A story of how Maersk’s integrated supply chain solutions helped a retailer to speed up delivery
The customer
Our customer is a leading grocery retail brand with over 400 stores in the United States. The company enjoys a steadily growing market presence across both its online and offline channels.
The challenge
In today’s highly connected global market, COVID-19 has presented large-scale disruption to supply chains, and public health institute guidelines have become a source of tension at many stores that are supplying essential goods during the pandemic. The retail world is most susceptible to these discrepancies and our customer’s business was no exception.
A major impact on the logistics industry and the rapid increase in the demand for Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) caused a local shortage of the same.
In order to resume the highest safety standards for their staff and customers, our customer needed to ensure the supply of PPE in the fastest way possible.
The Maersk solution
In no time, Maersk brought its product management experts together to discuss the best method to speed up the supply of PPE to the customer.
The integration of its ocean and logistics services provided great flexibility and allowed Maersk to provide an airfreight solution combined with store door delivery. This meant that there was a seamless flow of PPE from origin port of loading to the final destination, with one touchpoint. Maersk also demonstrated its ability to quickly adapt to changes when the PPE supplier experienced a production and documentation delay. This was done by changing the Less-than-truckload shipment to a Team Truck to further speed up delivery and save an additional 2 days at the destination.
The result
The flexibility to switch to alternative and contingency transport solutions helped our customer to dramatically speed up the delivery of PPE despite large-scale disruption to supply chains caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The main benefits were
- Quick introduction of effective measures to protect the health and safety of staff, customers, and communities.
- Single touchpoint across ocean and land, including one invoice from origin port of loading to final destination.
- High level of flexibility achieved through a broad product portfolio, including alternative and contingency transportation modes.
I sent a quick text message to our Maersk Sales Representative on a Saturday and it was just a matter of hours to set up a call with Maersk’s product management experts to talk about solutions on how to speed up the delivery of PPE – I was impressed.
Flexibility to shape your retail supply chain
The integration of ocean and logistics services provides us with a unique advantage— the flexibility to tailor solutions according to the needs of the customer for both single products and product bundles. This includes finding different ways of transportation and alternative routes to handle supply chain disruptions if needed.
To determine which option will be the most effective for your business, contact us.
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