Leading Steel Manufacturer, Gerdau, Increases Visibility with Princeton TMX

The Challenge

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Global manufacturer Gerdau produces a wide range of steel products and operates within a large network of metal recycling locations, steel mills and downstream facilities. Its business divisions manufacture both long and special steel products for agricultural, automotive, construction, distribution, energy, industrial, and mining markets.

The company’s Gerdau Long Steel North America (GLN) business division operates six steel mills in the U.S. and three in Canada, manufacturing merchant bar, structural steel, piling, special bar quality and rebar products. GLN utilizes a variety of facilities and third-party processors for its freight moves. The company’s complicated supply chain operations require extensive, careful planning, but its previous transportation management system (TMS) did not provide the level of automation and visibility it needed. GLN needed to move toward a digital model while enhancing visibility and better managing its carriers and rates. So, they began the search for a TMS that would fully enable the next stage of their supply chain evolution.
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A TMS That Provides Greater Visibility and Control

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GLN manages a variety of unique shipping scenarios involving mills that produce steel, downstream non-production facilities and third-party processor facilities handling inbound and outbound shipments. But the team had numerous service gaps and communication issues with their existing TMS, and the solution wasn’t evolving in tandem with the growth of their business. GLN’s team had to continually execute certain moves through manual emails because the system couldn’t provide the right data. During the vetting process for a new TMS, the Princeton TMX team showed careful attention to detail and addressed all of GLN’s concerns; and to have that attentive live customer service resource was invaluable to the team. “We chose Princeton TMX because they’re very easy to do business with, provide great communication and they provide the capabilities we need to manage our transportation operations effectively,” said Julie Martin. “Their TMS has given us much more visibility into our entire supply chain. It breaks things down simply but gives mountains of information compared to what we used to have available. I honestly don’t know how we worked so long without it.”

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Enhanced Visibility Leads to Better Carrier Scheduling and Rates

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Previously, GLN lacked insight and visibility into its carrier base—the new TMS helped provide immediate benefits by enabling them to establish accurate delivery windows for each load and quickly select the best carrier at competitive rates.

The Princeton TMX team helped GLN create a new formula for delivery reporting. In the past, they had assigned a delivery window and two dates on a shipment— “earliest” and “latest”—but with the new TMS, they are able to assign a “planned” delivery date for each load. The carriers were incredibly receptive to this change.

Additionally, the TMS eliminated the problem of some GLN users direct or single tendering loads out to some carriers without a rate in the system to pay the carrier. At times loads weren’t being matched to any rate or rates weren’t being negotiated or priced out appropriately, and carriers weren’t being paid for these loads on time. This was especially difficult for Canadian-based carriers, as there had previously been many issues due to differing taxes, accessorials, rates, currency conversions and fuel surcharges from one country to another. Today, if a contracted rate doesn’t exist for a carrier, the mills cannot tender a load to that carrier unless they enter a spot rate. “The system has been immensely helpful for payment efficiency to carriers, and the work queues give us the visibility we need,” said Martin. "The system has been immensely helpful for payment efficiency to carriers..."

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Realizing Process Efficiencies and Boosting KPIs

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GLN has realized several efficiencies using the TMS and has seen improvements in KPIs across the board. “It’s been amazing for visibility,” said Martin. “The system allows us to almost instantly troubleshoot any load issues ourselves internally, easier than before.”

Once a load is departed in the system, it shows as “in transit”, and access to real-time load data has allowed for timely, detailed delivery information to GLN’s customers without having to call carriers for updates. In the future, GLN plans to have carriers use the TMS for any accessorial requests. The TMS can serve as the first point of contact to request any accessorial for approval, and the team will have the reporting to show every detail.
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To-date, the partnership with Princeton TMX has resulted in significant performance improvement in several key areas:

Improved Visibility: The TMS established accurate delivery windows for each carrier and load, providing real-time visibility across the entire supply chain.

Improved Carrier Reporting: Carriers can see any load, its status, and its rate. Improvements on carrier scorecard KPIs skyrocketed utilizing the TMS. Now, 100% of carriers are entering key data like planned and actual delivery dates.

Enhanced Payment and Invoice Management: Payments to carriers are more efficient, and GLN now has extensive reporting on all invoices.

Actionable Data Points: Better visibility into inbound and outbound shipments and reporting data has enabled Gerdau to discover new optimization opportunities.

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Partnering for Ongoing Improvement and Evolution

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GLN notes the ongoing drive from Princeton TMX to realize continuous improvement and evolve its solution alongside its growing customers. “The team really goes above and beyond, whether it’s creating solutions to problems we bring them or proactively bringing us new solutions, opportunities or strategies they’ve worked on with other customers that could benefit us,” Martin said.

“They’re helping make our supply chain more strategic and data-driven. We have folks across our business asking to see the data that our TMS is showing us—it’s that valuable across our entire organization.”