Optimizing Meat Supply Chains: Strategies for Eliminating Inefficiencies and Ensuring Quality
The meat supply chain grapples with many challenges and inefficiencies stemming from a variety of shipping performance issues, limited bandwidth, and incomplete supply chain data.
These inefficiencies contribute to heavy financial losses and unnecessary food waste with a major impact. According to The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), an average 14% of the world’s food source spoils before it reaches the retail market, resulting in a loss of $400 billion.
As meat shippers, your first priority is delivering fresh, safe, and quality products that build customer loyalty and grow your business. Pinpointing the bottlenecks slowing down your supply chain is easy to do with a TMS platform and third-party logistic partner providing full visibility from pickup to destination.
What is hindering your performance?
“On-Time & In-Full” (OTIF) non-compliance
Problem: Failing to meet OTIF standards that result in hefty fines, putting a strain on your bottom line and damaging your reputation with customers.
Solution: A transportation management system (TMS) improves OTIF compliance by consolidating everything into one platform. It increases visibility by helping suppliers better manage last minute order changes, optimize delivery routes, and minimize costs. Carriers that arrive on-time and follow food-grade requirements are also influential in meeting OTIF standards. A TMS helps suppliers track carrier scorecard performance to identify and select quality carriers for shipments.
Reactive Reponses to Order Updates
Problem: Reactively responding to customers after they request order updates instead of anticipating their needs leads to a poor reflection of your reliability and service.
Solution: Real-time tracking updates for your customers throughout their freight’s journey, without playing phone tag or sending numerous email updates.
Carriers Unfit to Transport Food-Grade Products
Problem: Carriers arrive at pick up without food-grade equipment and temperature tracking capabilities, compromising the quality and safety of your meat products.
Solution: Finding carriers that meet stringent local, state, and federal requirements is critical not only for meeting industry standards but safe customer consumption. With a bigger carrier network, it’s easier to find qualified carriers that comply with all Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) regulations.
What is eating up your time?
Shipment Management
Problem: Working weekends and overtime to manually manage shipments so they arrive on-time.
Solution: No one wants to live at the office. A TMS platform can drastically reduce the amount of time it takes to manage a shipment by eliminating repetitive manual tasks and accelerating decision making when having to rework a load.
Inefficient Communication Channels
Problem: Wasting time setting up delivery appointments and contacting multiple carriers for updates.
Solution: The risk of miscommunication is high when you’re in a time crunch. Instead of tracking down information via emails or phone calls, a TMS gives shippers access to real-time data, providing precise GPS truck locations and load status updates every 15 minutes, offering full visibility throughout the freight’s journey.
Manual Load Consolidation
Problem: Spending hours manually consolidating orders to create multi-stop full truckloads.
Solution: Optimal use of transportation resources is always a shipper’s goal. TMS automation improves planning efficiency and ensures shippers hit their mark. It quickly identifies multiple
orders for consolidation and can optimize loads into multi-stop truckload shipments. A slew of carrier options also helps shippers pick the right carrier for the job, locking-in best rates and delivering products faster.
Why are your data reports incomplete?
Lack of Integration Across Multiple Systems
Problem: Entering order and shipment data multiple times into numerous systems, increasing the risk for errors and wasting your internal team’s time.
Solution: Using a TMS compatible with EDI and API technology allows for seamless data exchange and accuracy, saving shippers up to 30 hours per week.
Inefficient Sourcing of Real-Time Data
Problem: Pulling data from multiple locations to manually build reports, losing valuable productivity time and delaying decision-making.
Solution: Automated reporting tools captures and combines multiple data sources, like from your ERP and WMS programs, into one centralized platform with instant access to cost-savings and KPI metrics, freeing up your time to focus on strategic initiatives that impact your bottom line.
Manual KPI Calculation
Problem: Manually tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) each week.
Solution: Implementing automated KPI tracking grants shippers instant access into key shipping indicators like orders, total spend, on-time delivery, and cost-per-pound. These actionable insights give shippers the tools they need for scalable savings and revenue growth.
Faster Solutions for a Fast-Paced Industry
It’s time for meat shippers to ditch spreadsheets and six to eight-month TMS integration timelines (an industry standard, unfortunately) for more efficiencies.
At Dynamic Logistix, full integration of our XTMS platform takes only six to eight WEEKS, which means you could be improving OTIF delivery rates, reducing costs, optimizing routes, reporting accurate data, and strengthening customer relationships four months ahead of schedule. Ready to hear more? Book a demo with our team or head to dynamiclogistix.com/meat.
