Case Study – Personal care logistics

Personal care products manufacturer

Health & Beauty Direct Marketer improves supply chain wellness. The customer is manufacturer and direct marketer of naturally safer health, beauty and household cleaning products with warehouses in the United States, Japan, Taiwan, Malaysia and Australia. It’s structure places responsibility for P&L within each country. In the United States, a leadership change in the Transportation department offered Noatum Logistics an opportunity to discuss new approaches to logistics management.

The challenge

The customer felt its supply chain was working fine. No pain, no need to change! However, having worked with Noatum Logistics in the past, and experienced improved operations, the new leader was willing to let us review the company’s pricing and route information on outbound shipments to the United States, Japan, Taiwan, Malaysia and Australia.

The strategy

Analyze the pricing and route information to determine if we could optimize the customer’s supply chain.

The solution

The analysis uncovered opportunities to reduce transportation expenses, reduce reliance on airfreight, streamline communications and improve service levels. The Noatum Logistics solution also increased shipment visibility.

Following implementation, a Hong Kong “control tower” provides a centralized resource for managing and monitoring the customs clearance processes and transportation on trade lanes used by the customer. The control tower oversees pricing and coordinates distribution to local markets. This aids the customer in enforcing price-to-market strategies, while stabilizing ship dates.

Noatum Logistics technologies deliver visibility for better management of purchase orders and inventory. In addition to facilitating shipment consolidation, this also increases productivity. Each market knows the status of inventory on order, and when to expect it in its warehouse, enhancing local planning and marketing efforts.

The result

The customer initially allowed Noatum Logistics to handle a few trial shipments. Our results encouraged them to turn over more business, and we now handle 80 percent of their global freight.

The customer enjoys both hard- and soft-cost savings. Shipment consolidation reduces transportation expenses. New product rollouts now typically ship via ocean freight, rather than the more costly airfreight. A website allows local markets to quickly find shipment status information, which the customer estimates cut in half company emails on orders.