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Star Pipe Products manufactures fittings for ductile iron pipes, joint restraints, and castings for municipalities and construction projects. They have an expansive supply chain, with 14 regional distribution centers across North America, over 75,000 warehouse locations and over 1 million square feet of storage space.
With a major focus on Ocean Freight, Star Pipe uses both Real-Time Container Tracking and Predictive Visibility solutions by Portcast.
What Issues Were They Facing?
Before Portcast, tracking ocean shipments was a manual process through carrier track and trace, which took up a full day or multiple hours each week. The track and trace process involved the tedious process of visiting multiple carrier websites to get updates on the location of their shipment. Given the manual nature of the process, data could be updated only once a week.
Furthermore, because the tracking process was manual, it was only initiated two weeks before the arrival of the cargo, not during the entire journey, making inventory and downstream supply chain planning difficult. Additionally, the tracking had to be done again after the shipments had arrived to ensure that the TMS being used was updated with the correct data.
What Was the Impact of Portcast’s Real-Time Visibility?
Star Pipe was able to significantly decrease the amount of time they spent manually tracking the arrival timings of their containers while increasing the frequency of data received. The implementation of Portcast API allowed easy integration of real-time container journey data directly into their ERP system. Thus enabling them to retrieve the most up-to-date data on a daily basis.
Portcast data is used across teams for planning, tracking warehouse release times, and managing inventory levels. The company’s Imports department was able to proactively inform customers about delayed shipments and exceptions; better sales promises have led to more satisfied end customers. Additionally, accurate shipment ETA timings allowed them to manage their own trucking operations and enabled the sales team to better understand the inventory level of finished goods. The planning and sales teams both benefit from the use of this data.
Star Pipes has tracked over 4,000 containers since integrating Portcast into their systems, saving over 1,200 hours of manual work each year. Through Portcast’s real-time container tracking, Star Pipe has saved over 12,000 USD and seen a 1.5X return on their investment; just from saving on tedious manual tracking.
Portcast Real-Time and Predictive Visibility Platform
We aggregate, standardise and enrich container tracking data from over 70 sources to provide you with a single source of truth. Our system detects risks and also explains the key reason for the delays so you can get a full picture of all your containers, easily.
Interested in learning more about our product? Get in touch with us for a demo today.
