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Dow Chemical

A World of Opportunity:  Standardizing a global logistics process

Dow Chemical Company is a leading science and technology company that provides innovative chemical, plastic and agricultural products and services in the food, transportation, health medicine, personal and home care, and building/construction industries, among others. It has annual sales of $28 billion, and serves customers in more than 170 countries.

Challenge:

As one of the world’s leading multi-national manufacturing companies, Dow Chemical Company had a vision to create and deploy a solution, standardizing international transportation and trade logistics into one process at the global level.

In particular, Dow wanted a lead logistics provider (LLP) that could deliver a world-class supply chain strategy, technology, operations management and purchase order execution on a global basis for its Marine Packed Cargo (MPC) business.

Solution:

Enter BDP International. In addition to chemical industry expertise, BDP had all the pieces in place, due to its core transportation, forwarding and customs brokerage services, access to superior global resources, and a time-tested reputation for zealous customer service and international trade information management.

Rick Gerardo, Vice President of Dow’s Supply Chain organization describes his company’s selection of BDP: “In today’s competitive world, you need partners who can grow with you, and that’s why we have formed a partnership with BDP. As Dow positions itself for future growth, we will need a logistics partner with a proven track record, the right industry expertise, a commitment to provide exceptional value to our customers, and extensive global reach and capabilities. BDP offers us exactly those strengths.”

People are the engine of BDP’s success with Dow. A centralized BDP LLP team oversees the Dow business activity and ensures that the processes for which BDP is responsible, operate efficiently and effectively within Dow’s overall supply chain across five primary service categories: logistics, communication, documentation, SAP entry and review, and customer service.

The bottom line? After approximately 15 months, Dow has realized significant hard cost savings for their MPC business. More than 20 percent in savings have been achieved on Dow’s airfreight logistics process costs.

How Dow Chemical benefits from working with BDP International:

  • Gained a competitive advantage through value creation-service enhancements and cost reductions, including trade lane analysis, cycle time analysis, and SBU-specific costing
  • Redesigned and standardized processes
  • Providing Day-1 performance metrics and exception-reporting, as well as ongoing cost analyses
  • Added value by virtue of expanded global visibility of all its export and import processes
  • Achieved potent, single-source decision-making capacity to adapt quickly to changing conditions across every front in Dow's multi-national marketplace
  • Exceptional teamwork focused on attacking costs, improving customer service and managing continuous improvement across all aspects of operations