Challenge: A large Amsterdam-based company, boasting sales of over 30,000 household products, sought to expand its market and become a non-resident U.S. importer. The company had to learn U.S. import requirements and establish an optimal logistics strategy for its China- and India-origin goods.

Challenge: A manufacturer of top-tier athletic apparel and footwear is also a supplier for its own retail and wholesale channels. As a global company, it lacked visibility into purchase orders and struggled with shipment tracking. This led to restrictions in the company’s ability to collaborate with a supplier base of several hundred vendors and factories — as well as limited end-to-end visibility.

Challenge: Nearly 10 percent of the world’s drug supply is counterfeit, prompting many countries to set rigid guidelines to track and trace pharmaceuticals across the supply chain. Achieving compliance is often a huge undertaking for pharmaceutical manufacturers and 3PL providers.

Challenge: Growth driven by acquisitions left a global manufacturer with a mixed bag of ERP systems — resulting in an unconsolidated view of spend and an inability to quickly analyze data. The manual reporting system, combined with data extraction and trust issues, was costly and left the manufacturer with a poor understanding of true supplier expenses.

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.