BRINGING IT ON HOME

Logistics Insight Asia, 1/7/2008

Implementing a TMS allowed this US retailer

Since Crate and Barrel first opened its doors in 1962, the housewares and furniture retailer has expanded its operations to over 160 stores and more than 7,000 associates serving customers in 29 markets. The American company has three primary distribution centers, located in New Jersey, Chicago, and San Francisco. Deliveries are shipped out of these facilities to 21 crossdocks where goods are sorted and loaded onto trucks for delivery to customers within a 80 to 160 mile radius.

That calls for a robust TMS that can handle the 80 delivery trucks – most of which are managed by 3PLs – that make 16 stops daily for the company. Up until recently, that process had been handled manually using online and in-store sales transaction data that dispatchers used to assign deliveries to the company’s fixed routes. Those manual processes were inefficient, but the biggest challenge was the lack of visibility into deliveries on the road.



“It would take five or more phone calls to figure out if our customers were going to get their deliveries on time,” says Pat Gottmann, Crate and Barrel’s home delivery manager. “There was no easy way for us to know what deliveries a driver had already made and which ones were still to follow. We were not happy with the impact on our customer service.”

The company also needed more accountability from its 3PLs – a mission that was unattainable without real-time visibility and reporting capabilities. After putting out a bid to four companies that offered TMS products, the company selected Descartes Systems Group’s On-Demand Routing and Visibility solution

PLUG-IN … AND PLAY
According to Gottmann, the goal was to find an affordable system that was flexible enough to address the different delivery needs of each market, and that offered the scalability to support the retailer’s aggressive growth plans. The on-demand option eliminated the need to install software at every site, and meant new maps were always available as the retailer expanded to new markets.



“We simply plug into the service as we opened new locations and gain immediate access to the information we require to deliver effective service,” explains Gottmann, who adds that the company selected Boston as its first deployment site. “By starting in Boston we could ensure streamlined communications between our in-house point of sale system and Descartes, and establish best practices that could be easily adopted by our third party logistics providers.”

Crate and Barrel now processes about 80 percent of its delivery volume through the system, which has allowed it to consolidate its smaller routes into larger routes covering greater areas, optimize its routes for efficiency, and use fewer trucks to handle a growing number of deliveries.

Other benefits include narrower delivery windows and real-time visibility into the status of deliveries nationwide. “At any time during the day we know exactly how each route is progressing,” says Gottman, “how many drivers are on the road, how many deliveries each driver is doing, where their last stop was, and more.”