CargoSolutions, the supply-chain optimisation business unit of Cargo Carriers, recently received a Platinum Award and an Extraordinary Judge’s Award for the exceptional service that it continues to supply Mossops-Western Leather (Mossops) at this year’s Logistics Achiever Awards (LAA).

The prestigious LAA programme rewards professionalism and excellence in the effective application of strategic, tactical and operational logistics and supply-chain management principles, concepts, as well as practices in southern Africa.

For more than 30 years, it has encouraged local companies to review, evaluate and upgrade their current logistics and supply-chain management practices. This is in addition to creating a greater awareness and understanding of the value of effective logistics and supply-chain management.

The esteemed panel of judges of this year’s LAA were very impressed with the role that CargoSolutions played in assisting the leather manufacturer turn around its operations.

Established in 1846 in Wellington, Mossops is a significant supplier of leather to local manufacturers of shoes, furniture and fashion accessories.

Catering to an extremely wide market for leather products, the company grappled with quality inconsistencies; large amounts of work in progress; long lead times to clients; and missed promised dates. These challenges were exacerbated by a highly volatile rand/dollar exchange rate.

Gert Kruger, Chief Executive Officer, and Mossops’ management team, therefore, decided to partner Cargo Carriers in 2016 to assist them in optimising the entire supply chain using the Theory of Constraints change process and enabled by the Symphony System.

Under CargoSolutions’ watch, Mossops started importing high quality hides from local producers to reduce lead times in a process that is managed with the help of dynamic buffers and is adjusted according to supply and demand.

The supply of offtake products was also changed from a “make-to-order” to a “make-to-stock” process, also facilitated by dynamically-adjusted buffers.

Moreover, robust partnerships were established with four key customers with substantial footwear factories located in Cape Town, Groot-Brakrivier, Port Elizabeth and Pinetown. They relay inventory data to Mossops on a daily basis so that it is able to replenish stock frequently and according to their demand.

The outcome of this intervention has been extremely impressive.

Over the past three years, Mossops has become financially sound, both in terms of return-on-revenue and capital employed.

Meanwhile, the company’s customers have also managed to reduce inventories from up to six months to about two weeks due to the partnership programme. Their production lead times have also decreased by more than 50% and cash-to-cash cycle reduced from some six months to eight weeks.

Notably, production output has surpassed any historical record volumes over the past couple of months and output has been growing on a monthly basis.

The CargoSolutions team, under the leadership of Director Dawid Janse van Rensburg, and management of Mossop worked very hard on this project to ensure its success.

“It was a great privilege to work with such an enthusiastic and motivated team, and I know that this project will inspire many other local manufacturers of apparel, footwear and clothing,” Janse van Rensburg says.

His team accepted the Platinum Award and Extraordinary Judge’s Award at a prestigious awards ceremony that was held at Montecasino on 17 October 2019.