IMS has been working with this national management group since 1999. The group is responsible for promoting milk and educating school children of its nutritional value. They also work in conjunction with regional organizations to develop teaching programs and national advertising.
Opportunity
This group came to IMS looking for a way to lower their print production costs. They also felt that their warehousing and distribution needs were not as efficient as they would like.
Challenge
Find a way to reduce print and warehousing costs over 22 individual warehouses across the country. As a group, the distinct warehouses had significant duplication of services and substantial freight costs.
Solution
IMS first tackled the print costs by standardizing sizes, colors, print quantities and timing to better fit common presses. This alone saved 55 percent in production costs on one of their first print projects. IMS then developed a strategy that allowed many of the regional organizations to centralize their individual warehouses into IMS' secure, climate controlled distribution center. With the group utilizing our print management service, we were able to provide precise control of inventory, reducing waste and allowing reports to be consistent and global in scale for the first time. Freight between individual warehouses was almost totally eliminated by drop shipping from IMS' distribution center. Our centralized call center handles all phone, fax, web-based and e-mail orders for both the regional offices and the national management group, including credit card processing and invoicing.
Result
In the five years that followed the consolidation, warehouse savings alone exceeded 20 percent. Armed with good inventory information, the management group sees additional savings by making better decisions regarding the print and procurement of their materials. Printing shorter runs more frequently has almost eliminated waste due to graphic changes. With one facility, material is moved electronically in and out of each regional group's inventory as needed, saving the labor and freight costs previously incurred by physically shipping inventory across the country.
