When transport planning becomes a bottleneck in production

In operations with complex production and large product flows, transport planning often becomes a critical but underestimated part of the whole. The planning takes place close to production, is tightly linked to the business system, and is influenced by many moving parts such as volumes, capacity, routes, and external parties.

Despite this, a cohesive decision support is often lacking. The result is manual decisions, low precision, and a working method that is difficult to scale and explain.

Consequences for the business

When transport planning does not function as it should, it affects more than just daily logistics:

• Transport costs become difficult to predict and control
• Delivery precision varies, despite stable demand
• Planning becomes dependent on individuals and vulnerable
• Changes in volume or structure require a lot of manual work
• Management and finance lack transparency in how decisions are actually made
• What often begins as an operational problem quickly becomes a strategic limitation.

What is required to move forward

Moving forward seldom involves replacing the entire system landscape. It often involves creating structure where it is lacking.

Successful businesses gain control through:

• reliable and consolidated planning data
• clearer links between business systems and planning
• decision support that reflects actual flows and constraints
• work methods that reduce manual steps without losing flexibility

It is only then that planning becomes something more than a day-to-day exercise.

How this helped one of the world's largest salmon producers

One of the world's largest producers of farmed salmon faced just these challenges. Large volumes, complex transport flows, and a planning process that required a lot of manual work in several systems.

By structuring the transport planning and linking it more closely to the business system, better oversight, higher planning quality, and improved foresight were achieved. The working method became less dependent on individuals and more robust, while efficiency increased by approximately one full-time equivalent.

Our role

Elvenite works with businesses where complex flows, business systems and decision support need to function together in practice. The assignment often involves understanding what everyday life actually looks like and creating structure between ERP, planning and operational decisions.

The focus is on building solutions that support the business – not on implementing generic tools alongside.

When is this relevant?

This is particularly relevant for organisations with complex production and transport flows, who work in business systems like Infor M3 and feel that planning and decision support do not provide sufficient precision, transparency or control in their daily operations.