Overview
Nippon Paint is one of the world's largest coatings manufacturers, serving decorative, industrial, automotive, and marine markets across Asia-Pacific. Its China operations run a dense network of plants, regional warehouses, and thousands of distributor and retail delivery points, moving both hazardous bulk chemicals and finished paint SKUs every day.
Challenges
Fragmented Multi-Plant Dispatch
Each plant and regional warehouse planned its own outbound transport with local spreadsheets and phone calls, making it impossible to consolidate loads or benchmark carrier performance nationally.
Hazardous & Mixed-SKU Complexity
Coatings shipments mix hazardous chemicals, bulk raw materials, and finished cans with strict compatibility, temperature, and route restrictions that manual planners could not reliably enforce.
Opaque Distributor & Store Delivery
Once a truck left the yard, distributors and retail stores had no reliable ETA. Delivery exceptions were only discovered by phone, causing missed unloading windows and repeat visits.
Manual Freight Audit & Settlement
Thousands of monthly freight bills were reconciled in Excel against multiple rate cards. Errors, over-charges, and slow settlement damaged carrier relationships and inflated logistics cost.
"With Deep-Insights AI we finally have one platform that plans every load, tracks every truck, and audits every freight bill — across our entire coatings distribution network."
Logistics Director
Nippon Paint China Supply Chain
Solution
Unified Cloud TMS for Coatings Logistics
Deployed Deep-Insights AI TMS as the single execution backbone across plants, regional DCs, and 3PL carriers, with configurable order, load, and route models tailored to hazardous and non-hazardous coatings flows.
- Multi-plant order pooling & load consolidation
- Hazmat-aware routing & carrier compliance rules
- Carrier tendering, tracking & scorecards
Digital Distributor & Store Delivery
Connected drivers, distributors, and retail stores through a mobile ePOD app and portals, giving every stakeholder real-time ETA, digital signatures, exception photos, and closed-loop returns handling.
- Mobile ePOD with photo & signature
- Distributor & store ETA portal
- Automated exception & return workflows
Automated Freight Audit & Settlement
Configured rate engines and audit rules to automatically match every waybill against contracted rates, accessorials, and fuel surcharges, driving invoice accuracy and shortening settlement cycles.
- Rule-based freight audit engine
- Multi-carrier rate management
- Automated statement & settlement
Results
Lower Landed Cost
Consolidated loads, competitive tendering, and automated audit delivered 8%+ year-over-year freight cost reduction across the coatings distribution network.
Reliable Distributor Service
On-time delivery to distributors and retail stores climbed to 98%, with real-time ETAs and proactive exception alerts replacing phone-based tracking.
Compliant & Traceable Operations
Hazmat routing rules, digital POD, and full document trails gave safety, finance, and audit teams end-to-end traceability for every shipment.
Key Takeaways
- Unified plants, warehouses, and 3PL carriers on a single cloud TMS
- Enforced hazmat compliance and load rules automatically at planning time
- Delivered real-time ETA and paperless POD to distributors and stores
- Cut freight cost by 8%+ while shortening carrier settlement cycles
