Engineering Export Efficiency for EV Manufacturing
A Need to Quickly Export Parts to Shanghai From North American Vendors.
In 2019, a major, fast-growing, US-based electric vehicle manufacturing company planned and started a manufacturing facility in Shanghai, China. The company needed to quickly export parts to the Shanghai facility from its North American vendors, which were spread out across 50 shipping lanes in the US and Canada.
The company needed a bonded export solution and wanted to work with a single 3PL to execute rail, expedited truckload capacity, and dray capacity using aggregated transportation. All components for manufacturing needed to be consolidated in a centralized facility before being sent to the Port of Oakland for exportation to Shanghai.
Design
Prior to starting operations, ITS Logistics met with stakeholders to review and ensure that all required operational milestones for all modes were recorded in order to build an SOP. Those stakeholders included manufacturers, freight forwarders, customs brokers, more than 50 shipping location facilities, consolidation facilities, and all trucking
capacity.
With that information, ITS Logistics designed a four-month, high-volume schedule to move 1200 containers and 500 truckloads per month. After that initial phase, operations would scale according to the Shanghai manufacturing facility’s dynamic supply chain. Using a single consolidation point in Brisbane, CA for all North American inbound shipments, the operations team would prepare the electronic vehicle parts for shipping before being exported to Shanghai through the Port of Oakland. Shipments would then be marshalled through two Bay Area yards, one for inbound into the facility and one to stage for export, to avoid missing export vessel schedules at ports.
ITS onboarded and vetted carriers for transportation, executed the SOP, and assigned a sole source 24/7/365 operations team of specialists to the project. A single point of contact managed real-time communication to quickly resolve exceptions and problems at the customs, ocean carrier, and inventory levels.
Execution
ITS’ network inbound trucking/rail capacity efficiently transported inbound volume from vendors in both US and Canada at an approximate volume of 50 loads per week. Operations continued efficiently despite 2018 tariff-related congestion and the 2020 COVID-19 related disruptions. Using ITS Logistics Bond, shipments out of Canada were sent in-bond through free trade zones, cutting down on duties, taxes, and fees. Once parts were transported to Brisbane, the ITS Dray Services Team executed container scheduling and pick-ups based on contents-by-SKU to ingate export to Port of Oakland terminals.
Results
Using ITS Logistics, the manufacturer efficiently transported goods from its network of North American vendors and exported them to its new Shanghai facility in time to start production. The company continued to use the export strategy and ITS Logistics in the following months as its Shanghai facility got fully up and running. During this time, over 90% of all export windows were met as requested. This ensured container detention, storage, and chassis costs were minimized throughout the duration of the project. Operationally, an on-time inbound transportation score of 95% minimized additional labor, transportation, and customs-related costs.
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