DELO goes digital with its shipping process

DELO Industrie Klebstoffe GmbH & Co. KGaA, an owner-managed global market leader of industrial adhesives headquartered in Bavaria, has fully digitized and optimized its shipping process with software from AEB SE. The solution helps DELO with packing, hazardous goods management, and all goods shipments – and even supports export management and communications with the customs authorities.

The software also provides a direct link to seven transport partners, so DELO can automatically generate the correct labels, shipping documents, and EDI messages for them. It even creates generic shipping labels and shipping orders for some 150 other carriers, especially for shipments with the Incoterms EXW and FCA.

The software also models special coolant packaging processes for items such as temperature-sensitive adhesives, which are typically packed in a Styrofoam box with dry ice and a temperature sensor. The solution then identifies the requirements specific to the product ID and item types, guides the packer step by step through the process, and even indicates whether a hazardous goods label needs to be added – and if so, which one.

The software has been in company-wide use since March 2021 and now helps DELO process some 20,000 shipments with around 35,000 packages every year. Christian Walther, Head of Production and Logistics at DELO, sees a big win here: “We set out to implement a fully integrated software solution that would deliver an end-to-end digital process chain with greater reliability, efficiency, and automation. Mission accomplished.”

Accelerated processes were one clear manifestation of this, with the average time needed to process a shipping order falling by some 30%. The most dramatic time savings happened in the shipping office, which often needed hours to process larger, complex shipments that are now handled in less than an hour.

The urgency of implementing the solution was driven by DELO’s consistent growth trajectory in recent years. “The old process was at its limits as the volume of shipments soared,” explains Christian Walther.
DELO had been using multiple software systems in shipping, and some steps in the process had to be carried out manually. The company relied on third-party customs software to handle export declarations, for example, while shipping labels were created with the tools of each individual transport partner and shipping documents were generated in the ERP system.

The bumpy handoff between the various systems, along with paper-based steps, are now a thing of the past. The new software gives DELO more than just faster processing and lead times – it also provides end-to-end visibility of the data.