Kimberly Clark, leader in essential hygiene products, uses Opalean to optimize its packaging management with its carriers and customers.

In 2020 Kimberly Clark implemented the Opalean solution to manage the flow of its Euro pallets in real time. Each month, an average of 3,500 carriers distribute pallets to 180 customers.
Before, Kimberly Clark, its logistics provider and its carriers used their own Excel spreadsheet to manage pallet accounts, until the final customer.The logistics teams had a lack of visibility, the flow management was not precise and the data was hard to analyze.

For Kimberly Clark, what were the issues related to pallet management?

The main challenge for Kimberly Clark was to manage the pallets to the final customer, while increasing the collaboration with its carriers.
In addition, the logistics team needed a consolidated view of the entire perimeter, in the form of a “control tower”, with precise performance indicators for each carrier and each customer (pallet debt, return rate, etc.). An accurate tool that would also generate clear tables to monitor partners.
Finally, Kimberly Clark wanted to control operations and the data entered by its 3PL provider.

Carriers, also connected to the platform, validate all loading and unloading operations at the customer’s site.

Thanks to real-time information sharing, the accounts of the handling supports are aligned between all partners. Any discrepancies are identified and resolved immediately. The carrier can validate the information entered or issue an alert, in case of disagreement, which will be instantly visible to the declarant.

As for Pallet Analytics, Kimberly Clark uses it to monitor its carrier and customer accounts. This tool allows to centralize all the data entered by its partners, to draw KPI’s essential to the management of reverse packaging, but also to make extractions in PDF or Excel format.

The benefits, obtained thanks to Opalean, are already visible for Kimberly Clark and all its partners.

• A centralized and real time view of pallet debts, shared with carriers and customers. It is no longer necessary to search for pallet balances in multiple documents (Excel or SAP). The entire chain has been put under control. 
• Reduced mental workload: The team focuses on collecting handling materials from carriers and customers, rather than on the quality of the information
• Improved credibility and transparency of data, mutually controlled by Kimberly Clark, the carriers, and then by the final customer.
• Simplification of dispute processing: The CMR notes are uploaded to the platform. There is no longer need to mediate by e-mail or by phone.
• Time saving for the teams: The pallet manager needs only one day per month to remind his customers and carriers, while he used to spend 50% of his time to check and confirm the information. Certain tasks have been removed, such as the end-of-month summary and the duplicate management in the TMS of transport partners.
• Simplified returns: It is now easier to plan returns with carriers, either for full truckload deliveries at the warehouse, or with pooling centers such as Paki and Epalia.
• A reduction of the pallet budget in 2021:After less than a year of use, the budget reduction is already concrete: “even if the gain is not yet quantifiable, it is palpable”..
• A reduction in the transportation budget: Kimberly Clark uses several carriers to deliver to the same customer. Previously, each carrier was assigned to a single destination, to avoid the complexity of the data in the Excel tables.