How a Global CPG Leader is Saving $8.1M+ Per Annum and Turning Its Ocean Freight into a Competitive Advantage with Decision AI
Overview
A leading global regulated consumer goods company ships billions of cartons of high-value, condition-sensitive products annually to over 120 countries across ~60K ocean containers. Ensuring timely and secure delivery is critical — not just for sales continuity and brand protection, but for maintaining compliance across regulated markets.
However, the company’s primary distribution network through ocean lacked live, in-transit intelligence. Critical teams — including logistics, quality, security, and supply chain planning — were forced to rely on delayed updates, manual coordination, and fragmented systems. This resulted in inventory misalignments generating Out of Stock panics, escalating detention & demurrage (D&D) costs, spoilage risks, and exposure to counterfeit threats.
To solve this, the company partnered with Decklar to deploy Decision AI with Visibility at scale — enabling predictive insights and actionable decisions at every level.
The Challenge
The company’s outbound ocean container shipments were high-value and risk-prone — yet the internal teams were flying blind:
- Inaccurate and Delayed Shipment Status Affecting Stock Planning: ERP and freight systems provided only periodic updates and no real-time view into whether containers had been offloaded, cleared, or delayed — forcing manual follow-ups and guesswork.
- High Detention & Demurrage Charges: Without knowing when containers were available for pickup or stuck at port, delays in drayage coordination led to mounting penalties and unexpected cost overruns adding up to millions of dollars.
- Security & Diversion Exposure: Brand protection teams lacked the ability to trace high-value shipments end-to-end — increasing the risk of theft, tampering, or gray market leakage in vulnerable legs such as the first mile, at ports, and last mile.
- Temperature & Humidity Risk Affecting Quality: Sensitive SKUs such as heat-affected products faced quality risks in warm-weather ports or during prolonged transit in the form of container rain — yet breaches were only discovered after delivery or not discovered at all in distributor-led markets impacting customer promise.
- Lack of Predictive & Accurate Supply Chain Planning Inputs: Demand & supply planners had no early signal on exceptions. Missed shipments led to stockouts or unnecessary air-freight, while lack of in-transit inventory visibility caused misaligned supply decisions. Further, all decisions needed sustainability considerations at the forefront.
Traditional freight systems, freight forwarder portals, and static ETA updates failed to meet the decision-making needs of these diverse teams.
What They Tried & Why It Didn't Work
- ERP, TMS, and Carrier-Aggregator Systems: Offered static, scheduled updates — often 24–72 hours late — with no insight into container condition, dwell time, or handling status at the destination.
- Track & Trace Devices: Were bulky, expensive, and couldn’t operate along with cumbersome to procure across their ~50 origin points and recirculate post shipment completion. Further, data from these devices didn’t offer a single visibility layer that comprised of sensor data, carrier milestones, and decision intelligence, integrated with internal decision workflows.
Enter Decklar’s Real-Time Decision AI with Visibility
Decklar introduced non-intrusive smart labels inside containers (a fully managed operation) combined with AI-based decision intelligence that delivered live, predictive recommendations for every shipment and for every stakeholder.
- Functional, Cost-Optimal Unified Visibility: For outbound shipments that impact revenue, Decklar provided real-time location, tamper, temperature, and movement signals through its smart labels— even from deep inside sealed containers. Smart labels required no new packaging formats or customs declarations — enabling smooth rollout across 120+ destination countries.
- For the remaining lanes, primarily inbounds that were not revenue-critical, carrier milestones were captured – enabling cost-optimal unified visibility across 100% of their primary shipments & lanes.
- Real-Time Predictive Dashboards by Stakeholder: Delivered live signals into internal systems used by planning, logistics, quality, security and brand protection teams.
- Proactive Decision Workflows: AI translated decision intelligence into recommended actions — from initiating corrective drayage, to re-prioritizing downstream demand plans.
Day 1: Real-Time, Unified Ocean Visibility
Within the first 8 weeks of implementation:
- Live Container Arrival & Clearance Status: Visibility signals pinpointed when containers were offloaded, opened, and ready — eliminating reliance on manual updates.
- Temperature & Humidity Excursion Alerts: Delivered proactive breach notifications to quality teams — allowing them to quarantine at-risk stock before distribution.
- Tamper & Theft Detection: Ambient light signals from deep within the load uncovered unauthorized access — helping reduce counterfeit risk and preserve brand trust at sensitive ports and during first/last mile trucking.
Day 2: Decision AI Enabled Cross-Functional Execution
By the beginning of month 3, the company saw second-order benefits translating into compelling ROI:
- OTIF Signals for Out-of-Stock Mitigation: Accurate, predictive ETA allowed logistics teams to pre-clear incoming goods and reallocate labor — improving clearance & dock productivity.
- Campaign ROI Protection: Planning teams used predicted ETAs and quality exception alerts to adjust product launches and distribution — reducing airfreight spend only to truly vulnerable distribution centers and protecting brand moments.
- Security Risk Anticipation: Brand security protection teams received early warning of diversion-prone routes — enabling tighter downstream custody controls. They further improved productivity on claims management.
Day 3: Decision AI is Enabling Accurate Planning
Following initial success for execution, the system was leveraged for effective planning:
- Accurate Scenario-Based Stock Planning: Planning teams began using real-time exception flags and predictive ETAs to model potential out-of-stock events under different delay scenarios, even before shipping. This enabled proactive reallocation of DC stock, optimized transload planning, and elimination of last-minute air freight.
- Carrier, Lane, & Port Benchmarking: Logistics and procurement began comparing lanes and carriers using Decklar’s historical exception and delay data — factoring in not just transit time adherence, but temperature/humidity risk and tamper exposure. This fed back into routing decisions and contract performance management.
- In-Transit Forecasting as a Revenue Planning Signal: Finance and demand planning teams initiated pilot programs to use in-transit inventory visibility to adjust revenue forecasting and cash-flow planning — setting the stage for reduced working capital in future phases.
Why Decision AI with Visibility Was Needed Together
Visibility showed where containers were — but not if there were risks or disruptions, nor what action to take. Decision AI alone couldn’t make the right decisions for execution or planning without trustworthy, real-time signals from the ground.
Further sensor visibility & carrier milestones needed to be merged to offer contextual visibility for ocean shipping for Decision AI to work effectively.
Together, Decklar’s unified visibility & Decision AI gave internal teams the ability to both see and act — enabling decisions that protected sales, brand trust, revenue, and margins.
ROI Summary
Direct Benefits Estimated:
- Detention & Demurrage Reduction: $2.2M/year savings from predictive pickup triggers and exception-led drayage coordination
- Air-Freight Cost Avoidance: $1.8M/year saved from eliminating unnecessary expedited shipments due to missed stock allocation
- Spoilage & Write-Off Prevention: $1.1M/year avoided due to real-time quality breach alerts
- Brand Risk Mitigation: $3M/year in avoided loss from proactive tamper detection and counterfeit risk reduction
Indirect Benefits:
- Preserved Market Share & Brand Equity: Ensured planned launches, promos, and campaigns were not derailed by missed shipments — protecting brand momentum and market share.
- Improved Planning Agility Across Stakeholders: Created a unified, predictive signal layer for planners, logistics, and security — reducing friction and latency in supply chain coordination.
- Working Capital Optimization: Enabled better revenue forecasting and reduced buffer stock requirements, lowering capital tied up in inventory.
- Reduced Sustainability Overheads: Minimized air freight and re-deliveries, supporting the company’s sustainability and emissions targets.
- Increased Supply Chain Trust: Strengthened confidence across internal teams and distributor partners with fewer surprises and greater responsiveness.
Total Value Unlocked:
$8.1M+ in logistics cost savings & brand protection.
Summary
By combining Real-time Visibility with Decision AI, the global tobacco leader transformed its primary ocean logistics from reactive coordination to proactive orchestration. Multiple teams — from logistics to planning to brand protection — now work from a shared, predictive signal layer, enabling faster, smarter decisions across the board.
The result: lower costs, preserved brand equity, and a global rollout with minimal disruption. Decklar enabled the company to turn its most opaque logistics flows into a competitive advantage.
Learn more about Decklar’s Decision AI Platform – Book a Free Demo Now.