If your company acquires another, how long is long enough for your logistics provider to devise a supply chain solution that involves finding a new building, mastering a complex inventory, revamping an outmoded distribution system and setting up a software solution to drive it all? Eighteen months? A year?

How about six weeks?

That’s how long DSC Logistics took to solve the logistics challenge that Kimberly-Clark brought to us when they acquired a new division as part of growing their Healthcare business.

The division, Tecnol, had an Orthopedics group that sold supplies like knee braces and wrist splints to doctors’ offices nationwide.  Distribution had been handled internally in a highly manual environment. But Kimberly-Clark wanted a more cost-efficient, automated operation.
Did they have time to study this new division and figure out how to bridge the transition seamlessly? No. Did they still want to make an outstanding impression on their new customers? Yes.

Call in DSC. As their third party logistics provider, we took on mastering this challenge for them so they had more time to spend running the business. We found a space for this new operation, which required picking an average 100 orders per day, each unique. Then we set up “each pick” lines to expedite the process.  We revamped our Warehouse Management System (WMS) to track inventory perfectly on a per-unit basis. Finally, we devised a labeling system that noted box contents on the outside, so that clinics didn’t have to open every box to verify shipments. Everyone was happy.

Best of all, we kept finding process improvements that permitted us to drive down Kimberly-Clark’s overhead by 45% in total costs (expressed as average cost per case shipped) over three years.

Guess it pays to have a really flexible logistics provider when you want a full range of logistics motion. That’s DSC.