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Sunday 20th May 2012 9:45am
Value Added Services Case Studies
Case Studies by Service

Our Client is a global, multi-national electronics services company.
Services Used by this Client
  • Outbound Logistics
  • Value Added Services
  • Strategic Stocking Locations
  • Reverse Logistics
  • Transport Services
Customer Requirements
  • As they were supporting the German market, they needed a reverse logistics solution to enable movement of defective equipment from Germany to the UK and back again.
  • A consolidation centre was therefore required somewhere in Germany, and low cost but reliable express logistics to/from Germany, which delivered repaired equipment back to their Client.
  • Retail stores would send the defective equipment to a consolidation centre, where it would be bulk packed and shipped as a daily consolidated express shipment to the UK repair centre. A daily express shipment would be sent back to the German retail stores.They needed full visibility of each piece of equipment while it was in our possession and assurances over security and avoidance of lost units.
     
Our Solution
  • Frankfurt or Cologne were identified as the two prime locations to set up the consolidation centre. These offered us distinct transport and cost (due to the structure of our pricing agreements with one of our main express freight partners).
  • We chose Frankfurt, and provided a consolidation service and implemented some specific customisations to our Matrix applications suite. This enabled defective units to be assigned a unique identification number when received into our location. This allowed our Customer to identify the retail store and therefore, end Customer, to whom the defective unit belonged.
  • For the movement of repaired units, we established a break-bulk solution. Individual units would be assigned a German domestic shipping label prior to shipping from the UK. They would then be shipped back to Germany under a single express consignment and on receipt, put into the German domestic network.
  • The consolidation centre address was provided to all of the retail stores and defective units started arriving. These were received, booked into our system, consolidated and sent by express freight to the UK repair centre.
     
Outcome
  • The initial shipments were successful. However, we immediately noticed that the dimensions of the packaging used by the retail stores, were significantly larger than originally indicated, causing a cost problem for our Client.
  • The solution was to design special packaging (which provided the required level of protection but minimised the volumetric weight of each shipment). We implemented this for the flow of repaired goods back to the retailers. This immediately brought the costs back down to expected levels.
  • We then implemented a repacking operation in the consolidation centre. Immediately prior to commencing this new operation, we were advised by our transport partner that there was a change of policy regarding shipping of lithium ion batteries. Consequently, we moved shipments to a road service. Obvious delays occurred, thus we reverted to shipping, but performed a physical inspection of each battery prior to shipping back to the UK. This was added to our repacking process. Should there be any problems i.e. leaking, then we would dispose safely of them in Germany.
  • Finally, we implemented the new operations. We were not only able to resume the safe flying of units to the UK for repair, but we also met our Client's cost targets.
     

 

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Our Client is a global, multi-national electronics services company.
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Our Client is a global, multi-national electronics services company.