Big Name Brands Demand Bespoke Logistics Systems from Freight Forwarding and Transport Suppliers

AUSTRIA – LIECHTENSTEIN – When a brand name is universally recognised it is a tempting target for any international freight and logistics group worth its salt. With scale however come problems and when a customer ships around 650,000 consignments in over 50 countries each year it takes a great deal of meticulous planning to keep things on track. Austrian based Gebrüder Weiss is fortunate enough to be the forwarding agent and transporter for just such a brand, Hilti, a name familiar to any professional construction worker.

The Liechtenstein headquartered Hilti group produces literally millions of items annually, from wall plugs, tools, electrical appliances and facade systems to various hazardous commodities, all of which require attention and Gebrüder Weiss is charged with transporting everything, including deliveries to the Hilti centres and construction sites, customs clearance, return management and storage.

To manage things on such a scale Gebrüder Weiss came up with what it terms a ‘Control Tower’ solution to optimise both transport and storage processes. The GW team use the centrally controlled monitoring and evaluation system for analysing performance, which it says enables the company to quickly react to deviations and flexibly implement customer requirements.

The new monitoring tool has been in use since the end of 2014 and creates weekly and monthly standardised reports for all Hilti’s global transport. In Europe, Gebrüder Weiss sends most of the Hilti product transports by road and to Asia by air and sea freight and Thomas Keller, Transport Manager Strategies & Sourcing at Hilti Aktiengesellschaft commented that the launch of the Control Tower had significantly improved quality as well as performance transparency.