METAL & STEEL

STEEL / WIRE & COATINGS

€4.4 BILLION

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Bekaert Corporation

Bekaert Corporation develops a controllable freight strategy in North America

Customer

Bekaert is a world market and technology leader in steel wire transformation and coating technologies. The company pursues to be the preferred supplier for its steel wire products and solutions by continuously delivering superior value to its customers worldwide. Bekaert Corporation, a subsidiary of Belgium-based NV Bekaert SA (Euronext Brussels: BEKB), was established in 1880 and is a global company with almost 30,000 employees worldwide. In late 2015, Bekaert Corporation implemented the Transporeon platform to help align strategic sourcing and executional transportation management across its North American operations.

From a commercial aspect, Transporeon allowed for a higher level of transparency and the ability to build a controlled strategy for the transportation spend of the business.

Matt Watring, Transportation sourcing manager North America
Bekaert Corporation

Challenges

  • Each plant was responsible for its own logistics and freight management, resulting in disconnected scheduling activities between the plant and central transportation
  • Lack of transparency around the way carriers were being selected and measured
  • Freight assignment to carriers was handled manually through phone calls and email
  • Shipping facilities were experiencing dock congestion and accumulating high detention charges resulting from poor visibility into on-site truck activityon sourcing manager North America

Solution

All five of Bekaert’s U.S. manufacturing facilities plus three additional business units now use the Transporeon platform, achieving:

  • “Control tower” transportation management using Transporeon Shipment Execution integrated with Bekaert’s SAP platform for visibility and accurate information exchange across both environments
  • Validation of spot market-based freight assignment using a competitive bid model with Transporeon “Best Carrier”
  • Automated shipment execution through Transporeon “Best Carrier” and “No-Touch Order”
  • More effective planning capabilities and easier validation—or even rejection—of carrier detention fees with Transporeon Time Slot Management

Results

BETTER PLANNING & EXECUTION

An “appointment-only” model ensures time slots are set up to match shipping capacity

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MORE CONTROL

Transportation for incoming freight, returns and LTL is now centralized and much simpler given the ability to handle more volume with less effort

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EASE OF REPORTING

Significant reduction in carrier payment processing effort with quicker issue resolution

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TRANSPARENCY

Ability to independently validate tenders assigned to lowest-cost provider in an audit-proof system