Exceeding Goals with a Fast ROI at Benjamin Moore

Benjamin Moore, an industry leader committed to innovation and sustainability, had a goal to improve its truck loading and distribution process.

Benjamin Moore, a Berkshire Hathaway company, was founded in 1883 and is one of the world's leading paint, color, and coatings brands. A manufacturer of premium quality residential and commercial coatings, Benjamin Moore maintains a relentless commitment to innovation and sustainable manufacturing practices. The Montvale, New Jersey-based company employs more than 2,000 team members, and has five manufacturing facilities, located primarily in North America.

As an organization that is committed to innovation in manufacturing and sustainability, Benjamin Moore was looking for a better way to manage its internal distribution operations to maximize capacity and reduce errors.

Bill Johnson, senior vice president of supply chain, said, “We needed a systematic way to maximize pallets and weight for our truckload shipments of finished goods from our manufacturing plants to our Distribution centers where product is fulfilled to our retailers.”

With no system in place to drive loading optimization, the company often relied on the knowledge of its employees. “While they did their best, it caused us to under ship, leaving multiple pallets off the truck, while in other cases [we were] over shipping, causing delays and fines – which leads to overall customer dissatisfaction,” said Johnson.

Benjamin Moore conducted an extensive review of supply chain vendors, including an RFI and RFP process. Ultimately, their research and resulting conversations led them to select ORTEC as their preferred partner. The ORTEC Load Building for SAP® solution offers advanced optimization algorithms for 3D Pallet and Load Building, is fully certified by SAP, and integrates seamlessly into the customer’s SAP environment.

Impacting the Entire Supply Chain for Increased Customer Satisfaction, Greater Sustainability, and Cost Savings

Benjamin Moore partnered with ORTEC to optimize its load building for deliveries to its distribution centers, as well as to make improvements throughout its supply chain.

“We teamed with ORTEC to not only implement their load optimization software, but also to implement a comprehensive supply chain integration which load building was part of,” said Anthony Buchan, director of transportation.

Buchan described the team’s goals for the larger project as being three-fold, including: “increasing customer satisfaction both internally and externally, driving sustainability to reduce our carbon footprint by requiring less shipments due to maximization of weight on each shipment, and achieving cost savings on process improvements and shipping costs.”

''We have achieved and exceeded our goals. We were able to payback this initiative in less than one year, an outstanding ROI. With less trucks required, we have reduced our carbon footprint and since we are more efficient, our fulfillment rates have increased.''

- Anthony Buchan, Director of Transportation

Building a Partnership for Supply Chain Optimization

ORTEC endeavors to be more than just a software vendor to its clients, building and designing partnerships and impact approaches that help its users continuously improve their operations. Benjamin Moore has experienced that commitment first-hand.

In describing the relationship, Buchan stated, “The experience exemplifies the true meaning of a partnership. The initiative was challenging and complex, but ORTEC was up to the challenge. There was support and engagement from the executive team as needed and they had a highly engaged and motivated implementation team with plenty of resources supporting their efforts. They were also excellent in hypercare and are a trusted partner going forward.”

New Initiatives Required a Customized Solution to Meet Customer Needs and Expectations

Benjamin Moore implemented an inventory staging process to load from manufacturing lines straight to staging lanes for shipment and then into the trucks destined for their warehouses. Through this initiative, they committed organizationally to achieve labor and warehouse savings.

As a part of this process, ORTEC 3D load building is used to ensure that truck loads are built to maximize capacity and reduce empty air. The system automatically manages full and partial pallet staging and loading order to increase efficiency, while allowing flexibility for adjustments to support variations. The loading sequence can also be modified to accept placing more stable items at the back of the truck to improve end of trailer stability.

While ORTEC has a certified SAP integration that embeds its load building tools directly into the SAP environment, the Benjamin Moore project necessitated multiple algorithm customizations to support the requirements and desired functionality. These requirements included automating the process without manual triggers, ensuring the process was performed as efficiently as possible and only optimized when necessary, and customizing the user dashboard to enable access to visualization tools.