Home Construction Industry Manufacturer Conducts Transportation Assessment

A leading North American manufacturer of fiber cement siding and backer board for the home construction industry. As part of its business growth strategy, the company was moving toward a job-specific product sales and delivery model to enable the use of full wrap products by the builder and enhance the value of the company’s brand.

Creating a make-to-order environment required a complete supply chain transformation, particularly in outbound transportation. Job orders needed to be delivered nationally from five manufacturing plants, rather than the conventional delivery of stocking orders from forward mixing centers. As the company began a mixed dedicated fleet/one-way transportation model, it needed to assess the processes and technology in use, identify savings opportunities, and develop a plan for nationalizing the new program.

• Analyzed new transportation requirements (volumes, service requirements, load factors, multi-stop requirements) for new business model
• Identified alternative solutions, searching for methods to deliver new requirements within desired service levels
• Dedicated assessment of current solution by reviewing contract details, routings, fleet utilization, and cost structure
• Systems assessment of current order and transportation management system (TMS) functionality and identifying gaps
• Optimizing pilot region, building transportation model to identify optimal deployment of dedicated versus one-way transportation resources

• From a financial perspective, modeling results identified a 7% cost savings with optimized fleet deployment, along with a 50% reduction in fleet size. Fleet reductions were implemented immediately, with a project payback in 2 months. Eleven other initiatives were identified.
• Significant gaps were identified that required a new TMS.