Tive Brings Supply Chain Visibility to Global Chemicals Company

Merck KGaA, known in the U.S. as EMD Performance Materials Group, is a German specialty chemicals company with a complex, international supply chain. In a recent interview with Inbound Logistics, Supply Chain Program Manager Andreas Grimm described the challenges of managing EMD's supply chain: "Our visibility ended when we shipped product out the door," he explained.

To address this lack of visibility, Grimm and his team began to explore how a digital supply chain solution could improve their operations and shed light on the dark spots in EMD's supply chain. In the Inbound Logistics article, Grimm explains how EMD decided to work with Tive to track to key shipments and gain a window into the exact location and condition of their in-transit goods.

The Tive trackers provide real-time data regarding a shipment's location, as well as temperature, humidity, shock, and other key variables. All that sensor data is sent directly to Tive's cloud-based software platform, where the EMD team can monitor it from anywhere in the world. In addition, Tive's customizable alerts made it possible for team members to get a notification if a shipment arrived at a certain location or experienced potentially harmful conditions, such as high temperatures or shock levels.

"This gave us insight about what our customers and forwarders are doing," Grimm explains. For example, in one case, Tive trackers detected a temperature excursion on a truck shipment caused by an issue with the air conditioning system. The tracker sent an immediate notification to Grimm, enabling him to work with the carrier to fix the problem and save the shipment of expensive, highly sensitive chemicals.

Thanks to Tive's supply chain visibility solution, Grimm is no longer stuck in the dark when his shipments leave the building. Real-time alerts and data-driven analysis make it possible for EMD to discover potential problems before the damage is done, and eliminate the root cause of these issues to improve future operations. To learn more about how EMD Performance Materials is working with Tive, read the full article from Inbound Logistics. And to find out how Tive can bring a new level of visibility to your company's supply chain, request a demo today.