Case Study Food Manufacturer Relies on Greenfield and Brownfield Optimizations

Founded in the 1960s, the company has evolved over the decades into an international food manufacturer with more than 10,000 employees. In Europe, the group has approximately 30 brands and various production sites and sales companies.

• For a planned market expansion into certain regions of Eastern Europe, the distance calculation, extrapolation and location optimization function in PSIglobal was used to determine which location was optimally suited for opening an additional distribution center. The calculation with PSIglobal considered the production sites already existing in Eastern Europe, including small warehouses and a distribution warehouse. A two-stage optimization was carried out, covering inbound logistics and outbound logistics. This way, the food manufacturer pursued the goal of permanently reducing transport costs.
• The company has made various calculations in PSIglobal, also to check the efficiency of the distribution network in the UK. The aim was to find out whether the location of the existing distribution warehouse should be retained or whether it would seem reasonable to relocate it to optimize costs. The efficiency of the existing network was confirmed, with the realization that, depending on volume growth, the opening of a second service provider location is recommended. 
• Another project served to optimize the procurement network for supplying the production sites in Europe. The focus was on the transport costs of the entire supply chain – including ship transports to the ports, port handling, truck transport, and storage and production costs. Using the underlying calculation capabilities in PSIglobal, various.
• Combinations of port and warehouse locations were modeled to find the optimal nodes in the network. The results led to cost and efficiency optimization of more than 10% in the areas of transportation, warehousing and port handling.
• In addition, the food manufacturer uses PSIglobal to calculate CO₂ emissions with the goal of creating transparency on the path to a green supply chain. For this purpose, a methodology based was developed for the quantification of CO₂ footprint, which considers the shipments made, the vehicle fleet used, and the type of fuel used.