𝐆𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐀𝐜𝐫𝐨𝐬𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐖𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐬 𝟭⧸𝟯

𝐂𝐚𝐬𝐞 𝟭: Storage/Demurrage Bills

A company had been paying storage/demurrage bills for almost 80%+ of seafreight shipments.

💦 Who’s at fault?

From the structure, seems no-one.

🪵 Merchandising Dept - Responsible for communicating with suppliers mainly on products, and collecting shipping documents along the way

🪵 Shipping Dept - Responsible for managing overall shipments specifics (instructions, claims, drawbacks…) , including submitting the docs for clearance when they are available;

🪵 Forwarding company - Responsible for achieving the boarder clearance and getting shippments delivered, once they receive the paperwork.

Storage/demurrage costs happened due to the late clearance and extended time of cargo storage at a port —— This was due to the late submitment by the Shipping Dept, which was because of the late docs from the Merchandising Depts…

🩺 The ‘𝐖𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐬 ’ in the situation:

The party who knew the deadline of the shipping paperwork and the results (the extra costs), failed to communicate across upstream;

Each party had their own role focuses and comfortable, ‘traditional’ boundaries

When the bills were getting received by the company, it’s already quite sometime later after each finished their bit.  The bills were accepted as ‘bad luck’, ‘it happens’.

❇️ 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐒𝐨𝐥𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧:

🔸Eduction (upskilling) & Communication

🔸Run sets of overaching metrics with ownerships clearly assigned

🔹The ultimiate: Setup and Maintain a collaborative working culture to co-enjoy the small & big successes, co-battle the pitfalls, and co-learn from failures.

📉 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐄𝐟𝐟𝐞𝐜𝐭:

Unnecessary costs eliminated: $2-3 million yearly. 💵

Some of the ‘walls’ or silos in a company are like an unscratchable itch —something feels a bit off, yet everything seems well-grounded...

Is it? 🔎