Kohler Case Study

Number of Sites – 4

Quote

“With LoadProof we can take different sample audits out there and use that as a training tool or a process improvement tool to really stabilize the shipping processes”. – Paulo Lubag – Manager Logistics Solutions – Kohler.

Transcription

Puga  –

What is what is something that you guys like about this tool,  if you could say three things about the tool that you guys like it

Paulo-

Yeah definitely, obviously just the actual solution itself the fact that we are taking a more modern approach I guess you’d call it in this part of our operations uploading instantly seeing it on your desktop,  it’s really seamless for our operations leaders out there to really see where the gaps are in our processes so it’s an instant identifier of course there’s that pretty common phrase the picture tells a thousand words so it’s easier for us to really understand where our efforts need to focus on whether that’s in that day that week so far it’s been solid from that end

Puga – 

Okay and where do you guys see the most savings, we have customers that have seen all different kinds of savings one is the overall number of claims that they got reduced that happened and then also the time that they spend on researching things as a team  sometimes multiplayer like that where do you guys see the see the big benefit in terms of LoadProof? 

Paulo – 

So, though we haven’t necessarily seen it from that specific perspective where your customers may have and that’s again that has a lot to do most more on our end and our process, essentially the solution is it’s sort of isolated now in logistics but we do plan on expanding it and showing it to other parts of our businesses. We just wanted to increase our site adoption rates to multiple sites so that we could have a standardized process across our network. We do have a pretty wide network so it’s essentially a ramp up plan. 

Once we get enough sites on board and then we could start to pull in customer service like pull in marketing teams, sales teams just to show them that “hey these are the quality loads that are coming out of our sites and if there are any issues then you could let us know I think for us the most benefit that we have seen though is just a from a process stability perspective. 

Again we’re more really focused on sort of identifying the gaps that’s what my team does and so the images really tell us the story of  how where those gaps exist in our process. So if you have  20 to 30 pictures for that shipment   you could essentially monitor every single pallet that goes into your trailer if processes are executed correctly. So it does allow us to to really close those gaps faster if we’re able to hunt it down 

Puga – 

So is it fair to say that I mean now people are let’s say there is an origin facility that ships product, and let’s say a destination facility a destination customer or it could be a  internal caller   site so are you seeing that because now we have pictures to go back and see it the the quality of the work or the packaging or the shrink wrapping that’s being done at the origin facility is much better and also at the destination facility they are able to log in and look at all this and they’re trusting this thing more is that what it is?

Paulo – 

Yeah I mean necessarily that’s our ultimate goal  is to have everybody looking and policing each other on quality. Our operation is pretty friendly and we have a pretty good relationship with our operators so  they do understand that it’s not necessarily that we’re watching them or monitoring every single move they make but we do have an audit process in place where we can take different sample audits out there and use that as a training tool or a process improvement tool to really stabilize those processes as mentioned earlier 

Puga – 

Okay great, okay so it’s a great audit tool that if some problem happens they’re able to go back and look at these pictures and they’re able to  basically evaluate and say “hey now we got these pictures where did we drop the ball they know clearly” 

Paulo – 

correct 

 

Puga – 

oh okay that’s great and how did that improve your customer service or  how is the let’s say the recipient or the destination are they seeing any difference in terms of “hey now the quality is better the packing is better the pallets are stacked nicely or the  boxes are stacked nicely and the pallets have been loaded nicely on the trailer” and things like that?

Paulo – 

Yeah i mean overall we have definitely improved there’s still some more hashing out of that process as mentioned earlier. Customer service  really monitors the claims from their perspective and they have their own sets of processes. But overall our numbers are doing better  year over year  of course we’ve got some challenges here with the covid and we do it we didn’t have like any other company. We had to adjust our outbound and inbound operations with the newer associates that may have not been loaded before. 

I could say it has definitely helped us with the training part of it too. So i’ll probably lean more on that latter comment there with the LoadProof. We could easily train an operator who’s maybe on their first or second week on the job and say “hey here’s some quality loads if you want to identify with a a good load or what’s a bad load”, then quickly get into the LoadProof site and show them some real-life examples of  how a trailer should be loaded with our product in it.

Puga – 

Great okay that’s fantastic so you mentioned that the numbers have improved a little bit  what are those numbers, are those chargeback numbers or are those claim numbers or are those freight claims?

Paulo – 

yeah i mean ultimately they are claim numbers. We measure claims, i’m not sure how different they are from other competitors in our market or other players in our industry in logistics. But our claims are essentially measured through accuracy as well as as quality of loads meeting damages. So yeah we’ve seen improvements in the accuracy. We do load a lot of full pallets so I mean overall yeah we’ve seen improvements. I can’t think of the top of my head what those specific improvements or  metrics wise but  we have seen a downtick 

Puga – 

So basically this is you ship a trailer and then something happened with damage and then you’re supporting a freight claim to the carrier. Now you’re able to accurately provide information so the freight claims get processed I mean obviously every time a freight claim is created  the carrier is involved there may be somebody else that is involved and then  if you’re underwriting insurance, the insurance companies involved so now we are able to provide whatever information that’s needed in a more accurate fashion is that what it is 

Paulo – 

The transportation piece of I mean yes that would be our ultimate standard process. Again we haven’t pulled in the transportation departments yet just because we’re still trying to increase  our site adoption so we have and then for the current ones we haven’t rolled that out yet so hard to really say that the main reason. I think most of the process stability and process improvements are really more on the in-house side from a training perspective and not necessarily claims where someone’s pulling up the LoadProof site  where they could look at “hey we loaded it this way it’s not necessarily on the site’s fault or the carrier’s fault so  we’re not there yet but that is the ultimate plan”.