Optimize logistics & warehouse management

Optimization of your inbound logistics

Optimized inbound logistics are crucial for your company’s competitiveness. By ensuring an efficient flow of goods, bottlenecks in the transportation process are avoided and efficiency is increased. Effective process optimization, e.g. in incoming goods or quality control and the agreement of service level agreements (SLA) with suppliers, significantly increases both delivery reliability and the quality of the transport process.

By optimizing your inbound logistics, you ensure reliable delivery and can thus reduce safety stocks. Furthermore, costs can be effectively reduced through tenders and the selection of suitable suppliers. Another relevant advantage is the contribution to greater sustainability. Efficient route planning and transport optimization can significantly reduce emissions.

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Table of contents

01

What are the challenges?

Numerous challenges can arise in the area of inbound logistics that need to be overcome. Only once you have identified your current challenges can you improve your competitiveness through targeted optimization. Challenges in inbound logistics include, for example

  • Price increases due to
    • volatile pallet costs
    • Freight costs (e.g. due to driver shortage)
    • Diesel/energy costs
  • Significant inbound volume changes/shifts: These result, for example, from the loss of suppliers or the addition of new suppliers. As a result, a redistribution of quantities to service providers is necessary.
  • Insufficient delivery performance from existing service providers
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What advantages do you achieve through optimization?

Profit increase

Our transport and logistics tenders usually result in significant savings, often in the double-digit percentage range.

Flexibility

Increased flexibility is another positive result of transport and logistics tenders. As part of outsourcing, fixed costs can be replaced by variable costs. Tenders also increase flexibility in the transport sector, as new, high-performance suppliers can be identified and volumes can be redistributed in terms of flexibility.

Full transparency

Tenders also have the advantage that your company is fully informed about current market prices (ideally broken down into the various cost components, such as transport price & personnel share, etc.) and about the current volume flows on the market.

Improved delivery performance

Furthermore, tenders can be used to find efficient, alternative service providers with whom you can conclude a service level agreement (SLA). This can effectively increase your company’s delivery performance.

How we can support you

The optimization of inbound logistics follows a five-stage approach:

  1. 1

    As-is analysis & concept development

    At the beginning of the project, current transport contracts are analyzed, with a particular focus on documents & results of past tenders. In a next step, a comprehensive analysis of the transport volume is carried out, on the basis of which a logistics spend cube is created, which includes the structure of the quantity structure and the evaluation of quantity flows. Furthermore, both the requirements and restrictions of transport logistics are recorded, and cost transparency and a baseline derived from this are created.

  2. 2

    Preselection

    For the pre-selection of potential suppliers, a service provider long-list and a shipping supplier self-assessment are initially created. The latter includes the following content:

    • Size of the company
      • turnover
      • employees
      • Vehicles, etc.
    • Locations
    • Credit check (e.g. Creditreform)
  3. 3

    Invitation to tender

    The tendering phase includes an intensive workshop to coordinate the tender documents and derive the shortlist of service providers. The tender is then carried out and offers are obtained. During this process, efficient tender management is involved and queries are answered. Based on this, the offers are evaluated, a suitable service provider is identified for future negotiations and the next upcoming negotiation rounds are scheduled.

  4. 4

    Final negotiation

    In this step, contract components and operational specifications for the service provider are defined, and negotiations on terms and conditions with the selected transport service provider are prepared and carried out. Furthermore, this phase refers to the evaluation of the revised offers after the negotiation round, as well as to a recommendation derived from this and the calculation of savings for the award decision.

  5. 5

    Implementation

    In the final phase, transport contracts are signed and the implementation of the new structures is started. If necessary, the transport service providers will also be changed.

Would you like to find out more about supply chain management?

Would you like to find out more about supply chain management?

Get in touch with us!

Your contact persons

Gereon Küpper, valantic

Gereon Küpper

Partner

valantic

+49 211 56 38 75 - 42

  • Supply chain optimization
  • Chemical industry
  • Digitalization
  • Software selection
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Dennis Goetjes

Dennis Goetjes

Partner

valantic

+49 211 563875-50

  • Supply Chain Management
  • Sales & Operations Planning
  • Supply Chain Configuration
  • SCM-Organisations
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