A leading wholesale and retail importer credits the IMS Destination Cargo Management (DCM) platform with dramatically reducing detention and demurrage expense — and sustaining cost avoidance across its import network.
This case study features a leading wholesale and retail importer that brings goods in by ocean from overseas suppliers. The business engaged IMS in 2016 to address persistent problems in its inbound ocean operation.
The importer brings in a high volume of ocean containers each year — sourcing from 5+ origin countries and 15+ origin points, working with 5+ ocean providers (NVOs and SSLs) and their underlying carriers, and relying on 5+ trucking companies to serve warehouses across the US and Canada.
Prior to working with IMS, managing inbound ocean containers was an overlooked segment of the importer's supply chain — one that resulted in extremely high accessorial costs, especially detention and demurrage.
Coordination across truckers, warehouses, and other service providers was handled manually in spreadsheets, distributed by email, with follow-up by email and phone. The absence of visibility tools to provide accurate forecasts and actionable shipment intelligence resulted in several millions of dollars of annualized costs in demurrage, storage, detention, and excess chassis fees.
After a two-week initial implementation, the IMS DCM platform immediately provided the importer with full inbound visibility — including both FOB and DDP vendors' import containers — with systematic reporting at the SKU, PO, shipper, and group level within any given container.
By using the platform to enact and manage standard operating procedures, the importer immediately reduced detention and demurrage related expenses significantly — an over 20x cost reduction — and has sustained that cost avoidance, in this area and others.
Working with IMS, the importer built and implemented carrier and warehouse scorecards for each business partner, tied to a specific SOP — for example, requiring truckers to pick up an empty container within 48 hours of empty notification.
By measuring, monitoring, reporting, and holding focused review sessions with business partners, the importer drove down "D&D" and chassis cost exposure across the network significantly.
See how the IMS DCM platform and partner scorecards can drive down detention, demurrage, and chassis costs across your network.