Philip Morris USA
Summary
This Fortune 100 company has entrusted O’Byrne Distribution Centers with the distribution of its finished products for over 30 years. Due to the extremely high value of cigarettes, customers limit their orders to an estimated daily case usage of over 1,200 different line items (SKUs). Individual case picking is extensive and inventory turns are high. Each day, ODC must effectively manage receiving and rotating thousands of cases and hundreds of SKUs, as well as the picking and shipping of hundreds of orders. Each order is unique and requires very close attention to detail, zero damage, FIFO rotation, and individual truckload or LTL shipping requirements. Accuracy and organization are of critical importance given the fact that even a single receiving, picking, or shipping error can cost ODC a thousand dollars or more per case. As with many of the other accounts we handle, the stakes are high but O’Byrne excels at meeting Philip Morris’s detail-oriented demands through hiring only the most capable individuals and then training and motivating them to work as a team. Everyone is expected to hold high standards and to take responsibility for the success of the “total” operation.
Benefits
Outsourcing distribution through O’Byrne has allowed Philip Morris to remain “lean & mean” in the competitive tobacco business. Fixed costs like property, buildings, trucks, etc. remain off of their balance sheet, greatly improving ROI, while O’Byrne takes responsibility for managing the details of getting the right products to the right places at the right time. Philip Morris is free to invest in things like marketing and new product development, which increase market share, instead of things like hiring, training, and managing, which don’t.
O’Byrne is required to file monthly inventory reports with the state for tax purposes and the state conducts surprise inspections to verify inventory accuracy. These inventory reports, independently verified by the state, prove that O’Byrne’s receiving, picking, and shipping accuracy rate is 99.99996% – a level of accuracy which surpasses all but the best distribution centers in the world. Accuracy on this level can give your company a clear advantage over your competition.
A Large Midwestern Bank
Summary
ODC manages this large Midwestern bank’s business forms inventory and makes sure that each of its over 260 locations have all the letterhead, transaction receipts, cashier’s checks, and insufficient funds notices (hopefully you’ve never received one of these little beauties) it needs to operate.
Every day ODC receives over a hundred orders from the various bank locations needing any quantity of the thousands of business forms SKUs in inventory. The vast majority of orders request less than full case quantities of items so “inner” packs or “eaches” are picked, packaged, and shipped same day in parcel-sized shipments. For larger bank locations with numerous people placing forms orders, “mail stop” numbers are placed on each order package (within a master parcel) so they may be quickly separated and delivered right to the desk of the person who ordered the forms.
Benefits
By consolidating the forms inventory for over 260 locations in one distribution center, the inventory can finally be managed accurately and handled much more efficiently than by having each location or region manage its own forms.
Forms purchases can be made in “bulk” while at the same time keeping the total forms inventory at a minimum. Valuable office space isn’t taken up by unnecessary supply rooms and economies of scale can be brought to bear at every step in the office supply process.
And as with all companies that outsource logistics functions through O’Byrne, this bank benefits by having distribution experts using the latest technologies handle their logistics concerns for them while they focus on their core business. Would anyone expect a bank to set up zone picking controlled by the latest warehouse management software available and supervised by distribution veterans? Banks are financial experts not distribution experts. But through outsourcing with O’Byrne Distribution Centers this expertise and the efficiencies it creates is exactly what they get.
WestRock
Summary
The fine papers division of Westvaco supplies paper in large roll stock and cut-sheet form to catalog and magazine printers worldwide. O’Byrne uses roll clamps to cross-dock this product between rail cars and trucks so the proper materials are on hand when the printer is ready to go to press. Often the time constraints are tight and would threaten to shut down a printer’s line if not met. This type of “Just-In-Time” inventory management saves storage costs but requires a very dependable distribution partner to work properly, and O’Byrne has never failed to deliver on time for Westvaco’s JIT customers.
Some O’Byrne customers buy raw materials in bulk and store them with us so they can utilize their own plant space solely for production purposes. They rely on O’Byrne to make sure their raw materials arrive Just-In-Time for production so that their plant is clear of unnecessary materials, their space and personnel are dedicated to production purposes (creating higher ROI), and so production runs go smoothly.
Benefits
If your company’s finished products are your customers’ raw materials, you could find tremendous efficiencies through implementing a JIT distribution program with O’Byrne Distribution Centers. Likewise, if your company is a manufacturer and would like to improve ROI while increasing production, you could move your materials offsite to O’Byrne and use all of your facility for production purposes. O’Byrne can manage the details of getting all the products needed for production to your facility on time. And at the same time, we can pick up your finished products and manage their distribution as well making your facility a dedicated production center focused on what you do best.
Unilever – Best Foods
Summary
Bestfoods is the Fortune 500 company behind such well-known products as Mazola, Hellman’s Mayonaise, Jiffy Peanut butter, and many others. O’Byrne handles the nation-wide distribution of many of their products destined for large customers in the food service industry.
O’Byrne is an expert when it comes to Food Safety. We are audited and inspected by AIB Food Safety for cleanliness, documentation, training and procedures – and our Quality Control Systems are ISO 9001:2016 certified.
Our FDA registered and WDATCP certified “food grade” facilities and expertise with detail-oriented case picking are extremely important for this account. FIFO rotation and Lot number tracing are also important to ensure that only fresh products reach the consumer and that manufacturing anomalies can be tracked down and corrected quickly.
Benefits
By choosing O’Byrne Distribution Centers, Bestfoods gained a distribution partner with decades of experience handling food products for accounts such as Hersey’s, Lipton, M&M Mars and more. And since releases to their customers typically require a high degree of case picking, O’Byrne’s expertise in this area allows Bestfoods to confidently promise high service standards to their customers as a condition of new business and then deliver on their promises – literally!
Utopia
Summary
The internet is a booming marketplace. With the right products, prices, and marketing, ecommerce companies can grow at a much faster rate than the same business model would have been able to even just a few years ago. Utopia is an example of just such a business. With expertise in the most recent digital printing technologies and an internet store front, their new business is beginning to blossom. But managing inventories, and picking and shipping internet orders is not their cup of tea. Instead, they’ve decided to control costs and preserve start-up capitol by outsourcing these functions to O’Byrne. Our systems have been connected seamlessly to Utopia’s internet store front so orders are transmitted to us electronically. O’Byrne manages the quick and efficient fulfillment of Utopia’s parcel-sized orders so Utopia personnel may focus on expanding their product offering and building their e-business.
Benefits
By having the distribution professionals at O’Byrne manage the “back end” of their internet store front, Utopia immediately gains for themselves the highest quality distribution system without the significant investment in people, systems, space, and equipment that would otherwise be necessary if they were to handle these functions themselves. And just as importantly, outsourcing with O’Byrne frees their management to focus solely on the many issues that must be dealt with in a quickly expanding e-business.
Confrerie des Chevaliers du Testevin
Summary
Milwaukee may be known as the beer capitol of the world but that didn’t prevent the Confrerie des Chevaliers du Tastevin from using one of our Milwaukee locations for storing their inventory of world class wines. This worldwide organization of wine connoisseurs headquartered in Beaune, France requires its inventory of rare and highly valuable wines to kept in secure and temperature controlled storage conditions pending their sale and/or use by Confrerie members. The wine is extremely expensive and fragile and must be handled only by trained and capable hands.
Benefits
The Confrerie benefits by outsourcing its storage and distribution needs by reducing the overhead involved in the procurement and distribution of their wines. Outsourcing makes all logistics costs variable, and capital outlays are virtually eliminated. The Confrerie pay for only the services they use each month instead of having fixed full time labor, space, and equipment costs. Expenditures for things like cooler equipment and special shelving, which are capital intensive, are avoided by outsourcing and capital is preserved for the Confrerie’s primary goal of acquiring the world’s finest wines.