Cabrera Foods
Since 1949, Cabrera Food's commitment to quality has made it one of the largest processors of tortillas in the world. Operations in Mexico, the United States and Central America, demanded that Cabrera Foods streamline transportation costs and develop key performance metrics to be used in several production plants.The company's plant in Fresno, Ca. realized the need to change their distribution and transportation processes. In an effort to increase productivity and reduce operational costs, Cabrera Foods decided to outsource the plant's transportation operations.
For the past decade, Cabrera Foods had pursued an aggressive growth-by-acquisition strategy, which nearly doubled the company's revenue. While revenue growth was good news for Cabrera Foods, the company was challenged with integrating uniform process throughout their network. In essence, each plant still functioned as a silo or a separate business unit.
Cabrera hired Your Team (YT) to address the following challenges:
Challenges
1. To reduce overall transportation costs by centralizing Cabrera Foods' transportation operations
2. To enable Cabrera Foods to handle increased transportation volume associated with a substantial increase in product demand
3. To develop key performance and financial indicators to track and measure performance across Cabrera Foods' 11 U.S. plants
Cabrera Foods selected YT to identify and improve areas of inefficiency in the plant's inbound and outbound transportation operations. Cabrera Foods quickly saw the opportunity to drive down overall transportation costs while expanding to meet the growing demand for its products in North America. They employed YT to manage the transportation network for eight of its existing U.S. plants.
YT soon identified Cabrera Foods' greatest logistical challenge-each plant was using its own set of operating procedures and mode selection processes to manage inbound and outbound transportation. This prevented Cabrera Foods from maximizing its existing transportation network infrastructure.
Requirements
Analyze the Cabrera Foods Logistics Exercise in the Cabrera Foods handout.
Identify possible solutions to Cabrera's challenges.