On the way with punctuality

Punctuality is the virtue of kings, but it is also allegedly the soul of business. Without it, people turn impatient or anxious, but its consequences in business are often much more serious and include delays, downtime, damaged reputation, and also frequent financial losses and terminated contracts.

Numerous logistics companies are dealing with such problems. The Raben Group had a situation in the spring of 2017 during its cooperation with Pantos Logistics – a subsidiary of LG Electronics in charge of the leading electronics provider’s logistics. In the first quarter of the aforementioned year, the OTD (On Time Delivery) level was satisfactory. However, it would soon drop below the level expected by the client because of the difficult situation on the market, including insufficient resources and shortage of drivers.

Nothing about us without us

Comprehensive repairs were prepared in the fall of 2017 in order to raise punctuality and increase the quality of the provided services. The independent Raben network in Germany – developed and announced in the previous quarter – was launched in January of 2018. The quality improvement process was opened to the client to let us prepare the best individual solutions – under the principle of “nothing about us without us”.

The LEAN workshops, which were attended by representatives of Pantos and the Raben Business Improvement Team, included discussions and compilations of the entire transport process, established the brief path of escalation for elimination of needless communication, and covered a common FTP document archiving system (documents, reports). The following month included implementation of the new communication between the Raben Group’s divisions in Poland and Germany based on full status-based reporting. This provided the clients with proactive information on the current shipment status and the saved time went towards raising added value in the delivery process.

The foundation is information

The effects of the collective efforts came quickly: shipment punctuality was improved in January by 8 percentage points. July saw the record OTD of 10 pp. The volume was equally impressive: in May of 2018 – the month preceding the start of the World Cup – it rose by almost 15% from the corresponding period of the previous year. In the meantime, Raben was able to extend a key contract on the German market.

The Raben Group closed its cooperation with Pantos in 2018 – the first 12 months under the new standards and improved communication – on an upward trend in scope of both punctuality and increased order volume and numbers. Fulfilment of the set goals was one thing, but we also received praise from the client, who showed appreciation for the way we handled the situation and the partner relations between the companies and declared the desire to continue our development and cooperation, which is evidenced in the record volumes.

On 2 January 2019, to crown this success and show appreciation for the policy of credible and clear information on the shipment status provided to customers, the Raben Group launched a new function based on ETA (Estimated Time of Arrival). This is an advanced tool determining the planned time of delivery based on GPS data and registered information concerning the processing of individual shipments loaded on the delivery vehicle. Its main features include increased information availability, process transparency, and convenient planning. The new function will definitely help further improve the quality of the provided services and consequentially raise satisfaction from cooperation and relations with customers even more.