Customer:
A multi-national mining innovation company
Industry:
Mining equipment, machinery and consumables
Solution:
Provided an alternative solution that reduced handling of product, minimized the associated risk, and cleared valuable warehouse space while reducing their CO2.
Results:
- Maintained set transit times
- Reduced handling of easily damaged product
- Reduced handling of dangerous-to-handle product
- Improved warehouse utilization
- Reduced CO2 emissions
- Reduced annual costs
The customer was originally consolidating drill rods destined for Nevada, with consumables going to Pennsylvania. Upon arrival in PA, the containers would be unloaded, but the rods would sit in storage for 2-3 weeks before reloaded and transported to Nevada. The nature of this process is higher risk and weekly shipments typically consisted of 2 containers.
To optimize the flow of goods into North America, we explored how to ship the rods directly to Nevada from origin and eliminate the extra handling in PA. Ideally, this would reduce costs associated with road logistics and as well as the carbon footprint of each shipment.
Since the rods were sitting in PA for 2-3 weeks, the increased transit times to Oakland, CA were not an issue. In fact, they remained the same, while lowering costs and carbon emissions. Handling the product became less frequent and helped mitigate the associated risks.
Moving to a direct-to-Nevada model provided better facility utilization and optimized the cargo flow. This strategic shift reduced costs associated with trucking and staffing, and freed up much-needed warehouse space.