DHL Supply Chain has launched a pan-European, in-bound logistics service for Jaguar Land Rover (JLR).
The system is designed to reduce costs and enable more responsive logistics planning, and has already resulted in a ten per cent improvement in supply chain efficiency.
The European in-bound logistics function involves 500 automotive component suppliers in 17 countries, and is run from DHL’s freight control tower in Veghel, Holland, where it also plays a central role in planning and managing other supply chain service providers on JLR’s behalf.
The European in-bound collection service comprises more than 980 full and partial load collections every week to sites in Castle Bromwich, Solihull and Halewood, and is one of the largest of its kind in the UK.
DHL uses a combination of transport services, including full truck loads, milk round collections and groupage, in a bid to provide the most efficient and cost effective service.
As part of the in-bound solution, DHL introduced a container management team to reduce reverse logistics costs and a new vendor management quality system to investigate and solve delivery issues across the supplier base.
DHL’s supply chain management system has also been integrated with the JLR system to provide greater transparency and supply chain visibility.
Laurie Cogger, vice president, lead logistics provider automotive at DHL Supply Chain UK, said: “This has been a hugely complex project to implement in a very short timescale – just four weeks from project approval to implementation – but one that has paid great dividends already.
“Our implementation of the control tower ethos, where we act as a 4PL, brings best practice and supply chain innovations, and has worked really well. This has been a real partnership between us and the JLR team.”
The move follows the implementation of the UK parts collection service in August 2008.
