MSC

MSC is an international supply company with 12,000+ SKUs.

MSC had 4 warehouses located in central Long Island NY. The task was to relocate the contents of all four warehouses to a central distribution enter that the company has set up in Eastern Pennsylvania.

The Challenge was that:
1. the entire relocation had to be completed within 72 hours
2. every SKU had to be location-tracked throughout the process; and,
3. it had to be accomplished during Labor Day Weekend (a virtual traffic nightmare)

Initially, MSC was going to award the contract to MARTRAC, the special projects unit of UPS at the time. When we explained to MSC how Martrac was going to broker the shipments to backhaul truckers, how the process would work, and why it would fail, we successfully secured the contract for Transcom.

With transportation management software still in its infancy, we had to devise a plan to (A) get the entire relocation done in the allotted timeframe, and (B) manage the information in such a way that MSC could continue to serve clients throughout the move, thereby needing to know where SKUs were in transit so that they could plan accordingly.

We cobbled together a makeshift system that combined the transportation software we had, 6 whiteboards, 20 mobile phones, spotters at the origin and destination points, and dispatchers working 8-hour shifts throughout the weekend.