A lean transportation approach for reducing distribution cost: A case study

This work describes the strategy of a Mexican firm to improve its transportation cost of unused truck capacity. This is based on the application of a transportation waste elimination scheme for increasing efficiency in its warehousing and routing operations on a detailed level. The Operational Equipment Effectiveness index used in TPM is adapted to be used as the main performance measure. Availability, performance and quality wastes are identified using Value Stream Mapping of the distribution operations. The implementation of the improvement initiatives is still in progress but pilot test and projected results are provided.