Reducing costly ocean-to-air freight conversions with predictive analytics
Core challenge
Supply chain planners at a global industrial manufacturer were losing millions to last-minute ocean-to-air freight conversions
Industry
Industrials, Manufacturing, and Energy
Use case
Ocean-to-air freight conversions
Solution
Predictive machine learning + prescriptive decision support
Impact
Hundred thousand dollars savings per month
Client overview
The client is a global industrial manufacturer operating multiple business units across a complex, worldwide distribution network, moving finished goods from plants to internal distribution centers and onward to customer locations across markets.
Challenge
Context
In a global supply chain, every last-minute shipment change carries a direct cost.
Long lead-times and limited visibility into product availability and shipment readiness meant that shipments originally planned for ocean freight were frequently switched to expedited air close to the ship date.
Costly conversions
With annual air freight spend running into the tens of millions of dollars these conversions represented a significant and recurring drain on logistics budgets.
Solution
We designed and deployed a phased solution combining predictive machine learning with prescriptive decision support.
Predicting risk
Recommending action
The first capability predicts, about a week in advance, whether a shipment is at high risk of converting from ocean to air, flagging it early enough for planners to intervene.
The second layer moves from insight to action, recommending alternative fulfillment options using an optimization approach.
By closing the loop between predicting risk and prescribing the next best action, the platform gives planners genuine operational actionability.
Impact
The solution demonstrated value with a savings run-rate of several hundred thousand dollars per month post go-live.
Structured around outcome-based commercials, the engagement aligns client’s and our success. The AI solution establishes a replicable, high-ROI blueprint for global manufacturers with a meaningful ocean/air mix, targeting millions in annual hard savings through reduced air conversions and improved proactive planning.
