Owens Corning Taps Digital Freight For E-Procurement

Compiled ByDave Schafer Digital Freight Inc. has signed a one-year contract with Owens Corning to provide freight transportation procurement across five major Owens business units: insulation, composites, exterior, roofing, and cultured stone. Owens, Toledo, Ohio, has offered more than 70 million miles for bid to hundreds of transport-service providers in more than 10 different online request for quotes (RFQs) since January, Owens says. "With more than 500,000 truckloads a year, it is imperative for us to streamline the logistics process, reduce RFQ cycle time, save on transportation costs, and keep the carriers happy," says Terry Heeter, chief logistics officer, Owens Corning. Digital Freight's DigitalRFQ, an online request-for-quote tool, allows the company to do all that and more, he says. Using Web-native solutions to conduct an online transportation RFQ condenses traditional RFQ cycle time, Lexington, Ky.-based Digital says. Previously Owens used binders and regular mail to execute RFQs, which took an average of three months to complete. The process was time-consuming and only allowed transportation managers to conduct bids once every two-to-three years, Digital says. "We chose Digital Freight for our contractual freight transportation buys due to the complexity and industry-specific requirement in logistics that call for a niche solution," Heeter says. "Using the Digital Freight Marketplace has reduced the cycle time from months to days, enabling us to conduct RFQs on an as-needed basis while using less man hours." In January Owens used Digital Freight to create a more strategic core carrier group to handle focused freight business for several divisions as well as identify new carriers to accommodate additional capacity in other divisions.