BevChain Logistics & Transportation Case Study

Powering productivity through automation

BevChain provides national tailored supply chain solutions for the beverage industry across Australia with ‘best-in-class’ warehouse and distribution services.

Handling in excess of 2.5 billion serving units annually and calling on 25,000 delivery points, BevChain are the leaders in beverage supply chainsolutions. The company operates from 13 distribution centres across Australia and New Zealand, employing over 700 people, with a fleet of over 200 vehicles plus sub-contractors.

As a specialist in the warehousing and distribution of alcoholic beverages, BevChain understands the demands placed on the liquor industry and its customers. Since BevChain’s inception, suppliers of beer, wine and spirits have taken advantage of BevChain’s specialised services and its ability to tailor solutions to meet their needs.

Today, BevChain successfully consolidates products from over 25 different customers, including some of Australia’s favourite beer brands, for distribution across Australia.

In September 2017, Linfox, Asia Pacific’s largest privately-owned logistics business, took full ownership of BevChain, buying Lion’s 50 per cent share of the Joint Venture. BevChain continues to operate as a separate entity to enable its focus on the specialised beverage market while benefiting from Linfox’s scale, expertise and extensive logistics network.

The challenge

In 2015, BevChain implemented another company’s mobile app into its operations. Once the solution was rolled out and handed over, issues with administering the product, integration, functionality and reliability started to come to light.

BevChain at that time had separate Transport Management System (TMS) environments for each distribution centre. To resolve visibility gaps in cross docking interstate loads, a decision was made in 2016 to migrate those individual TMS instances to a single national TMS environment, and at the same time firm up integration with a new, more robust interface between the TMS and the mobile app.

While the integration between BevChain’s TMS environment and the mobile app improved slightly, BevChain and its drivers continued to experience major issues with the mobile app. Over the space of three years numerous attempts were made to resolve these issues with the company but to no avail. BevChain wanted to focus development of its mobile app on compliance in line with new national Heavy Vehicle legislation.

BevChain required a flexible solution that was easy to administer and flexible to develop, particularly in the areas of safety, fatigue management, mass management, incident management, driver behaviour, start-of-day logs, location tracking and proof of delivery.

The solution

ConnectiX seamlessly integrated with BevChain’s existing Transport Management System, offering enhanced collaboration between its logistics partners and transport departments.

ConnectiX allows the provision of the following logistics services, including but not limited
to: vehicle and driver scheduling; start of day checklists; location tracking; proof of pickup and proof of delivery.

For the driver, the solution allows for input into a variety of categories including trip; messages; declarations; incidents; fatigue; assets; vehicle usages and documents.

ConnectiX has only been in place for six months, but has already helped BevChain achieve greater clarity around its operations by automating the management of over 200 fleet vehicles and nine warehouses, plus its subcontractor fleet, which facilitate more than 3500 transactions per day.