Leading real-time supply chain visibility company FourKites announced the recipients of its annual Golden Kite Awards, which recognize best-in-class companies that are leveraging the FourKites® platform to achieve breakthrough results in five categories: Enterprise Collaboration, Improved Customer Experience, End-to-End Optimization, Supply Chain Agility and Green Earth. This year’s Golden Kite Award winners are Kimberly-Clark Corporation, Bayer, Land O’Lakes, ArrowStream and Cardinal Health.
- Kimberly-Clark Corporation received the Golden Kite Award for Collaboration for streamlining the appointment scheduling process across 16 distribution centers and production plants to improve productivity and ensure on-time deliveries. By scheduling approximately 1,200 appointments per month (60 per day) in FourKites’ Appointment Manager solution, Kimberly-Clark has been able to eliminate 300 emails and save 480 minutes per day. As Tony Poole, Senior Transportation Manager, Kimberly-Clark, stated, “In addition to the email and time savings, on-time delivery on live unload shipments has improved by 10% due to the ability to secure the live load pick up in a timely manner.”
- Bayer received the Golden Kite Award for Improved Customer Experience. Bayer has been using FourKites to obtain more visibility across its product delivery, especially in the area of last-mile visibility to enhance the customer experience. According to Bayer Logistics Manager Arvin Cuenco, “Visibility allows us to make well-informed decisions when the unplanned or unexpected happens. It not only gives us confidence in our own processes, but it also makes our customers happy, as they can rely on us.”
- Land O’Lakes received the Golden Kite Award for End-to-End Optimization. The agriculture leader is leveraging FourKites for prompt visibility, even among its smaller carriers in rural areas. Carrie Conrad, Transportation Systems Analyst at Land O’Lakes, said, “We’re excited to roll this platform out to all our drivers so that we can track 100% of our shipments right from pickup, and therefore be empowered to be more proactive and accurate with customer delivery notifications.”
- ArrowStream, which manages freight for many of the top restaurant chains in the country, won the Golden Kite Award for Supply Chain Agility. Director of Operations Jason Wowk said: “By creating a platform in which we were able to pair all of our purchase order visibility with the real-time tracking and ETAs of FourKites, we were able to develop tiles in which our customers could receive real-time stockout potential alerts and act proactively in order to expedite, transfer or allocate items, based upon each individual situation and need.”
- Cardinal Health received the Golden Kite Award for Green Earth. Cardinal Health has been able to make progress toward its long-term sustainability goals by using FourKites. Karen Betancourt, Vice President of Logistics at Cardinal Health, said that “to track emissions and to evaluate how we’re performing — it all relies on data. And that’s a place where we’ve been thrilled with our partnership with FourKites, because without it, we would not have the critical data we need to operate well.”
“Congratulations to all of this year’s Golden Kite winners,” said FourKites founder and CEO Mathew Elenjickal. “As supply chain disruptions and challenges continue, FourKites customers are rising to the occasion, leveraging supply chain visibility to attain greater levels of service, reliability and resilience. This year’s Golden Kite Award recipients are best-in-class examples of how much companies can accomplish when they pursue widespread collaboration and smart application of big data across all corners of their supply chain.”
The Golden Kite Awards launched in 2019 to celebrate the hard work and success of FourKites customers who are achieving unprecedented results with supply chain visibility technology. This year’s winners — along with finalists KeHE Distributors, Clearwater Paper Corporation, GlobalTranz, T-Mobile, Haworth, Schneider National and Schreiber Foods — were celebrated last week at Visibility 2022, FourKites’ annual customer-focused event. This year, more than 850 global supply leaders gathered in Chicago to share best practices, collaborate on future product development, and network with like-minded peers.
Over the last 12 months, FourKites has experienced unprecedented growth. It has increased its customer base by over 80%, now totaling over 1,100 customers and 420,000+ carriers; it has seen nearly 60% growth in the number of shipments in its platform; and it has experienced 80% growth in ocean customers year over year, now tracking 98% of global ocean traffic. FourKites has also seen significant growth in Europe and Asia-Pacific. Last week, the company announced a strategic partnership and investment from Mitsui & Co., Ltd. to expand FourKites’ offering across APAC. Mitsui is just the latest industry giant to throw its weight behind FourKites, following strategic investments from FedEx, Zebra Technologies, Volvo Group Venture Capital and Qualcomm Ventures, LLC, over the past two years.