Implementing Real Time Transportation Visibility in a complex supply chain The Barilla Case

The purpose of this thesis is to highlight the steps that have been taken to successfully implement a Real Time Visibility platform, based on a case study in Barilla company, highlighting the challenges of the project, and showing the effects that Real Time Visibility can have in the supply chain. The thesis starts by introducing the company, in order to provide a comprehensive overview of the firm and to make the reader aware of the environment and complexity of the supply chain in which the project took place as well as the challenges that it is currently facing. Successively, a literature review is presented. In this section the concept of supply chain management is analyzed, as well as solutions that provide visibility to the supply chain such as Real Time Transportation Visibility (which is the main focal point of this thesis) and the Control Tower. After the presentation of the previous information, the reader has enough knowledge to be introduced to the RTTV project. This project was implemented as a response to those challenges explained in the initial chapters. The case study begins with a market analysis to explore the various providers of Real Time Visibility platforms. Then in the Proof of Concept phase, two of those solutions have been tested simultaneously. After having chosen the most adequate solution for Barilla's needs, I moved on to describing the production phase which mainly consists of onboarding of transport suppliers and making sure good data quality is achieved in order to start introducing the platform to other teams within the supply chain. Reflections are also given on the advantages that this project can bring as well as a brief focus on future developments, namely the integration of this system into the larger Logistic Control Tower. This document can be considered as an attempt to show what are the possible benefits from using a real time transportation visibility system and introducing it to different actors in the supply chain, while suggesting actions to take and highlighting those aspects which are important for a successful implementation of such a platform.