Humans can survive without water for three days. For water bottlers that are reliant on springs and wells, it’s a lot less.

MODE’s customer, a bottler of some of the best-known spring-sourced and purified water brands in the U.S. and Canada., was running into $1 million-a-day problem when their springs and wells went dry or became contaminated after rainstorms.

This production interruption costing that much is only surprising if you aren’t familiar with the uber-competitive bottled water industry. Water is essential, and retailers will do what’s necessary to keep shelves stocked. Maintaining the flow of product to retailers in order to hold onto coveted shelf space and make retailers’ lives easy is paramount for success.

Much of the $1 million-a-day problem is opportunity cost and relationship risk. A lot of it is the cost of operations being knocked offline – the cost of idle workers, equipment and truckers adds up, as does the overtime once production is resumed.

MODE collaborated with the bottler to devise processes and procedures that can be applied to the bottler’s widespread springs and many brands. The program MODE came up with provides the bottler with on-call tractors and drivers trained and ready to haul tanker trucks full of the water that their bottling plants need to keep production flowing when their springs and wells fail. Not only did we solve their cost problem, but we improved on-time performance to 98% and provided visibility to their backhaul opportunities allowing for continuous route optimization.

Read the full case study below to see how MODE helped this major bottler keep their logistics flowing.

Contact our team of experts to see what MODE can do for your supply chain.