Oji Fibre Solutions

CHEP Pallet Management Solution – from 10 hours to 10 minutes per week

At a glance

Oji Fibre Solutions (OjiFS) is a leading producer of sustainable market pulp, paper and fibre-based packaging, with aligned logistics and recycling services that close the loop on its value chain, making it a key contributor to the circular bio-economy.

OjiFS delivers product on thousands of pallets a week from its pulp and paper mills in Auckland, Kinleith, and Kawerau, to its packaging facilities in Auckland, Hamilton, Levin, and Christchurch, to its nine distribution centres, and on to customers throughout New Zealand, and around the world. The company’s vast distribution network ensures their customers receive paper and packaging products when they need them.

Business objective

Implement an automated, accurate and flexible pallet management solution for OjiFS’s Packaging Central facility in Levin, that services customers across the Central North Island of New Zealand.

Solution

A highly integrated solution that caters for the complexities that come with pallet management and transfers between many organisations with varying needs.

Outcome

Increased productivity of the distribution team, improved accuracy of CHEP pallet transfers and integration with the pallet provider’s system, resulting in precise account dehires.

The challenge

The OjiFS Packaging Central distribution team was spending over 10 hours a week managing the transfer of pallets, which was a detail-orientated and very manual task. If the pallet management process fell behind, due to incorrect data or staff away on leave, it became very difficult to catch up, given the already hectic daily operations of a busy manufacturing and freight dispatch site.

The solution

eCargo’s freight management system was the logical choice for a systemised pallet management solution. eCargo is tightly integrated with Kiwiplan, the OjiFS ERP system, and holds all freight movements, including returns and redirects. This meant eCargo was an accurate and comprehensive source of pallet quantities and movements.

The pallet management solution generates the pallet transfer file in the specific format required by the pallet supplier, in this case CHEP, based on the following variables:

  • Actual number of pallets to transfer per freight consignment
  • Carrier transporting the pallets
  • Account to use based on delivery location or carrier
  • Key reference numbers

The solution also supports several exceptions, which previously added time and complexity to the manual task:

  • Identifies which accounts have a ‘not to transfer’ rule
  • Applies customised date of transfer business rules
  • Determines if the consignments were on hired pallets or non-hired pallets

This is all delivered via a centralised web-based solution that can be utilised from the office or home, by site dispatch or head office staff.

OjiFS can extend the pallet solution in future to support:

  • Pallets on incoming goods
  • Other pallet types including Loscam

Benefits and outcomes

From day one OjiFS reported immediate benefits from the eCargo pallet management solution. The 10 hours per week spent managing pallets was reduced to 10 minutes a week. The accuracy of pallet transfers improved, and discrepancies were picked up immediately and remedied. They now have visibility of all transfers and can identify exceptions where customers do not have accounts to transfer to.

We worked with eCargo to automate the process and make sure we could carry on with the transfers without missing a beat. eCargo took a costly complex and manual process and transformed it into an easy-to-use systemised solution. eCargo understood all the idiosyncrasies of hired pallets and built a solution that worked for OjiFS. Now, if anyone is away, another team member can easily use eCargo to make sure we are covered.

Sharee Harper, Oji Fibre Solutions, Logistics Manager, Packaging Central

For more information on Oji Fibre Solutions visit ojifs.com