Unilever’s Journey to Logistics Optimization

Background

Unilever is a world-leading supplier of food, home, and personal care products with 400+ brands and sales and distribution in over 190 countries. A key part of the global Unilever business is the logistics operations that ensures that 3.4 billion people are able to use Unilever products every day around the world.

Given the scale and complexity of the logistics operations, Unilever have been looking at innovative ways to reduce logistics cost while continuing to deliver best-in-class customer service. Unilever was looking for a transportation management system that enabled them to not only reduce costs but optimize productivity, and be functionally inputted across all of their teams globally.

With different teams requiring different solutions depending on the market they operate within, Unilever required a solution that could be operationalized both as standard across the company, as well as providing tailored solutions for many different requirements.

Results

Unilever implemented Oracle’s Transportation Management Cloud across their global network of Unilever logistics which has been implemented with several other business-critical applications, including warehouse management system, enterprise resource planning, and transportation rate systems.

With a global organization like Unilever, the global design of these projects is critical to ensure you have the right balance of standardization across the board, but the ability and scope to customize within different markets.

This project has enabled Unilever to utilize advanced logistics planning logic to better leverage cross-docking and load consolidation to support just-in-time delivery, and reduce the number of trucks required as well as inventory requirements.

The advantages of this have been twofold. The solutions of the project have enabled smarter decision making which has led to cost reduction by combining loads and using fewer trucks, as well as being able to spend less time generating and analyzing logistics data thanks to real-time information.

Another positive outcome is the drive towards sustainability; a big focus for Unilever globally. With better visibility of transport lanes and optimization of vehicle utilization, Unilever's logistics team is able to make smarter decisions that lead to sustainable actions such as reducing emissions through combining loads, as well as understand traffic to reroute and minimize miles, as well as cutting paper usage with the help of cloud operational functions.

By attending the webinar you will learn:

How to utilize the cloud for overall cost reduction

How to perfect the foundations prior to optimization

The sustainability benefits of cloud implementation

Ready to dive into the world of world class logistics?

Dirk-Jan de Ruiter

Global Logistics Director | Road Transportation & Logistics Sustainability | Unilever

Dirk’s career spans 17+ years of driving large-scale business optimization initiatives with a strong customer-centric approach. In his current role as Global Head of Logistics, Road Transportation & Logistics Sustainability at Unilever, he has responsibility for the long term strategy definition and roll-out for road transportation and logistics sustainability across all of Unilever operations globally.

He has had multiple successes in leading complex, cross-functional projects and programs to deliver cost-effective flow of products, sustained productivity and working capital improvement.

With keen qualitative and quantitative business acumen, he drives collaboration with diverse stakeholders across global territories. Prior to his current role he was Head of Warehousing and Transportation at Kraft Heinz.

VIKRAM SINGLA

Strategy and Transformation Director | Sustainability Ambassador | Oracle

Vikram helps supply chain and finance business leaders leverage technology to deliver meaningful business outcomes for their organizations. He also serves on the board of CILT (Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport) – UK. He has over 25 years’ experience in the technology sector, including deploying supply chain transformation programmes for Fortune 500 firms. One of his initial assignments was to build digital factory models to drive capital investment decisions at an automotive major. He is currently responsible for defining and executing the go-to-market strategy for cloud solutions in the UK. Vikram has an MBA from Warwick Business School and graduated from IIT (Indian Institute of Technology) Delhi, India

MARIA VILLABLANCA

Co-founder and CEO | Future Insights Network

Maria Villablanca is the Co-founder and CEO of The Future Insights Network, the fast-growing network of over 130,000 manufacturing and supply chain leaders, the host of the supply chain transformation podcast, Transform Talks and the author of the Transform Thoughts newsletter. Maria has interviewed hundreds of senior practitioners, thought-leaders, academics, and innovators from the world's most admired organizations to cut through the hype and noise around supply chain, manufacturing and transformation.