As one of Japan’s largest integrated logistics companies, our customer, has a logistics network connecting 37 countries, 212 cities and 383 outlets around the world with a total of 43,544 employees and 32,565 vehicles. It is one of the Fortune 500 companies and a premier global logistics organisation.

Its operations in China was established in 1995 with the same high-quality level of service as its parent company and has grown into a leader within the same industry. Today, our customer has integrated international air transport, international shipping, domestic warehousing and transportation, Vendor-Managed Inventory (VMI) management, information inquiry and multi-modal transport.

What were our customer’s requirements?

Due to the rapid growth of its operations, bottlenecks began to emerge during peak periods due to the volume of activity. Our customer needed to optimise their systems to be able to support the future growth of the company.

Part of the challenges it faced was due to their internal processes, which saw customer service staff being responsible for both corresponding orders and scheduling tasks for respective projects. With reliance on personnel to carry out the operation and carrier assignation, there was a lot of room for human error. Additionally, this situation also meant a lot of time and money was spent on staff training as it took longer for a new staff member to become familiar with the distribution process. Warehouse and customer service personnel were needed to confirm multiple data times, which wasted a lot of manpower, time and material resources.

Carrier tracking information was done by mail or telephone, which meant feedback was not timely. The overall process was complicated and confusing; there was a lack of a unified transportation business tracking management, which resulted in high customer complaint rate. There was also insufficient support on the client information system as this information was retrieved by telephone or email.

The existing system also depended on a manual billing mode, which provided a lack of reliability, and there was no KPI assessment system in place.

How did we meet our customer’s order?

To meet the growing demand of our customer’s third-party logistics business, Honeywell Logistics Solutions was tasked to modernise its logistics management and establish an effective, flexible, callable and externally portable Transportation Management System (TMS) to match the most urgent needs of China.

We used our wealth of industry experience and innovative Honeywell Logistics Solutions Transport Management System (HLS TMS) to transform the overall process of our customer's transportation management by integrating all businesses into a single system, therefore establishing a unified transportation management platform.

The overall process includes Customer Service Order, Import System, Dispatching Designated Carrier, Warehouse Tally, Box Information Entry, Document Printing, Shipping Confirmation, Route Tracking, Customer Received, Settlement Fee Generation and Calculation.

In the process of setting up HLS TMS, the original organisational structure was adjusted, and a new scheduling department was added to improve dispatching and resource utilisation.

We integrated an optimised scheduling system that is highly flexible and automated into their operations. With this system, the dispatcher configures the required scheduling based on each order’s specific needs. An intelligent rules engine assists the preferred carrier and users can select the appropriate carrier based on the carrier’s freight estimate, scoring estimates for the order quality, product type, delivery area, time limit and weight range. By providing guidance to dispatchers they can improve carrier selection, reduce human errors and improve dispatch workflows.

With the implementation of the HLS TMS, tracking information is also easily obtained. Tracking data can be obtained through label scanning and accessed automatically, eliminating the need for actual manual communication.

Finally, to improve customer satisfaction, HLS TMS provided our customer’s staff with access to operational usage information. Staff can login to the system to view business data or open the order inquiry interface, enabling the receiving staff to check the order status at any time, allowing them to improve the overall quality of their customer service.