect Order Dashboard, Business Activity Monitoring, Real-time monitoring and alters, multi-tenant secure cloud solution

Business Impact: School Specialty was able to successfully move to mondCloud services without any disruptions to existing business. As a result, partner on-boarding timeframes decreased from three to four months to just three weeks and B2B errors were significantly reduced. The company was able to monitor end-to-end supply chain transactions through the real-time monitoring dashboard system and saw improved operation efficiency. School Specialty was able to accomplish all projected goals and deadlines, and achieve an ROI of 50-percent reduction in B2B spending.Customers are also planning to on-board another 150 paper-based vendors in 2018.

Enabler: ProShip Inc.

Customer: A Catalog/E-commerce Distributor

Project Goal: Reduce labor and shipping costs due to remote distribution center location

Solutions: CVP Automated Packing Solution and ProShip Multi-Carrier Shipping Software

Business Impact: In order to meet the e-commerce distributor’s goal of decreased labor and more automation throughout its warehouse, the company turned to the CVP Automated Packing Solution which builds, fills, folds and labels parcels in one seamless process and creates a custom-fit parcel in seconds. Because the CVP Automated Packing Solution only requires one operator, it has reduced the company’s labor costs. Since implementing the solution in 2016, the e-commerce distributor has met its goals of decreasing labor and shipping costs.

Enabler: Protolabs

Customer: HP Inc.

Project Goal: Reduce design cycle time and produce prototypes and low-volume bridge production in materials that will be used in the final product for next-generation inkjet printers and cartridges

Solutions: Digital Manufacturing - front end automation, design for manufacturability software, expedited delivery and injection molding

Business Impact: Dramatically reduced design cycle time from a standard of six-to-eight weeks to just 15 days or less using Protolabs. The faster, more streamlined process helped HP stay at the top of the world’s highly competitive printer market.

Enabler: REZ-1

Customer: CSX Corporation

Project Goal: Create an analytical tool to visualize complex intermodal rail freight transportation and ultimately increase container utilization

Solutions: A custom, interactive dashboard built for the REZ-1 Asset Management

Business Impact: REZ-1 provided CSX Corporation with a dynamic, flexible data visualization tool that guides fleet utilization decisions and provides CSX customers improved availability to CSX containers. CSX uses the intelligence tool to view and analyze segments by load type and identify the least and most efficient load cycle segments. With the business intelligence tool, fleet utilization is higher than before and reports have positively affected the bottom line by providing analytics to visualize their complex freight transportation system and manage the pieces with a holistic view.

Enabler: Saddle Creek Logistics Services

Customer: Graduation Source

Project Goal: Improve order accuracy, delivery times and inventory visibility

Solutions: WMS, bi-directional application programming interfaces, web portals and customized reporting.

Business Impact: With Saddle Creek’s technology, Graduation Source was able to achieve its goal 50 percent faster. Overall inventory accuracy and visibility have increased significantly, and as a result, Graduation Source has been able to reduce on-hand inventory levels and reduce monthly freight spend.

Enabler: Silvon Software Inc.

Customer: Global Producer of Dairy Products

Project Goal: Provide better supply chain visibility and forecasting capabilities

Solutions: Silvon’s Stratum applications for sales analysis, inventory performance management and statistical forecasting

Business Impact: Since utilizing Silvon’s Stratum analytics and forecasting engine, the dairy producer’s forecast accuracy improved by 8 percent to 98 percent. The producer has been able to decrease operating expenses that had previously resulted from inaccurate forecasting methods and reduce spoiled product or product facing expiration to its goal of .25 percent of gross sales. With the tools provided to them by Silvon, the company’s sales team spends less time forecasting and more time strategically selling. In addition, everyone enterprise-wide now has the ability to find the root cause of any issues that may occur across its supply chain.

Enabler: TRANSPOREON Group Americas

Customer: A Global Steel Wire Manufacturer

Project Goal: To align strategic sourcing and executional transportation management across its North American operations

Solutions: Transporeon shipment execution, Transporeon Best Carrier, Transporeon No-Touch Order, Transporeon Dock Scheduling

Business Impact: The global steel wire manufacturer was able to receive substantial results from implementing TMS. Results include: reduction in carrier payment processing efforts with quicker issue resolution, the ability to independently validate tenders assigned to lowest-cost provider in an audit-proof system, utilize an “appointment only” model ensure time slots are set up to match shipping capacity, create control transportation for incoming freight and have a significant reduction in transportation spend.