SuperMarketNews.com: By joining a network of retailers, manufacturers and carriers, Penn Traffic is bringing visibility and cost savings to its inbound transportation functions.

Making an appointment with Penn Traffic has become a lot easier.

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The network is the creation of One Network Enterprises, Dallas.

“We set up blocks of time for appointments,” said Tim Cipiti, Penn Traffic’s vice president of distribution and manufacturing. “We can manage the flow better than before; it makes the process smoother.” In a few months, Penn Traffic will open its other two warehouses in Pennsylvania to the scheduling system.

One Network’s collaborative appointment scheduling system comprises hundreds of carriers and manufacturers, along with such food distributors as Kroger, Safeway, Food Lion, Publix, Spartan Stores, Smart & Final and Bozzuto’s, in addition to Penn Traffic. It now accounts for 25% of the inbound movement of goods from suppliers to retailers in the supermarket industry, with much of the growth coming in the past two years, said Greg Brady, chief executive officer at One Network.

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“The biggest thing we’re looking to get is visibility [into inbound shipments] that you can’t get with a manual system,” said Cipiti.

Penn Traffic is beginning to see a number of operational improvements as a result of the appointment scheduling system, said Cipiti. For example, it has been able to reassign one of the two employees who had handled appointment scheduling to another area.

In addition, the company is able to track the performance of carriers much more easily than in the past. The system automatically creates a scorecard of deliveries, allowing Penn Traffic to focus its attention on carriers that are chronically late. As a result, “inbound on-time performance is much better,” said Cipiti. Overall, automation has reduced the workload by 75%, he added.

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Long-term, Cipiti sees the scheduling system helping Penn Traffic to keep lower inventory levels in its warehouses. “You can manage your inventory better, because you are getting close to on-time deliveries.”

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One Network’s Brady observed that suppliers and carriers are attracted to the scheduling network because it offers multiple retailers simultaneously. “They don’t want to deal with 100 scheduling engines,” he said.

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