On Site Logistics
- Customer: Dow Chemical
- Product Type: Supply Chain Management
- Product: Supply Chain Management
- Solution: On Site Logistics
- Location: Ahlen (DE)
THE CHALLENGE
Dow in Ahlen produces raw materials for insulation products, foamrubber and plastics, mainly used in construction and automotive industry. Den Hartogh delivers the biggest part of the raw materials in Ahlen and also performs a part of the loadings from Ahlen. Dow faced internal logistic problems: the site is situated in the city center of Ahlen, surrounded by homes, a main road and a railway track: no expansion possible. Production is growing fast and has the opportunities to continue its growth. However at some point there would be a traffic jam of trucks on site the whole day.
OUR SOLUTION
Together with experts from Dow we came up with a creative solution: Drop & Swap. We arranged a parking 2 km’s away from the Dow site, and an ‘on site’ tractor unit which is running continuously from Sunday 22.00 hrs till Saturday 14.00 in a 3-shift-sytem. We are loading the raw materials at several locations in Europe and drop the loaded units at the parking in Ahlen, to make sure that the material is availible by the ordered delivery time. In return these trucks take empty or pre-loaded units away from the parking. The on site tractor unit drives up and down between the parking and Dow. Full units are taken from the parking and dropped at the unloading points, and empty units are taken back to the parking. Empty clean units are taken from the parking and dropped at the loading points. The actual unloading and loading is done by Dow operators. In this way the transport is disconnected from unloading and loading at Dow-Ahlen. We started July 2007 with Drop & Swap and this is the experience of Ian Watson, Systems Global Planner at Dow: “Despite the accelerated implementation of this new concept, the start-up was done without problems. It has brought us several advantages:
- Less trucks on the approach road and on our site
- A small number of dedicated drivers whom function as Dow employees
- Increased delivery reliability
- Just in time delivery of raw materials
- No costs for long unloading / loading times
Next to improved safety and less reactor waiting time, it is also proven that we save money with this concept: "we are very satisfied."
