Italian food company Barilla is saving time and money—and improving relationships with carriers and customers—thanks to supply chain visibility technology from industry tech developer FourKites. The companies embarked on a project in 2021 to transform the way the world’s leading pasta producer tracks and manages shipments, with the goal of ensuring that orders make their way to customers on time and in the most efficient way possible. That was no easy task, given Barilla’s intricate logistics operation, which includes 30 production sites, 15 of which are in Italy and 15 abroad. Every week, Barilla moves more than 2,000 loads from Italy to more than 120 countries around the world via road and ocean transport.
Three years into the project, Barilla has reduced the time employees spend manually interacting with suppliers and logistics service providers to track shipments and respond to any delays or disruptions that may arise. Using FourKites’ real-time transportation visibility platform, the pasta company has streamlined its processes and now has 80% visibility into its road and ocean shipments, which are handled by 35 carriers and three ocean freight forwarders.
The goal for 2024 is to continue the digital transformation and increase that visibility to 90%—a milestone Barilla’s leaders say the company is well on its way to achieving.
IT’S ALL IN THE ETAs
The FourKites platform gives Barilla a real-time view of its end-to-end supply chain, providing visibility into where goods are throughout the shipping process. This allows the company to make better decisions at all points in the shipment’s journey.
FourKites feeds critical location data about shipments into Barilla’s IT system. Then, using patented artificial intelligence (AI), the tech provider generates insights that help Barilla identify exceptions early, so employees can take action and prioritize work based on impact.
“FourKites directly and easily incorporates hundreds of real-time data points into Barilla’s control tower, resulting in a seamless self-service experience that provides supply chain intelligence for the Barilla team,” FourKites explained in a case study about the project.
Essentially, with access to a wider range of data—including more accurate ETAs—the team can work collaboratively to solve problems.
“FourKites breaks down silos between systems and teams. We can share data to generate insights, identify shocks before they happen, and, most importantly, manage exceptions across our supply chain,” Davide Busato, Barilla’s logistic competence center innovation project manager, said in the case study. “As a result, we have streamlined operations, reduced costs, and improved the customer experience.”
BETTER INFO MEANS BETTER PLANNING
The results speak for themselves: Armed with highly accurate predicted arrival times, Barilla’s customers can more confidently plan their operations around scheduled deliveries. And Barilla can better manage both customer and carrier relationships to save time and money.
“Before we started using FourKites’ platform, we could only react to an issue when it was too late,” Busato said. “Now we react before an issue escalates into a major problem, which saves time while reducing transportation costs and fines. This in turn improves our relationships with carriers and customers.”
And with visibility into both over-the-road (OTR) and ocean shipments, Barilla is making strides across its entire network.
“Our goals with FourKites in 2024 are to track 90% of our shipments, reduce penalties with carriers by 5%, and decrease inefficient communication with partners by 10% to 15%,” Busato also said. “Thanks to FourKites’ ability to send automatic ETAs with delay updates, among other features, we’re well on our way to [achieving] these metrics.”
