Best Supply Chain WINNER - J & J's Tri-State Delivery Service

J&J's Tri-State Delivery Service only served Northern New Jersey when it was incorporated in 1987. Twenty years later, it has grown to cover New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Connecticut. The company is a major deliverer of high-end home products,including kitchen cabinets, windows and doors, appliances and furniture.

"The success of the company is based on quick turnaround time in the warehouse," reports John Knapp, president of CDAComputer Resources, a New Jersey-based company that operates as the contract I.T. department for J&J. "The company has 400,000 square feet of warehouse space, and we want to move product out within two days. We needed excellent trackability."

Until recently, trackability was handled manually. As trucks were offloaded, workers called out individual boxes and described them verbally. Checkers would check each item on paper. Obviously, the process was time-consuming and prone to error.

A number of customers began requesting quicker turnaround times, and J&J sawthe benefits of doing so as away to improve customer satisfaction, efficiency, quality and accuracy. The company set a number of goals. It wanted to expedite its current billing cycle; better track the receiving, checking and delivery of shipments; shorten the receiving and delivery process; eliminate the need for additional office staff to key in paper-based data; improve the accuracy of data being collected by drivers; and track driver efficiency.