Page 110 - Inbound Logistics | April 2017 | Digital Issue

IT Toolkit

the journey that led to incorporat-
ing Crossbow software was indirect.
In 2014, his department started seeing
some stagnation in its mature logistics
program. After 13 years in place, the
transportation management program
had become antiquated.
“We knew the TMS was not up to
date,” he says. “And the way our pro-
gram and company were growing, we
needed to see what we could do to be
more efficient.” The company was not
looking at optimization at that time, but
the more it investigated TMS programs, Ben E. Keith distributes more than 11.5 million pounds of food every day. It needed a TMS
the more it realized a new system was upgrade to efficiently supply its customers—restaurants, hospitals, schools, nursing
needed to grow to the next level. homes, and other institutional businesses.
“We had conversations with our logis-
tics managers at the DCs, and from not figure out where the changes were “Ben E. Keith is buttoned up man-
those discussions, we developed a wish needed to prevent situations when aging their supply chain,” says Bill
list for the new TMS,” Stull recalls. “As one truck would be overloaded while Michalski, chief solutions officer at
those discussions evolved, we realized another truck was empty. ArrowStream. “It has a process for man-
we needed a new tool to capture the “If we could affect the order sizes, aging inbound freight and everyone is
freight’s full potential. we could do a better job of routing aligned with it. But it was seeing unpre-
“As we were evaluating the different the orders,” he adds. “But because we dictability and volatility, and had a
systems on the market, we couldn’t find could not see the whole picture, we project underway to figure this out. But
one that addressed our issues,” he says. would often fix one problem and create it is not something you can take on man-
“Ben E. Keith was good at monitoring two more.” ually—there is too much data.”
progress, but did not have a system to Ben E. Keith made its TMS choice
help us make intelligent decisions.” when it upgraded its software through Improving Efficiency
a foodservice group that the company The first thing ArrowStream’s team
Time for an Upgrade belongs to. And although the new sys- did when the companies started work-
Stull and his DC managers were tem allowed for load tendering and ing together was set up a structure to
searching for a bigger and more action- certain levels of auto routing for simple see the inefficiencies. They established
able picture of their program. With the loads, it did not have the deep level of plans for the freight lanes and began
old TMS, in order to retrieve data to optimization the group needed. measuring the buyers’ adherence to
make decisions, for example, the com- Then Mike Roach, who was president those plans. That was crucial because
pany needed to download data into of the company at the time, happened it offered the metrics to measure the
spreadsheets and sift through a lot to visit with ArrowStream at an industry impact on freight costs.
of information. trade show, and started the discussion Then they looked at what they could
Stull and his team were frustrated about Crossbow, the new Software-as-a- do to create freight efficiency. This is
because by the time they came up with Service (SaaS) technology ArrowStream the ongoing part of utilizing the soft-
a productive idea, it was already out- had developed. ware. For example, Ben E. Keith had a
dated. The team needed a way to access Stull’s search was unexpectedly set of vendors with perishable products
the data in real time, and be able to take over. “We found out ArrowStream was and one-way moves with varying vol-
immediate action based on that data. thinking along the same lines as we umes. Using the information Crossbow
They also wanted a centralized view so were about load optimization, so from extracted and compiled, they changed
the general office could offer help to the beginning, it was a natural fit,” the configuration of the loads and routes
the DCs. Stull says. “Crossbow concentrates on for those vendors and were able to take
The company needed a bird’s eye inbound logistics and food service. The 20 percent of the trucks off the road.
view of all its moving parts. “We do a lot platform sits on top of the TMS, so we “We can group vendors into super
of load consolidations,” Stull explains. could integrate it without turning our vendors, and then sit down with pur-
“Our networks are big, and we could operation upside down.” chasing to discuss the merits of

108 Inbound Logistics • April 2017