Case. Scheme of Uninterrupted Delivery of Edible Fats against Short-Term Production Requirements Planning


In order to minimize the costs of raw materials storage, our Customers often come with the idea of connecting production and logistics in a way to provide the delivery of raw materials in the required volumes meeting the deadlines. The service is quite common in TLS market, but things becomes more complicated when raw materials require certain conditions of transportation and the delivery is performed against short-term production requirements planning.

The pet food plant works 24/7 on a short-term planning basis. The line allows to produce food with different fat content for cats and dogs. Depending on the order received for production, different amount of raw materials is used. In such circumstances, it is impossible to calculate the required volume in advance and the plant relies on the delivery of additional volumes of fat.

At the same time, the fat storage tank is relatively small, and considering the remaining fat, the newly delivered batch may not fully fit into the storage.

Task

The specialists of TELS Group of Companies received a task to develop a logistics scheme and organize the uninterrupted delivery of food raw materials from France to Russia.

Terms

  • The tanker must be suitable for transportation and storage of fats.
  • Planning and transportation takes 5-7 days without delay.
  • Delivery must be performed at the request of the plant and can be urgent.
  • At the same time, the volume of fat storage tanks at the plant is limited.

How was the logistics scheme organized?

To organize a reliable uninterrupted supply of fat, TELS specialists accomplished the following tasks:

Task 1. Providing the quality by the available capacity

The main difficulty was that the tanker used during transportation should carry only edible fats of the third category, no other cargoes. It was quite difficult to find free tanks with such limitations. To satisfy Customer’s needs and by agreement with one of the partner-carriers, we purchased a tanker that started going between suppliers in France and producers in Moscow region. It brought a batch of fat approximately every two weeks. The delivery was accelerated if necessary.

Task 2. Accelerating the delivery process

A request for production of certain types of food often requires bigger consumption of fat. Urgent replenishment of stocks reduces the risk of production downtime.

In this case, the Accelerated Truck scheme is implemented. The idea of ​​this scheme implies the delivery by two drivers – the first drives in France and Germany and the other driver replaces the first one in Germany. The first driver goes to Poland by a passenger car, takes a rest there and drives the truck that has already arrived in Poland to Russia.

By this scheme, without idle standing, the delivery from France to the destination customs office in Russia takes 4 days.

Task 3. Storage of the delivered fat in the shortage of tank volumes at the plant

The storage tank at the plant holds 20 tons of fat. The volume of the tanker is 16 tons. Sometimes the remaining volume of fat in the storage does not allow to unload the delivered fat completely. In this case, the cargo should be stored under certain temperature conditions so as not to thicken.

The following decision was made: by agreement with the carrier, the fat was stored in a tanker for a short time, while the freight costs were charged only for the use of transport without a driver. This decision suited the Customer perfectly.

While working on the scheme, the following tasks were solved:

  • The logistics process was provided by a permanent transport with the required characteristics.
  • A solution for accelerated delivery of goods (4 days from France to Russia) was found.
  • Temporary storage of fat outside the production plant was organized.

The implementation of the logistics scheme significantly reduced the risk of forced production downtime in the Russian Federation for the customer company, improved production processes in terms of supply and storage of fat materials.

Results

The implementation of the logistics scheme significantly reduced the risks of downtime at Customer’s production plant; the schemes of supply and storage of fats were improved.