Central control for Kraft Foods
Comprehensive optimization of route scheduling in Europe – Kraft Foods centralizes its transport management for Europe and expects to reduce overall mileage by up to 5 percent.
(Lebensmittel Zeitung 05.2009) When a major foodstuffs supplier such as Kraft Foods optimizes its 60,000 international transport movements in Europe, then benefits are clearly going to accrue. Logistics providers cover around 45 million kilometers per annum on behalf of the company, making trips between the company’s production facilities which are scattered all over Europe and its 80 or so warehouses. Up to five percent of the distance covered – in other words around two million kilometers – could be saved by the new European transport management system, says Markus Ganahl, Distribution Manager for Kraft Foods (KF) in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
Up to now, transportation for this food manufacturing giant has been coordinated at national and regional level. By the end of the year, it is expected that the various disparate strands will be drawn together into a single European business unit, the location of which is yet to be decided. A new software solution will then optimize all incoming transport orders on the basis of cost, service and environmental criteria and come up with measures for combining the flow of goods and rationalizing routes between the various sites. Preparatory work is currently being done on introducing the standard solution provided by inet-logistics, which has been designed to cut down on empty runs and conversely to utilize capacity to the full.
Alongside the issue of transport management within Europe, KF is also running another major logistics project. The food manufacturer is scrutinizing its European network for distribution logistics to the retail trade, in which it works closely with strong, regionally based transport operators. Kraft is engaged in a series of so-called ‘network studies’ throughout the countries of Europe, aimed at optimizing costs in distribution logistics without compromising in any way on service or quality.
