Strategic Consulting Services
Cargill
Cargill, the world's leading agricultural and bulk processing company, headquartered in Minnetonka, Minnesota, retained Radian, also of Minnetonka, to support a new logistics business process that would use software tools to optimize Cargill's shipping operations. At the core of the project, initiated in 1997, was the need to identify a rail shipment management tool to help Cargill improve customer service and cut rail logistics costs.
ETracker®, the state-of-the-art shipment management software from ALK Technologies, Inc., emerged as the superior choice following an extensive survey of available systems. A joint Cargill-Radian team recommended that Cargill license ETracker and work with ALK to adapt the system to meet Cargill's requirements. The resulting customized version of ETracker has been an unqualified success.
The eight Cargill divisions using ETracker ship over 400,000 railcar loads annually of corn products, agricultural oils, grains and oil seeds, flour and mill products, meat by-products, steel, phosphate fertilizer, and salt to customers throughout North America. Rollout of ETracker was started in June 1999 with the Corn Milling division and was completed at the final division, NorthStar Steel, in September 2000.
ETracker provides supply-chain visibility and supports Cargill's efforts to maintain sufficient product levels at customer locations while minimizing surplus inventory and railcar dwell times. The system receives, processes and organizes standard industry EDI into graphics, tables and custom reports to provide logistics managers with continuously updated information on the location, status and expected arrival time (ETA) of shipments and freight equipment.
ETracker's automatic exception alerts allow managers to focus on the relatively small number of shipments that account for the most serious logistical problems, keeping shipments moving smoothly throughout Cargill's rail supply chain. ETracker also summarizes corridor and carrier performance, allowing Cargill to compare promised with actual carrier performance.
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