Around 700 neighborhood markets and convenience stores supplied from a single DC, with OTM at the center of the operation
How a retail chain of small-format stores replaced spreadsheets, forms and messages with an integrated flow, from the store order to delivery confirmation.
The challenge
These are small stores with little room for inventory. They need frequent replenishment, within short receiving windows and at hard-to-reach urban addresses. A loading mistake becomes an empty shelf the next day. All distribution runs from a single distribution center.
The daily plan was built in spreadsheets, outside any transportation system. The project brought planning, shipping and tracking into a single process, integrated with the ERP, the WMS, the tax document platform, the risk management provider and the store app.
Before and after
| Step | Before | After, with OTM |
|---|---|---|
| Daily plan | Several Excel tabs, posted to a shared folder and announced on WhatsApp | Orders arrive through integration and OTM builds the trips automatically |
| Load size | Fixed number of units per order | Item-level calculation into cases, totes and pallets, within each vehicle's capacity |
| Shipping and invoicing | Spreadsheet checks, forms and manual typing | The trip goes to the WMS, and the confirmed loading triggers the tax documents |
| Tracking | Forms and a separate app | Drivers record gate, arrival, delivery and failed delivery in OTM itself, and redelivery is created automatically |
| Freight cost | Biweekly checks and cost allocation in spreadsheets | OTM calculates each trip's freight and allocates the cost across orders |
The gain is in process and predictability: every trip is now planned, tracked and costed in the same system.
Challenges overcome
Loose items in returnable totes
A large share of items travels loose inside returnable plastic totes, which then go on pallets. Out of the box, OTM does not know how many totes and pallets an order becomes. We designed and configured a calculation layer within OTM itself that converts each order into cases, totes and pallets, based on each item's weight, volume and packaging. Today, the number of pallets OTM forecasts at planning is very close to what the DC actually loads: a difference of about 2% over a month of operation.
Master data cleansing
With planning in spreadsheets, item weight and volume did not need to be exact. For the calculation to reflect the real operation, the project included a large cleansing effort on item weight, volume and packaging, together with the operations team.
End-to-end integration
OTM now orchestrates the flow across ERP, WMS, tax document platform, risk management provider and store app, from the store order to document issuance and delivery tracking.
Operational results
- About 700 active stores, with about 250 supplied per day.
- Automated planning: the day's main wave, about 150 orders, becomes about 44 trips in under 20 minutes.
- Over 250 active users per month, including carriers and drivers.
- About 20,000 tracking events per month recorded from the driver's phone, with no office data entry.
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