Software
Integrated material and transportation planning software

Eliminate inefficiencies by integrating transportation planning into the material planning phase

Optimize material orders with real-world transportation factors

Industries
Benefits
Tools
Use cases
FAQ

Transportation optimization meets material planning software

Material planning and transport planning are often separate processes. Material planners don’t know transportation capacities, and transportation planners can’t see their impact on inventory. This lack of visibility leads to ineffective plans and lots of last-minute changes.

Discover a new approach with software for integrated material and transport planning. By considering transportation constraints like capacities and costs earlier in your supply chain, you can optimize call-offs, make reliable plans – and reduce transportation costs by 10%.

Cutting-edge planning software

Powerful optimization algorithms ensure reliable planning and on-time availability of goods and materials. The software considers real-world transportation factors such as available lanes, transportation costs, and equipment restrictions when generating material orders.

Optimize transportation efficiency

You can automatically group orders into efficient shipments to maximize transportation utilization and reduce transportation costs. Direct benefits include increased FTL utilization and fewer trucks on the road for a more sustainable supply chain.

Kinaxis TLO by 4flow

If you use Kinaxis Maestro™ (RapidResponse®)

This embedded Maestro^TM(RapidResponse^®) application brings the power of transportation optimization to the Kinaxis concurrent planning platform – empowering you to increase planning efficiency, achieve significant costs savings and reduce carbon emissions

Learn more

4flow TORO

If you use an ERP system

Plug-in solution for MRP optimization

This plug-in solution fits in seamlessly to your existing landscape – so you can start optimizing material call-offs and achieving cost savings, no matter what software you already use.

Learn more

Automotive

Manage even the most complex global networks and counteract volatility. You can optimize transportation in complex networks to create significant cost savings, efficient supply chain processes, and end-to-end transparency with transportation and material planning software from 4flow.

Read our case study

Consumer goods and retail

Ensure reliable on-time delivery of high-quality goods, reduce complexity, and save transportation costs with one solution. You can tackle changing consumer demands and increased transportation and shipping costs with 4flow’s material and transportation planning software.

Read our case study

Discrete manufacturing

Build a resilient supply chain with reliable availability of components for on-time manufacturing. You can overcome supply chain volatility, from raw material shortages to shipping container delays, with 4flow's software solutions for integrated transport and material planning.

Read our case study

Benefits & features

>15% CO₂ reduction

Cost savings of up to 10%

End-to-end transparency and confident decision making

Improve transportation utilization by up to 20%

Eliminate silos and ensure supply chain resilience

Automation and optimization of material planning

The powerful algorithms can also be applied to the following additional use cases

Optimize container shipments

Optimize order call-offs for orders delivered by container – similar to the utilization of truck loads.

Optimized LTL shipping

Optimize your transport call-offs for LTL shipping if you frequently order small quantities.

Integrate regional shippers

Create optimal shipments with materials or finished goods to refill your regional central warehouses or distributors.

Advanced end customer service

Manage aftersales inventory replenishment at service or sales partners efficiently and easily.

Discuss your specific use cases with us

A TMS enhances day-to-day visibility, assists with compliance, provides documentation and supports the timely delivery of goods. On the other hand, transportation planning software focuses on automatically optimizing material call-offs considering both inventory and transportation constraints, allowing planners to consider transportation factors and material constraints simultaneously.

Considering transportation planning and optimization already in the material planning phase makes planning more flexible and efficient. Implementing transportation planning software alongside a TMS enables smoother execution by ensuring actionable plans, maximizing utilization and minimizing inefficiencies like last-minute changes and back-and-forth communication.

Transportation planning software automatically runs an additional optimization in the demand planning calculation. It prepones and/or postpones orders to consolidate demand and create fuller, more efficient loads. Transportation and inventory constraints are considered simultaneously, so planning results are feasible and cost-efficient, and material arrives on time.

Depending on the specific industry, processes and customer requirements, different transportation factors need to be considered in the optimization, e.g. incompatibilities, priority and transportation capacities.

Our 4flow experts can calculate your optimization potential for you free of charge based on a sample of your call-off data. Contact us to discover your optimization potential.

Any questions or looking for additional insights?

Download application-specific one-pagers showing how 4flow software solutions support customers from various industries
Access our on-demand webinar recordings on most common use cases

Access download area