3PL Partnerships: You're In Good Company

Inbound Logistics | By: Chris Lewis. 

To decrease the size of its shipments—while also increasing the speed of their delivery—Winsupply Inc., a nationwide distributor of building materials based in Moraine, Ohio, sought a 3PL partner to help scale its business operations to prepare for a changing marketplace. At the same time, it was also interested in maintaining its longstanding commitment to focusing on each of its individual locations across the United States and empowering their financial success.

As Winsupply prepared to boost shipment delivery time, while also reducing shipment size, it encountered a variety of supply chain management challenges: managing inventory across approximately 600 locations, optimizing scheduling and routing on asset and non-asset transportation, and maintaining overall landed cost while increasing velocity.

UNIQUE NETWORK DESIGN

Winsupply found a 3PL partner—Columbus, Ohio-based ODW Logistics—that was uniquely positioned to help it overcome supply chain management challenges and improve its shipment capabilities. Due to its infrastructure, which includes warehousing and asset-based trucking, non-asset transportation of all modes, freight planning and optimization, and engineering personnel, ODW Logistics was able to design a supply chain network specifically for Winsupply.

To prepare for this network design, ODW Logistics first needed to understand and replicate Winsupply's business activity—a nearly six-month process of onboarding, as well as the implementation of technology integration and online portals and processes, such as carrier score carding and in-transit exception management. After this process was completed, an array of value-added phases followed, including distribution center location analysis modeling and redesign, increased trailer utilization, route design for reduced lead time, and truckload pool distribution.

"For a best-in-class supply chain, we needed to first determine the right number of distribution centers that would optimize service level and total logistics cost, with certain variable constraints," McCann explains. "ODW Logistics helped us form the strategy roadmap and deliver the dynamic modeling that guided us to the most appropriate short- and long-term outcomes."

As a result of ODW Logistics' assistance, Winsupply now maintains a more efficient and repeatable supply chain process that has improved its delivery speed without increasing its cost-to-serve. Since partnering with ODW Logistics, the relationship has continued to flourish—from the time in which it began to implement new online portals to its current strategic plan for long-term growth and cost reductions. That plan, according to ODW Logistics, is a value-driven service that is utilizing the strengths of both organizations for future success and growth.