Industry: Fashion | Year: 2013 – ongoing
Spindox supported a well-known Italian clothing company for men, women, and children, with around 1,500 stores in Italy and abroad, in the reorganization of their logistics processes in response to the post-COVID-19 e-commerce boom and to optimize seasonal distribution. The end result was a stark improvement in the supply chain processes and delivery performance.
Ublique is Spindox’s platform for decision-making that implements statistical tools and applied artificial intelligence to simulate, forecast, and optimize processes.
With our technology, we have supported a well-known clothing company for men, women, and children. In particular, the Ublique functionalities, Transport Planning and that one about the logistic solution, were applied to achieve efficient project planning. The system was customized to meet the needs of the client and has become the cornerstone of a profound transformation of processes with two very clear objectives: to increase both sales and stock efficiency. This dedication toward logistics is matched by a similar commitment toward the distribution processes. Read about it here.
Challenge 1: optimization of transport planning
The customer’s initial need was to manage emergencies by speeding up the delivery of merchandise to the various stores and warehouses that manage the e-commerce flows. The Transport Management System (TMS) created by Spindox is the combination of two modules from the Ublique platform.
The Solution
Ublique | Transport Planning
The Transport Planning solution of the Ublique platform was used to optimize the transport of merchandise from the central warehouse to the stores. The calculation algorithm analyzes the availability of the merchandise present in the warehouse, selects the merchandise to be shipped, and intelligently organizes the routes for the delivery transportation, establishing the precise itinerary, the shipments with the relative subdivisions of the packages, and the timetable determining the departure of the vehicles.
The system allows stores to log into the platform and view their shipping plan in real time with the expected delivery time of each delivery of the day. It has a multilingual interface and also contains an instant messaging system.
Delivery planning and scheduling systems are not all equal
The first objective of this tool is to ensure that the vehicles deliver the merchandise in an efficient manner, both in terms of distance and time. For this reason, the implemented TMS (Transport Management System) knows the position of every single point of sale (latitude and longitude) via a map that allows it to calculate the travel times and distances between two points. This feature also supports the company’s sustainability objectives to reduce emissions.
The TMS is a flexible system, adaptable to changing business conditions without resorting to third party software suppliers. It is a collaborative system that encompasses both the points of sale and the logistics operators with a single representation of the data. Furthermore, thanks to an integrated simulation mechanism, it can use the data to find areas of inefficiency and test new potential solutions to be adopted.
The Advantages
- Operational tool doubles as a simulation tool: through the real-time tracking of fleets via the GPS that’s integrated into the system, it is possible to reprogram vehicle routes, if necessary;
- determination of the return on investments thanks to a series of KPIs that monitor the delivery performance;
- management of delivery planning to and from different warehouses;
- automatic planning of delivery routes to stores considering the different parameters associated with the delivery addresses (allowed times, vehicle size limits, road limits);
- mitigation of waste and losses in transport costs;
- faster and more effective distribution.
Challenge 2: optimization of logistics capacity
The merchandise arriving at each point of sale must be efficiently organized to ensure an accurately recorded and correctly supplied stock.
The Solution
The Ubliques‘s solution dedicated to logistic constructs logistically optimal shipment batches [AM1] that respect the constraints and maximizes the productivity of the resources involved (robots, sorters, and other devices associated with logistics activities).
In addition to addressing the abovementioned first challenge, the algorithm also incorporates the data of the client’s logistics systems to optimize the parameters and provide indications on the preparation and packing of the boxes that constitute the pallets to be shipped to the various stores. The solution uses experienced-based commercial KPIs to establish which merchandise is required as well as technical KPIs to obtain input on the type and size of the merchandise.
The user has the ability to check the results of the KPIs and the optimization process in real time and can decide at any time to block or modify the processes. This optimization algorithm has no numerical limits in terms of the amount of data to be analyzed and is capable of handling large amounts of data.
The Advantages
- Optimization and automation of the logistics processes for the merchandise preparation phase:
– packing optimization of the boxes: the merchandise is intelligently packed inside boxes based on the rules established by the client;
– the boxes are always full: one of the challenges that department stores face is how to optimize the capacity of the boxes in the best possible way to avoid wasting space;
– if the boxes are maximized, there is an automatic savings in shipping costs, among other aspects such as less production of labels and less handling of boxes;
– control of the contents in the box to maintain the highest quality: through our automated processes, the parameters used to pack the boxes can be defined to obtain shipment batches that reflect the actual needs of the stores. Deadline verifications and the practical selection of sizes and packages are then performed automatically (with the correct combinations).
- Workload management of logistics sorters.
- Optimization of handling activities and the resulting reduction in the costs of the human resources employed.
