Data makes the difference for Coca-Cola

Improving visibility throughout your supply chain can bring strong gains in productivity and efficiency. Just ask leaders at Coca-Cola and supply chain visibility platform FourKites.

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Coca-Cola is raising customer satisfaction levels by gaining greater visibility into its transportation operations, an exercise that has helped reduce detention and dwell times and is giving all constituents a better view of where shipments are and when they will arrive. The company is using technology tools from FourKites to achieve the results, a project representatives from both firms discussed during an education session at CSCMP EDGE 2021, being held this week in Atlanta.

To address detention and dwell time issues, Coca-Cola uses FourKites' Dynamic ETA and Executive Dashboard to improve insight throughout its network. Essentially, the tools help give all parties access to the same data, with analysis that Coca-Cola can use to react to issues and prevent problems. As Coca-Cola’s Don Wermerskirchen explained, the tech tools help centralize dwell reporting data, allowing Coca-Cola to track that information across its carriers and facilities.

The benefits? In a nutshell, the tools allow all parties access to the information they need in one place—and the ability to see where inefficiencies are and how they affect operations. Wermerskirchen encapsulated the program by noting that “you can’t fix what you can’t see,” and adding that the visibility program has shown that some facilities are performing better than others—and some worse—and that customer delays are sometimes the cause of detention.

CSCMP EDGE 2021 is being held September 19-22 in Atlanta.