Challenge: A global 3PL recently began providing fulfillment services for large, heavy components of cellphone tower parts. Due to size, material handlers often had to wait for forklift drivers to move components to static computer and printer desks in order to process orders. Workers also had to walk back and forth from staging areas to desks to enter data and print labels. Employee overtime grew in order to handle backlog, and workers reported stress and fatigue.

Challenge: A major international automotive manufacturer was experiencing a high rate of supply chain damage. The component racks which held car parts during transit had passed impact and vibration testing, but shipments were still arriving damaged. With no way to tell what was causing the damage, the automotive company had to get creative.

Challenge: Trading partners need to trust that inventory will arrive when scheduled — particularly during item promotions. Historically, location and arrival time was obtained via driver phone calls. But these projected arrival times didn’t consider traffic and weather conditions, and they were often too optimistic.

Challenge: In late summer 2017, a large pharmaceutical company found its supply chain threatened by three hurricanes and an earthquake. As a manufacturer of medicines for neurological diseases, the company was under governmental and commercial pressure to avoid disruption from four significant events occurring in quick succession.

Challenge: A company's engineering and sourcing departments were siloed and lacking access to historical information and accurate market data (pricing, availability and risk). The engineering department partially designs based on performance, but the bills of materials (BOMs) sent to the sourcing department were not procurable. The company needed access to the right data to increase contract negotiating power and reduce product launch risks due to inventory and manufacturing issues.

Challenge: Security was a priority for a leading logistics provider designing a large, new facility. The team had outlined a comprehensive physical security solution including IP video with integrated access control along with intrusion detection — all managed via a single video management solution (VMS) interface.

Challenge: This Fortune 500 company was paying premium prices for replacement part transportation and labor — and suffered from late returns. Manual, siloed methods for managing dispatching made supply chain processes inefficient and error-prone.

Challenge: A large telecommunications OEM required revisions to upgrade a power supply (PS) with early life failures in the field. Units were available in the U.S. and EU. There was no way to know systematically what version of the PS was in the units in question — the only information was a sticker on the PS itself. The challenges: contain cost and reduce turnaround time for repair.

Challenge: A large food manufacturer was using an arduous manual process to manage its freight. The company knew something had to change to eliminate extensive paper chasing, faxing, repetitive work and wasted time. But with the high volume of inbound and outbound freight to manage, a time-consuming implementation of a TMS wasn't feasible.

Challenge: The operations vice president of an oil and pipeline construction company recently admitted there was a time when he wondered if his company’s cargo insurance policy was worth it. The company sources goods from around the world, moves cargo by multiple modes and runs a supply chain through some of the world’s most high-risk countries. Thanks to meticulous packing and some good luck, they'd had very few supply chain incidents over 11 years. Until that summer, a few years back. That June, a truckload of welding equipment heading to Moscow caught fire. The $809,000 shipment was a total loss. One month later, a cargo ship carrying two of the company's containers, worth $150,000, caught fire. Those containers were also total losses.