When your products are used by over 2.5 billion people daily, having visibility of your end-to-end supply chain is a key priority.
Unilever, a leading Consumer Goods company and home to over 400 brands, uses around 12,000 containers on 1,500 ships to get their products into the hands of the consumers in more than 190 countries worldwide.
To simplify this complex logistics journey, Unilever has built a Track & Trace application that allows visibility of their cargo at sea, including essential data of the products (SKU) and container information.
The new, innovative tool, the Virtual Ocean Control Tower, aims to give Unilever extremely accurate real-time visibility into their sea freight operations, while boosting their efforts to drive sustainability across the ocean shipping industry.
But how do they manage to transform their logistics processes using this first-of-its-kind digital innovation?
This is where MarineTraffic comes in.
Among other partners, Unilever relies on MarineTraffic to streamline the sea freight logistics procedures and improve operational efficiency, using advanced AIS data and maritime intelligence.
By using MarineTraffic API services, Unilever is able to pull the vessel location data directly into their own application. In this way, they can easily keep track of the status of all the containerships that carry their products and transit the oceans each month, getting frequently vessel positions in a day. They are also able to leverage MarineTraffic Port Congestion data to monitor over 300 ports on a weekly basis.
More visibility, more responsiveness - better customer experience
“Tracking a product from Manufacturing until the moment it reaches the Mustafa Centre (popular department store in Little India) in Singapore is now a real-life scenario, using MarineTraffic data", a member of the Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL) Logistics Process Excellence team said.
That means that there is more transparency in each stage of the logistics process, less guesswork and faster, data-driven decisions. These have also contributed to increasing customer satisfaction, user experience and brand loyalty.
Unilever now benefits from the world’s most comprehensive coverage and gains access to end-to-end In-transit visibility. The MarineTraffic platform enables the global industry leader to receive updates 24/7/365, and leverage the highest position frequency anytime, anywhere.
