Mazda Motor Logistics speeds visibility across supply chain
Using Oracle Cloud, the European distributor boosts on-time delivery and cuts the time needed to close the books by 75%.
“By combining Oracle Transportation Management with Oracle Business Intelligence we're able to measure KPIs for our European distribution center and our regional warehouses. This allows us to compare the performance of our warehouses in the same way, with the same KPIs.”
Business challenges
Mazda Motor Logistics, which handles distribution of Mazda cars and parts throughout Europe, had a legacy warehouse management system that lacked a transportation management module, leaving Mazda without visibility into its product shipments. The inability to ensure on-time deliveries not only risked customer satisfaction—it made it possible for parts made by competitors to take market share away from Mazda with non-Mazda-certified parts.
Employees used to spend a lot of time administering files and manually calculating invoices. That is now fully automated via the Oracle Transportation Management tool.
Why Mazda Motor chose Oracle
Mazda Motor Logistics’ parent company, Mazda Motor Corporation, made the decision to go with Oracle for three reasons: Oracle’s global support and flexible solutions; a software solution design that works across Mazda’s entire global organization; and Oracle’s support for competence centers, with the Oracle Transportation Management center located in Europe. Mazda uses the competence center, or center of excellence, model to concentrate expertise in a specific software system in a single geographic location that can support Mazda and its subsidiaries worldwide.
Another advantage is the large Oracle user base at Mazda, which makes it easy for employees to share best practices. In the drive for transport excellence, Mazda Motor Logistics brought together three solutions using Oracle Integration: Oracle E-Business Suite for order and inventory management; Oracle Warehouse Management for unloading, staging, and loading operations; and Oracle Transportation Management for transport management and container load planning. The goal was to create a system of products that work together to provide visibility into the movement of parts and the data needed to identify the optimal logistics solution for transporting goods across the Mazda network.
Results
Mazda Motor Logistics now has visibility from order to delivery, and its export staff can see carrier bookings, invoicing, and billing without ever having to log out of the software. The company was able to eliminate Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Access files from its processes and fully automate all transport bookings. The company has also made its first foray into the cloud, with the implementation of Oracle Product Hub, which allows the company to manage all of its product master data through Oracle Cloud, with a full approval flow across the various departments.
Before implementing the Oracle system, it took four days to close the previous month’s books. Now the task takes less than a day. Even more important for Mazda Motor Logistics, reducing manual labor has allowed the company to redirect resources to customer service. And by using the competence center model, the company can now roll out Oracle solutions throughout Mazda’s global enterprise. In addition, the frequency of upgrades means that the Oracle solution effectively ‘future-proofs’ Mazda Motor Logistics systems, ensuring that it can easily take on new features and functionality as they become available.