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PL Developments Gains $1.5 Million in Transportation Savings with e2open Global Parcel and Oracle OTM
Technology Category
- Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Data Exchange & Integration
- Functional Applications - Transportation Management Systems (TMS)
Applicable Industries
- Consumer Goods
- Pharmaceuticals
Applicable Functions
- Logistics & Transportation
- Warehouse & Inventory Management
Use Cases
- Fleet Management
- Predictive Maintenance
- Supply Chain Visibility
Services
- Software Design & Engineering Services
- System Integration
The Challenge
PLD’s transportation team was working in a decentralized manner, with carrier routing decisions being made by staff at each of its locations who were relying on multiple, nonintegrated systems to manage their work. The company’s existing system provided carrier rating support with limited load and mode planning for less-than-truckload (LTL) and truckload shipments, but lacked small parcel rating and shipping capabilities. Additionally, the system did not provide carrier times-in-transit to support accurate delivery planning. Freight audit and invoicing was handled on two disparate systems, which resulted in extra steps to merge invoicing data for analysis. Patrick Heelan, PLD’s VP of Logistics, knew that the company could improve decision-making and efficiency by adopting a centralized, real-time transportation management (TMS) solution that could provide rates and transit times for all modes. “Ship dates get pushed completely upstream through the entire process, all the way through to when that product needs to be manufactured so that we can ship it on time to our customer.” In the case of shipping incomplete orders, his team also needed the ability to re-rate and replan the shipment for lowest cost on-time delivery. “We needed one system to process all shipments, all modes, with all of our data on orders in one place,” he said. “Data visibility is critical to everything we do between pricing our products, where we’re storing them – everything. We’re constantly looking at data.”
About The Customer
PL Developments (PLD) is a leading manufacturer of over-the-counter (OTC) pharmaceuticals and consumer healthcare products serving virtually every major retailer in the U.S. With operations encompassing 12 warehouses and 1.2 million sq. ft. of space in California, Florida, New York, and South Carolina, PLD delivers approximately 50,000 shipments a year to well-known retailers and wholesalers such as Walgreens, Target, BJ’s Wholesale, and Rite-Aid Pharmacy.
The Solution
PLD had already implemented Oracle EBS to manage much of its operations. The company chose Oracle Transportation Management (OTM) for LTL and TL shipments, freight payment and billing, visibility, and data analytics. They also implemented the e2open Global Parcel shipping solution to supply Oracle OTM with real-time small parcel rates and times-in-transit for load planning. Additionally, they adopted an Audit solution to automate freight audit and invoice payments on over 50,000 shipments a year. Each of these solutions is integrated to share order details necessary for planning, carrier decisions to support shipment processing, and post-shipment payment and tracking for real-time visibility and automated invoice handling. This integrated approach allowed PLD to centralize their transportation management on a single platform, managing more than 30 carriers with real-time data visibility for enhanced decision-making. The centralized system also improved data analytics by uploading all order and shipping data to a central dashboard, which facilitated better planning and resource allocation.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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