Direct Store Delivery

What is Direct Store Delivery (DSD)?

Direct Store Delivery (DSD) is the term used to describe a method of delivering products from a supplier or distributor directly to a retail store, thereby bypassing a retailer's distribution center. DSD products are typically fast-moving consumer products like food, beverage, personal care, oil and gas.

Why optimize Direct Store Delivery?

The service requirements for direct store delivery are increasing, due to:

• larger, faster changing and growing assortments
• shorter delivery times
• increasing number of promotions
• volatility in demand

These developments have a huge impact on the number of goods to be shipped and choices to be made about their distribution. A high service, reliability and transparency, but also efficiency are crucial to stay competitive. In addition, the costs for direct store delivery are increasing due to rising labor costs, traffic congestion, and rules and restrictions, especially for city distribution. Shippers and retailers wish to increasingly fine-tune availability, delivery times and margins.

How to optimize Direct Store Delivery?

Direct Store Delivery can be optimized by implementing load building and route optimization on a strategic, tactical, and operational level. The main improvements that lead to savings on costs and better performance are:

• Moving from static to dynamic planning
• Moving from decentralized to centralized planning
• Creating transparency and visibility such that receiver and carrier can optimize their part of the supply chain
• Optimizing the use of truck space and multi-temperature zones by adding optimized load building

What are the results of optimizing Direct Store Delivery?

The main results of optimized Direct Store Delivery are:

• Savings on transportation costs of up to 15%
• Reduced number of kilometers/miles driven, leading to CO2 reduction
• Satisfied customers by having a better on-time service performance
• Increased employee satisfaction by delivering a realistic amount of work to execute
• Reduced hardware footprint, in particular when using cloud solutions

Why contact ORTEC to optimize Direct Store Delivery?

ORTEC is specialized in planning and optimization with a strong focus on retail solutions for store and home delivery, including timeslot booking. ORTEC has successfully optimized a wide variety of delivery concepts for Consumer Packaged Goods - both perishable and non-perishable - for retailers.