Improving Visibility Across Logistic & Supply Chain Operations with Digitalized Order Delivery Management Solution

Executive Summary

Nippon Sanso Vietnam Joint Stock Company (NSVN) is a 100% Japanese capitalized company invested by Taiyo Nippon Sanso Corporation and Tomoe Shokai Co., Ltd., a leading supplier in industrial and medical gases in Vietnam. With sophisticated gas production facilities, NSVN unceasingly offers its best services to all its customers and sectors of the industry such as high-quality gases, specialty gases, mixture gases, pipeline systems, and customer services. With a strong record as a gas supplier leader for over 20 years, NSVN’s customer base spans across the northern and southern region of Vietnam, and they continue to embark on various expansion programs to strengthen their businesses for future growth.

True to its innovative nature, NSVN continually seeks to improve their supply chain operations as their business grows at an exponential rate. Yokogawa was tasked in May 2019 to implement an order delivery management system (ODMS) to solve NSVN’s ongoing challenge of delivery bottleneck. By December 2020, Yokogawa successfully completed implementing a comprehensive ODMS solution to improve visibility of NSVN’s logistic and supply chain operations through digitalization, while ensuring smooth transition from manual to digitalized operation.

 

The Challenges and Solutions

To support NSVN’s rapid growth, the need to perform their delivery activities in a faster and more efficient manner with minimum error and avoiding duplicated order entry is mandatory. Furthermore, despite NSVN’s clientele that are demographically disaggregated across the Northern and Southern regions of Vietnam, their delivery planning and scheduling rely on using cognitive reasoning to perform delivery activities. That was when NSVN arrived at the intersection of hiring and training new personnel or to move their logistic operation to a digital platform. NSVN chose the latter and entrusted Yokogawa to be the partner to optimize their supply chain and to provide end-to-end visibility of their order lifecycle.

However, translating the modus operandi of two leaders with their respective work methods into algorithms that represent NSVN’s current practices was not an easy task. It required a redefinition of best practices that factored in multiple angles and aspects of NSVN’s production schedule, inventory, ordering system, and delivery planning. The new platform was also required to be responsive, dynamic, and interconnected with real-time insights to provide comprehensive information across NSVN’s supply chain.

Yokogawa adopted DevOps (Development and Operations) methodology with an agile approach to develop NSVN’s cloud-based application platform. The methodology allowed rapid development of NSVN’s new digital platform while promoting continuous improvement through collaborative efforts between NSVN and Yokogawa’s cross-functional teams. Yokogawa’s ODMS encouraged cross collaboration within and beyond NSVN organizations by allowing information to be transferred seamlessly from sales order to delivery lead time at NSVN and their respective truck drivers and finally to NSVN clients in one unified platform.

NSVN business workflow with Yokogawa ODMS

Yokogawa’s ODMS handles shipment and logistic related activities, which includes order entry, manual and automated scheduling and delivery, payment and invoicing. The new platform alleviated some of the menial and tedious tasks such as order delivery scheduling, order delivery prioritisation, inventory forecasting, and collecting information for invoicing to logistic partners as well as to NSVN clients by processing information almost instantaneously.

ODMS Key functionalities

 

Comprehensive ODMS solution

Yokogawa supplied the following:

• Order Management – Information such as gas name and volume, delivery location as well as order date and time is available during sales order entry. This information is propagated throughout the entire order lifecycle, including tank number, gas availabilities, tracking of orders, and so on.
• Inventory Management – Visibility of NSVN’s factories’ tank inventories as well as NSVN customers’ inventory level to allow better supply and demand forecasting.
• Auto Scheduling – One of the most prominent features is the ability to perform auto-scheduling function that considers several factors such as distance from outbound delivery location to customer, distance between customers, tank size specification of each clients, cost per delivery, and tank availabilities at each factory. The auto-scheduling logic also compares the profitability between combined orders trip versus single order trip and provide suggestions on the delivery sequence. The system also allows flexibility to manually take charge of scheduling in the event that the suggested schedules are inadequate.
• Tracking – The software is available as a mobile application that is supplied to NSVN’s logistic partners and their drivers. The mobile application features delivery instructions (such as clients, locations, gas volumes, inbound/outbound factories), Google Map, as well as delivery actions and records.
• Reporting for Invoicing – Information pertaining to order intake and deliveries are recorded and reports and invoices can be automatically generated.
• Dashboard – Real-time visibilities of order intake, deliveries, scheduling statuses.

 

Customer Satisfaction

Yokogawa’s ODMS implementation allows NSVN to embark on a new way of performing their logistic operations and thus marking their first step towards digitalization. With real time insights, shorter order to delivery time and paperless production, NSVN is equipped with the tool to reduce repetitive tasks, have better foresight of supply and demand and ultimately, to improve their bottom line. Furthermore, the availability of the software through both web-based and mobile application platforms provides flexibility, accessibility and convenience for NSVN users, allowing smooth transitions from the old to the new practices.

The following are the summary of NSVN’s benefits upon implementation of Yokogawa's ODMS:

• Improved order accuracy and order fulfillment efficiencies 
• Optimised delivery schedule, reduced delivery cost, improved delivery efficiencies
• Reduced time to gather information for invoicing
• Promoting one single source of truth for all logistics and supply chain related information
• Better supply and demand forecasting; faster time to market

Thanks to the DevOps approach enabling quick development of the ODMS which can also be applied to other customers in no time.

Nippon Sanso Vietnam