Anheuser-Busch Quenches Its Thirst for Transportation Optimization
Overview
Anheuser-Busch is a leader in the beverage industry, with products including Budweiser, Bud Light, Michelob ULTRA, Stella Artois and a range of regional brands. It owns and operates more than 120 facilities, including breweries, wholesaler distribution centers, agricultural facilities and packaging plants.
Anheuser-Busch was challenged to strategically reconcile transportation demand and delivery needs across these facilities and orchestrate its broad transportation network using an outdated technology solution.
Anheuser-Busch rolled out its transportation management platform across all of its North American facilities in partnership with Blue Yonder, enabling the transformation from a legacy system and manual processes to intelligent automation and exception management. Blue Yonder enables Anheuser-Busch to integrate its verticals, standardize its data and processes, create scale, drive efficiency and control its transportation spend
Business Impact
The Challenge
Anheuser-Busch had a very complex problem, which many TMS vendors were unable to solve: optimize a complex, geographically scattered network of assets and facilities in real time. In searching for a transportation management solution, Anheuser-Busch was looking to achieve these objectives:
• Increased network-wide visibility, for greater control and disruption management
• Greater utilization of transportation assets and capacities
• Identification of cost-saving opportunities, for a lower overall spend
• Decision-making driven by data science, not gut instinct
• Integration of transportation management and order management systems, for profitable fulfillment
The Results
The Anheuser-Busch transportation management platform, powered by Blue Yonder’s solutions, allows the company to quantify savings and opportunities, balance service-level and cost tradeoffs, and prioritize execution across its complicated network of verticals. Blue Yonder supports always-on, proactive transportation management, driven by data rather than instinct, which enables Anheuser-Busch to get closer and closer to a self-guided supply chain. The company can evaluate network-wide performance in real time and trouble-shoot disruptions.
Blue Yonder also works to optimize fleets and other assets by getting every hour of operation and every inch of capacity out of them. Blue Yonder helps Anheuser-Busch see what’s available and plan in real time, and machine learning means activities like capacity planning get more accurate over time.