OUR CUSTOMER
Our customer is a Vietnamese company operating in the beverage industry, with a commitment to meeting consumer demand through products that comply with food safety standards while supporting environmental protection.
In December 2020, with Smartlog accompanying the transformation journey, the company successfully completed a 12-month program to establish a more advanced, integrated, and standardized logistics operation at scale for the F&B industry.
Two major initiatives helped create a paperless logistics environment: Smartlog Warehouse Management System (SWM) and Smartlog Transport Management System (STM). Both solutions were tailored to the company’s specific operational requirements and implemented on an accelerated timeline.
OPERATING CONTEXT
Our customer operates more than 100 warehouses and manufacturing sites nationwide.
To prepare returnable packaging liability reports, the Packaging Department previously had to manage and process millions of data records at the end of each month using Excel files. Packaging liabilities included the quantity of returnable packaging receivable and payable for each legal entity, such as factories, warehouses, and distribution centers, within a specific reporting period.
After checking, reconciling, and completing the reports, employees had to manually send emails to each warehouse or supplier. Similarly, whenever returnable packaging needed to be transferred between warehouses, the team had to initiate and communicate each transaction manually by email.
This created several operational challenges:
Significant time and manpower were required to process and reconcile data.
Manual data management increased the risk of errors.
Unnecessary costs could arise from inaccurate or delayed information.
Over time, these inefficiencies could negatively affect the company’s overall profitability.
This was not a simple problem to solve. Smartlog worked closely with the customer to assess the operating model and identify an approach capable of addressing these challenges systematically.
PROJECT OBJECTIVES FOR RETURNABLE PACKAGING LIABILITY MANAGEMENT
The key objectives of the returnable packaging liability management project included:
Monitor and manage packaging receivables and payables, while comparing actual packaging inventory against liabilities, so the company could make faster and more accurate transfer decisions, optimize costs, and ensure sufficient packaging availability across the network.
Access returnable packaging liability reports for the entire network, individual legal entities, individual warehouses, and corresponding inventory levels in real time.
Retrieve historical packaging liability data for any previous reporting period.
Trace detailed packaging liabilities at each warehouse by inbound, outbound, and accounting transaction.
Generate and print reconciliation statements for each legal entity according to predefined templates.
Automatically update packaging liability reports whenever transactions involving new product codes or warehouse codes were created.
SMARTLOG'S SOLUTION
After multiple rounds of analysis and discussion with the customer, Smartlog designed a dedicated module for packaging liability management and integrated it with the existing Logistics 4.0 ecosystem that had already been successfully deployed.
RETURNABLE PACKAGING MANAGEMENT MODULE
The Returnable Packaging Management module was developed specifically to manage packaging liabilities and integrated into Smartlog SWM.
Its core capabilities include:
Creating Transfer Notifications, either linked to or independent from Delivery Notifications, to record transactions that generate packaging liabilities.
Automatically sending email notifications to relevant warehouses.
Monitoring the execution status of each Transfer Notification.
Exporting Transfer Notification lists to Excel.
By managing packaging liabilities through the Returnable Packaging Management module, the company can record both packaging liabilities and actual packaging inventory in real time.
This provides the operational team with greater control over packaging transfers between warehouses and factories, helping optimize costs while responding more quickly to production and business requirements across the network.
PORTAL – REPORTING
The reporting portal consolidates operational data and presents it through visual reports and dashboards, including:
All inbound and outbound transactions across warehouses in the system.
Consolidated packaging liabilities by warehouse.
Packaging liabilities and actual packaging inventory at each warehouse.
Export of both raw data in Excel format and standardized packaging liability reports.
With these reports, the Packaging Department can significantly simplify the data verification and reconciliation process with relevant parties.
RESULTS ACHIEVED
This was a particularly unique project because it was implemented entirely online during the period of social distancing.
The project lasted approximately three months, from late June to early October 2021, and delivered clear improvements against the objectives jointly defined by Smartlog and the customer:
100% of operations were managed through Smartlog SWM.
Packaging liability data and actual packaging inventory were recorded in real time, down to each item code and warehouse, and presented through visual dashboards.
The team could proactively create Packaging Transfer Notifications between warehouses based on consolidated and visualized packaging liability data.
The execution status of each Packaging Transfer Notification could be tracked by warehouse, including New, In Progress, and Completed.
Newly created Transfer Notifications were automatically emailed to warehouses involved in the packaging liability transfer.
Every change or information update automatically triggered an email notification to the relevant warehouses.
Periodic packaging liability reconciliation reports between legal entities could be generated directly from the system.
The returnable packaging liability management project marked another important step in transforming logistics operations within Vietnam’s beverage industry, particularly in preparation for a single-ownership returnable packaging model.
The solution had already been successfully live for several months, with only the final acceptance steps remaining.
Through this project, Smartlog also recognized that the challenge of digital transformation continues to evolve. As business requirements become more complex, technology providers such as Smartlog and their customers need to work closely together, combining operational understanding and technological capabilities to develop solutions that create sustainable value.
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