General haulier Nissin (UK) Ltd is a 100 per cent owned subsidiary of the Japanese-based Nissin Corporation. With modern warehouses in Swindon, Rugby and London, Nissin operates within the following sectors: air and ocean freight forwarding; customs brokerage; warehousing; road transport; and third party logistics and supply chain management. The London branch of Nissin was opened in 1975 and became an independent subsidiary in 1984. Nissin (UK Ltd) established its operations in Swindon in the early 1990s and has since grown extensively.
The challenge
Nissin (UK) Ltd had the opportunity to bid to become the preferred Southern area haulier for leading Japanese automotive manufacturer, Honda. Winning this contract represented considerable growth for the company, with job numbers increasing from 20 to over 100 per day if it was appointed. In order to submit a successful tender for this contract, Nissin required a specialised transport management system to effectively manage the increased workload from this large customer, they required a solution that could be fully operational on day one of the contract and that could also be fully integrated with Honda’s systems.
The solution
Enter TOPS! Fargo Systems was able to tailor a version of its highly successful TOPS transport management software to meet Honda and Nissin’s requirements. Fargo built a bespoke TOPS interface that incorporated a live link to Honda’s transport management system, making it possible for all jobs to be automatically received and processed into TOPS directly from Honda. The implementation of TOPS was instrumental in Nissin’s success for winning the Honda contact, and once Nissin had been chosen by Honda, the company implemented the use of both TOPS and ‘TOPS…on the go’ at its Swindon site and has also since implemented Fargo’s container management and yard management system, CYMAN, to manage a warehouse of Honda modules.
The process
Nissin (UK) Ltd manages delivery of two key kinds of stock for the automotive manufacturer, just-in-time parts delivery from the warehouse to the factory, and in-stock delivery to the factory. It also manages the warehouses that the stock is stored in, prior to being transported to the plant. The car parts are loaded into containers at origin. When they arrive at Southampton Port, Nissin collects the containers using their road fleet, takes them to its warehouse, unloads the modules from the containers, and stores them until the manufacturer requests delivery. Honda operates within a tight timeframe; calls to transport the stock typically come with six, 12, 24 or 48-hour turnaround times, The TOPS solution was simple to use and easy to scale, and advanced enough to efficiently handle high throughput volumes and tight turnaround times. Integration with Honda’s system was also essential to ensuring optimum efficiency and visibility throughout the supply chain. Two years on, over 1,000 weekly collections from suppliers all over the country now filter from Honda’s internal systems into TOPS. These can be updated and amended by Honda as priorities change, and Nissin (UK) Ltd can control its work flow in real-time. When a collection is in transit, TOPS allows Nissin to feedback GPS location data and exact collection times to Honda informing them of the progress of the delivery and the estimated time of arrival.
The contract with Honda increased Nissin (UK) Ltd.’s workload by five-fold and consequently its truck fleet and driver pool significantly increased. To accommodate this, Nissin also introduced ‘TOPS…on the go’ among its fleet of 122 trucks and 384 drivers. Fargo Systems’ integrated telematics solution ‘TOPS…on the go’, provides an in-cab solution that enables Nissin’s drivers to receive transport order instructions and updates to jobs in real-time. Job status updates (Arrival and Departure) along with GPS updates are sent from the drivers via ‘TOPS…on the go’ back to the TOPS system in the office, enabling Nissin to know exactly where its trucks are, how the job is progressing and when the trucks will arrive at the collection or delivery points. This level of visibility enables Nissin to effectively deliver stock within the tight timescales required. Real-time location data makes it possible to predict any potential issues or delays and make the necessary adjustments to minimise their impact. The electronic POD functionality and standard admin updates feed back into the TOPS system, minimising the time key personnel need to spend on manual reporting for each job.
Commenting on the implementation of Fargo Systems’ transport management solutions, Nigel Mackenzie, Senior Manager at Nissin (UK) Ltd comments, “TOPS is highly regarded within the industry and we knew Fargo Systems could deliver a TOPS solution to handle the demands of the Honda contract. We partnered with them prior to bidding for the Honda contract in order to ensure we had the right solution in place and ready to go, if we won the contract. Fargo Systems worked closely with us to provide a specially tailored version of TOPS that was able to directly link to Honda’s systems. This made it possible for us to put in a serious bid and win the contract. The implementation of TOPS and ‘TOPS…on the go’ has been incredibly successful for us, the efficiencies it delivers in all areas of the supply chain process have enabled us to substantially increase the number of jobs we perform. As a result of this, we have significantly grown our truck fleet and driver pool and have also introduced TOPS in our Rugby location for our general haulage projects.”