IDS 4PL Business Case

Business Case 4PL Solution

A worldwide leader in the polymer chemical industry, with manufacturing facilities in several countries, needed to optimise the overall transport costs and to increase the performance of its logistics service providers.

The Challenge

The shipper has several sites in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany from which outbound shipments depart to all destinations in Europe. The shipper was using multiple carriers to transport these shipments to its customers and therefore faced complex lines of communications and and a lack of transparency. It also felt it had lost a grip on, and oversight of its shipments and carriers.

The Solution: IDS as Lead Logistics Provider

IDS has been appointed to serve as Lead Logistics Provider for carrier management and day-to-day freight management. The customer takes care of rate negotiations with the carriers, the selection of carriers and invoicing. IDS and its customer agreed to manage the end-customer’s existing carrier base in order to reduce the risk of change, while also benefiting from a centralised and efficient freight-management model.

As part of this solution IDS also:

• provides a pro-active flow of information to the customer concerning bottlenecks, exceptions & incident reporting.
• monitor QOTIF delivery (right quality, on time, in full).
• guarantees transport capacity (the IDS network is used as a backup).
• automatic fiancial consolidation of shipments.
• identifies cost-saving opportunities.
• provides 100% invoice control.
• establishes transparent multiple price structures (embedded in the Transport Management System (TMS).
• measures and reports the carrier's performance and discusses corrective actions with the carriers.