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By using a unique combination of road, air charter and onboard courier, Evolution Time Critical has helped to prevent a major automotive production line from stopping by facilitating an urgent door to door delivery from Poland to Turkey
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Resourceful emergency logistics analysts have helped to prevent a major car manufacturer from stopping production by using a unique combination of road, air charter and onboard courier to transport 20 boxes of seat belt retractors weighing 221kg from Poland to Turkey. Having received the urgent enquiry late one afternoon, the Evolution Time Critical's team quickly learnt that the parts already delivered by the manufacturer's supplier were faulty and waiting for a standard delivery would delay production by two days.
Since the carmaker in question runs two cars down the same production line, halting the line would be a highly expensive exercise. With a hefty potential bill of one million euros per day for the line, the manufacturer faced penalties of two million euros if the parts were not received in time. Given that retrofitting the parts was not an option, the task of maintaining production would rely heavily on Evolution's ability to facilitate an urgent delivery.
"Every day brings a fresh challenge for our team as they deal with urgent requests from manufacturers all over the world," comments Brad Brennan, managing director, Evolution Time Critical. "In order to facilitate the emergency shipment of seat belt retractors from Poland to Turkey at short notice, we drew on our global network of logistics contacts and knowledge of international transport legislation to make sure our customer would not be exposed to substantial stoppage fees."
Analysts at Evolution's global control centre responded to the enquiry within the company's standard 15-minute response time, and organised for the 20 boxes of parts to be collected immediately and driven through local rush hour traffic to a regional airport in Wroclaw. Due to recent changes in Turkish legislation, arranging immediate traffic rights for a direct charter would be impossible, adding an extra challenge for the team. Instead, it would be necessary to find a scheduled aircraft with capacity to carry the whole shipment.
No such aircraft was operating from Wroclaw to Turkey, and as a result Evolution's analysts had to locate a flight which not only had the capacity to carry a shipment of this size, but also departed late enough to allow for the transfer of the shipment from Wroclaw.
A flight from Berlin was quickly identified, and Evolution arranged for an immediate transfer from Wroclaw to Berlin by air charter. Simultaneously, the team organised for an onboard courier from its bank of global contacts to meet the charter upon arrival in Berlin, and accompany the shipment on its onward scheduled flight to Turkey.
Having cleared customs, the shipment was rushed to the component manufacturer for delivery by noon. In the meantime, a convoy of taxis was waiting at the component manufacturer's factory to deliver the completed parts to the carmaker as they exited the production line. The shipment was delivered in full in less than 20 hours, preventing the manufacturer from losing two million euros in stoppage time.
"Despite the strong logistical expertise of most vehicle manufacturers, our experience is that vehicle manufacturers and first tier suppliers are relying on contingency planning techniques that are no longer sufficiently robust to provide guaranteed on-time delivery," comments Brennan. "With overly lean inventories and over-stretched transport infrastructures, supply chain strength analysis has to be much more rigorous. Manufacturers must be aware of new types of failure with a different level of impact and review the types of contingency solution on which they currently rely. In this instance, a standard air charter was simply not practical, leading our team to quickly identify a creative and robust solution combining various modes of transport."
www.evolution-timecritical.com
About Evolution Time Critical
Evolution Time Critical is the world's leading specialist in emergency logistics for the automotive industry. Analysts are available 24 hours a day, ready to develop and implement solutions in any part of the world within a 15-minute response window, calling on a vast range of techniques, skills and contacts to ensure that goods reach their destination on time.
The skills of Evolution's team are also available for consulting projects, helping clients to achieve additional savings in their supply chains while also strengthening and improving manufacturing efficiency. Increasingly, Evolution has found that emergency logistics is playing an integral role in lean strategies as the automotive industry returns to higher production volumes, allowing further inventory reductions while maintaining the reliability of deliveries to manufacturing plants.
The expertise and techniques developed by Evolution for the automotive sector are also benefitting the aerospace and marine industries, where the company helps clients to release capital trapped in spare parts by facilitating urgent parts deliveries, and return aircraft and ships to service more quickly.
Press Contact
Katharine Earley at Market Engineering
+44 (0)1295 277 050
katharine.earley@m-eng.com
Sales and Marketing Contact
Brad Brennan at Evolution Time Critical
+ 44 (0)1332 814 914
bbrennan@evolution-timecritical.com
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