Mars Europe

To significantly improve performance of its intermodal European transportation network, Mars, a global market leader in the food, confectionery and pet care industries, partnered with 4flow, a leading global provider of supply chain consulting, software, and fourth-party logistics (4PL) services, to implement a continuous approach to integrated transportation planning, optimisation, and execution.

Throughout the project, the collaboration partners successfully transformed Mars’ transportation network into a connected, smart, and highly-efficient supply chain ecosystem.

With a modular control tower solution that integrates transportation planning, execution and controlling processes in the 4flow iTMS, Mars and 4flow successfully integrated 44 plants, including 23 Mars plants and 21 plants from external manufacturers in the control tower platform.

Thanks to collaborative teams, a forward-thinking approach, and a robust technology structure, the solution has integrated more than 100 carriers and currently organises over 2,300 transports on a weekly basis.

Since the solution was implemented in 2020, approximately 150 measures for improving efficiency in the Mars network have been identified, including cost re- ductions of €5 million and savings of approximately 1,200 tons of CO2 emissions.

Throughout the project numerous innovative solutions have been developed and implemented in the network, with more to come.