Roseburg Forest Products Co. Reduces Freight Costs and Offers Customers More Flexible Shipping Options with Oracle Transportation
 
 

Roseburg Forest Products Co. Reduces Freight Costs and Offers Customers More Flexible Shipping Options with Oracle Transportation

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Roseburg Forest Products Co. manufactures and markets a diverse line of wood products, including engineered wood products, lumber, softwood plywood, composite and hardwood panels, decorative melamine, wood pellet fuel, and other types of wood products. The privately owned company has agricultural land, a wood chip export terminal, and 20 manufacturing facilities in northwest and southwest regions of the United States. Its customers include home improvement centers, professional lumber yards, furniture and door manufacturers, and wholesale distributors throughout North America.

Roseburg Forest Products, which operates in a freight-intensive industry, spends approximately US$100 million annually on product transportation costs. In an average year, it sends 60,000 full-truckload and rail shipments to customers across North America. Facing rising energy costs and a weakened housing market, Roseburg Forest Products took a careful look at its freight operations in 2009 with the goal of reducing costs and improving its ability to compete in price and customer service.

To identify the true cost of freight and efficiently manage transportation carriers and routes, Roseburg Forest Products deployed Oracle Transportation Management, which is pre-integrated with the company’s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne enterprise resource planning (ERP) environment.

Today, the company has a solid understanding of its actual transportation costs by mode, route, carrier, and more―including accessorial charges, such as tarping fees. Based on this information, Roseburg Forest Products can analyze actual freight costs and adjust shipping pricing, up or down, to more accurately align with the company’s costs. In early deployment, the company made significant and rapid progress in closing up the US$1 million to US$2 million discrepancy between what it actually costs to ship its wood-based products and the lower rates it charged its customers.

At the same time, the company advanced its goal to compete on price and service by providing customers with expanded freight options. Roseburg Forest Products now enables customers to specify when they need their orders delivered and presents them with options for meeting those targets.

 
 

 
 

Challenges

A word from Roseburg Forest Products Co.

  • “Oracle Transportation Management provides visibility into our end-to-end transportation costs, allowing us to align customer freight charges with our actual costs and avoid losses from undercharges. At the same time, we have expanded freight and delivery window options for our customers.” – Daniel Coyle, Chief Information Officer, Roseburg Forest Products Co.

  • Continue to compete profitably in the competitive building product supply sector, especially when housing starts remain at less than 50% of healthy-market levels
  • Improve understanding of the company’s transportation costs, which average $100 million annually, to look for savings and better align customer freight charges with actual costs
  • Reduce the cost of shipping the company’s wood-based products to customers by 1% to 2%, representing up to US$2 million in savings potential
  • Improve ability to compete in price and service by providing customers―such as home improvement centers, professional lumber yards, furniture and door manufacturers, and wholesale distributors—with expanded shipping options that meet their cost and delivery requirements

Solutions

Oracle Product and Services

  • Deployed Oracle Transportation Management to effectively manage and optimize the company’s shipping costs, while delivering expanded options to customers
  • Improved understanding of the company’s actual transportation costs by mode, route, carrier, and more―including vehicle costs, up-charges for using specific rail lines, and  accessorial charges, such as tarping fees
  • Enabled the company to analyze actual freight costs and adjust shipping pricing, up or down, to more accurately reflect true costs
  • Made significant and rapid progress in closing the US$1 million to US$2 million annual discrepancy between what it actually costs Roseburg to ship its wood-based products and the lower rates it charged its customers
  • Improved customer service by providing new shipping options that enable customers to specify when they need their building product orders and select freight options that will meet those targets
  • Automated and accelerated the freight tendering process with an electronic data interchange interface to carriers, improving service to customers and freeing staff members for other priorities
  • Improved product flow through docks, thanks to more precise carrier arrival data
  • Benefitted from prebuilt integration between Oracle’s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne, the company’s ERP system and Oracle Transportation Management, which enables information, such as quotes, shipment details, and more, to flow from one system to the other to ensure accurate and up-to-date information across the company
  • Relied on Oracle’s strategy and product development teams throughout the implementation for expert advice and support, as Roseburg Forest Products was an early adopter of the integrated JD Edwards EnterpriseOne and Oracle Transportation Management environment

Why Oracle

Roseburg Forest Products has counted Oracle as a strategic business partner for several years. When the time came to select a transportation management solution, the question for Chief Information Officer Daniel Coyle and his team was “Why not Oracle? Why should we look further?” Regardless, the company conducted due diligence, validating its preference via industry analyst reports and market reputation. In addition, the prebuilt integration between Oracle Transportation Management and the company’s legacy JD Edwards EnterpriseOne environment was an important benefit, according to Coyle.

Partner

  • Oracle Partner

Hitachi Consulting