Schmitz Cargobull fulfills delivery promise through expanded supply chain visibility

“With Everstream Analytics, we gain better visibility of our end-to-end supply chain, and we’re aiming to expand this view to our first tier suppliers and our outbound supply chains. By integrating Incident Monitoring functionality into our supply and delivery processes, we are able to anticipate events and avoid disruptions, and reserve alternative resources before the competition can, effectively safeguarding the delivery of each customer order.”

– Peter Schonefeld, Head of Supply Chain Management, Schmitz Cargobull AG

Schmitz Cargobull AG is Europe’s leading manufacturer of semi-trailers and trailers, with annual production in excess of 45,000 vehicles and turnover of €1.6 billion. As a pioneer in the industry, this family-run German company attributes success to its comprehensive brand strategy, consistent quality standards, and fulfilment of delivery promises despite short lead times and high demand volatility. The company operates today on a global scale, with plants across Europe and Asia (China), and requires optimal network transparency to handle longer, more complex supply chains featuring greater interdependencies.

Customer Objective

Following rapid business growth and expansion into new geographies, Schmitz Cargobull needed better supply chain visibility and transparency on logistics flows, right down to component level (e.g., axles, tires, etc.) — a considerable challenge in this automotive sub-sector that is characterized by extremely short lead times. Trailer customers can typically change their order right up to the point of production. Some custom-built items must be urgently produced within 18 hours and the frozen zone begins only 10 hours before production starts. The trailer subsector also features high demand volatility, requiring just-in- time and 100% make-to-order inbound supply chain processes.

Schmitz Cargobull aimed to obtain a global yet detailed view of daily events (strikes, weather alerts, public holidays, etc.), especially those impacting their own production sites or their global supplier base. And, to improve efficiency and reduce logistics costs, Schmitz Cargobull wanted to build awareness and knowledge of Tier 1 suppliers and the outbound distribution network. Gaining supply chain visualization was also an essential step to creating a comprehensive disruption management system for Schmitz Cargobull, as they have a broad supplier base located in 19 countries; these suppliers input to a total of 8 production facilities, and there are drop-off points for finished trailers in 25 countries.

Everstream Solution

Everstream Analytics provided Schmitz Cargobull with an interactive global map of its end-to-end supply chain to capture the logic of network interdependencies both upstream and downstream and to provide a multi-tiered view of all key component suppliers and logistical locations. Easy-to-use search and filter capabilities enable Schmitz Cargobull supply chain executives to monitor products, parts, materials, and other sub-network attributes. This interactive solution enables Schmitz Cargobull to achieve valuable route visualization and derive views on material logistic movements.

For Schmitz Cargobull, supply chain visualization identified two significant risks: the potential for bottlenecks in the road network located in the southeastern region of Europe and the relative unfamiliarity of operating in China. Everstream has customized a supply chain incident monitoring platform that provides 24/7 near real-time alerting and feedback loops on disruption occurring anywhere in the world, and it has configured dedicated incident alerting profiles for Schmitz Cargobull that would ensure each member of the supply chain team would receive only relevant alerts. The platform also provides a feature to manually add incidents, enabling Schmitz Cargobull to quickly disseminate information about its network incidents across the organization (and not in the public domain). This user-friendly, integrated Everstream solution enables Schmitz Cargobull to easily track and prepare for incidents well before they become threats and can be accessed any-time and anywhere in the world. The organization can now plan and arrange emergency shipments to stay ahead of the competition and save production so business never slows and customer orders can be delivered on time.

The flexibility of the Everstream Analytics solution meets Schmitz Cargobull’s specific needs, including a customized product view that connects sites and products according to the customer’s organizational structure. Further long-term development is planned to tailor the Everstream platform more closely to Schmitz Cargobull’s make-to-order supply chain processes.

Customer Benefits

With Everstream, Schmitz Cargobull has achieved end-to-end supply chain visibility at production component level with a significantly lower investment of labor than in the past. The organization enhanced its capabilities to fulfill delivery promises, thanks to proactive alerting on potential supply chain disruptions in the inbound and outbound logistics flows. Everstream also provides Schmitz Cargobull with the ability to improve efficiency by monitoring Tier 1 suppliers and protecting Tier 2 suppliers.

Schmitz Cargobull also benefits from improved demand forecasting at supplier materials level. For example, Schmitz Cargobull was not impacted by strikes in Germany and Turkey because with Everstream Incident Monitoring the SC-organization was able to proactively increase buffer stock before the disruption could affect its operations. In addition, network visualization also helps Schmitz Cargobull to reduce logistics costs by identifying potential supplier ex-work transformation and supplier consolidation projects. A useful spin-off of this new visibility is that Schmitz Cargobull is saving on travel costs by rationalizing its worldwide supplier audit activity.