Company crisis
The Covid-19 pandemic has caused significant disruptions to global supply chains, including the chemical industry. The shortage of raw chemical materials and increased demand for sanitizers has resulted in operational challenges and logistical disturbances. To sustain growth, chemical companies must prioritize mitigating costs, managing inventories, and avoiding bottlenecks. Adaptability, determination, and planning are essential traits for chemical companies facing these challenges.
Companies must reinvent their operational processes, inventory management strategies, and transportation management to ensure business continuity. As each country responds differently to health and economic crises, supply chain challenges in the chemical industry are inevitable. The situation has necessitated changes in inventory management, raw material procurement, demand monitoring, workforce procedures, and freight costs.
When it comes to managing transportation and logistics, chemical companies are facing the following four main concerns:
Moving to Road and Railways
The transportation and logistics operations of the chemical industry have traditionally relied heavily on air and water transportation, particularly in larger countries and across international borders. However, due to rising safety concerns and inflated costs, chemical companies are increasingly turning to road and rail transportation for the transportation of raw materials and finished products. This shift in transportation modes has a direct impact on the final product’s cost, and accurate tracking of landing costs, end-to-end transportation tracking, and scheduling are significant pain points for chemical companies.
On-time Delivery of Raw Material
The demand for various chemicals has recently experienced a sudden and unexpected disparity. While the need for chemical surface cleaners and sanitizers has skyrocketed globally (which is quite understandable), the significant challenges lie in ensuring the timely delivery of these materials. Unforeseeable transportation lead times and difficulties in delivering the raw materials are significant pain points that impact the accuracy of the receipt dates.
Transportation Planning and Inventory Management
Efficient inventory management is a crucial component of ensuring a smooth supply chain operation. In the present times, chemical companies must align their logistical arrangements and requirements with the availability of products in their inventories. This necessitates end-to-end visibility and prompts higher-level decision-making to enable faster changes in material requirements. However, inefficient transportation planning is a significant obstacle to this process, which leads to delays and hampers supply chain efficiency.
Increased Freight Cost and Changing Regulations
As a result of the changes in transportation modes and disruptions in the global demand and supply patterns of chemicals, freight costs have increased several times over. Chemical companies are thus faced with the challenge of managing higher freight costs along with logistics and supply chain issues.
How can TopFreight help optimize your chemical company’s transportation andlogistics operations?
TopFreight offers a range of features that are specifically designed to help chemical companies manage their operations, inventory, and transportation. By gaining a comprehensive view of your company’s transportation and chemical supply chain management through TopFreight, you can effectively plan and implement optimization strategies for your chemical transportation and logistics operations..
Chemical companies need to maintain and track information about their chemicals under high-level categories. Additionally, labelling batches, identifying hazardous substances, barcoding containers, and specifying chemical properties are all essential components of any chemical company’s logistics plan in TopFreight.
With TopFreight’s Order Management indicator, complete inventory visibility is possible, allowing all stakeholders to stay informed and avoid bottlenecks or stock-outs during these uncertain times.
The Transportation Management module offered by TopFreight is a comprehensive solution that chemical companies can leverage to manage their transportation and logistics operations effectively. The module has a range of features that enable businesses to identify vendor and routing solutions for both inbound and outbound orders. In the current market dynamics, which are characterized by extreme price inflation and frequent changes, this module helps chemical companies reduce operational costs by optimizing their inbound and outbound transportation.
The TopFreight Transportation Management System module includes highly advanced business intelligence capabilities that help chemical companies identify the most efficient and cost-effective carriers. By leveraging this module, businesses can gain real-time visibility into their entire order and transportation process.
Impactful benefits of the TopFreight
Here are some of the most impactful benefits of the TopFreight Transportation Management System module for chemical companies:
- Warehouse Management Efficiency
- Enhanced Delivery Capabilities
- Inventory Reductions
- Real-time Supply Chain Visibility
- Effective Customer Service Set up Ad-hoc Cycle Counting Thresholds and Cycle Count Locations
- Pre-schedule Route Planning for Efficient Transportation
- Availability of Multi-packing Slips in Load Planning
- Skip Trivial Freight Reconciliation Process
To meet their unique shop-floor operations, every chemical company requires customized production operations plans for kits and packaging to ensure adequate transportation. This customization option is easily accessible with TopFreight.
Companies can utilize the system to manage lot tracking, tracing of chemicals, route mapping, resource availability, and freight cost management. Additionally, the system provides the option of generating individual or batch invoices to streamline billing processes.
The Transportation Management module in Dynamics 365 follows a well-vetted process flow that is both dynamic and customizable based on the specific transportation requirements of the chemical company.