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Category Archives: Case Study

Providing Exceptional White Glove Services to HPE Relocation – Case Study

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) is an American multinational information technology company that provides IT equipment and services to enterprise, commercial, and public sector customers. Their solutions include hardware such as servers, storage, networking, as well as various IT services such as support, managed services, consulting, and cloud services.

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Helping Dr. Squatch with Localized Fulfillment in Canada for their E-commerce and Wholesale Business – Case Study

Dr. Squatch is a fast-growing e-commerce brand that specializes in natural personal care products for men. With a focus on high-quality ingredients and sustainable practices, Dr. Squatch has gained a loyal customer base in the United States.

Following their explosive growth in the U.S., and to keep up with rising e-commerce demand in Canada, Dr. Squatch started looking for an experienced third-party logistics partner.

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How SCI Helped Bench Create a Strategic North American Distribution Model Using Section 321 – Case Study

Bench is a British clothing brand born out of the heart of Manchester, England’s music and skateboard scenes in the late 1980’s. What began as a niche t-shirt brand has grown to a line of athleisure clothing for men, women, and children inspired by an active 24-hour lifestyle.

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How Surgically Clean Air Outsourced Their Fulfillment to SCI to Meet Growing Demand – Case Study

About Surgically Clean Air

Surgically Clean Air is a leading provider of premium air purification solutions for medical professionals, businesses, and educational institutions. They design, manufacture, and distribute their commercial grade air purification equipment across North America and Europe with plans to expand.

Responding to Rapid Growth

When the pandemic hit, businesses looked for solutions to keep employees and patrons safe indoors with clean, purified air. Demand for air purification products grew very quickly in a short amount of time, resulting in an increased volume of orders that they could not fulfill themselves in-house.  As a result, Surgically Clean Air began the search for a reliable 3PL partner that could fulfill their orders with a integrated warehousing and transportation strategy while also being cost efficient for their business operations.

“After researching several 3PL partners, we chose to move forward with SCI because of their very high reputation for being reliable within the 3PL industry,” says Jamil Frig, VP Operations and Supply Chain “After our first meeting we knew that the staff would be easy to work with and I was confident they understood our business. Most importantly, they were willing to work and grow with us during these very dynamic times”

SCI has several warehouse facilities within Mississauga and the Greater Toronto. By partnering with SCI, Surgically Clean Air had access to SCI’s extensive national distribution and transport network, strategic planning capabilities and business intelligence to stay competitive and grow their business.

Surgically Clean Air Office

Scaling for Success

SCI’s operations and IT teams worked quickly to get all Surgically Clean Air SKU’s set up physically in the warehouse and on their warehouse management system so the EDI connections could be made for efficient order fulfillment. Surgically Clean Air had a very unpredictable demand profile due to the extraordinary Covid related conditions. They also had specific distribution requirements that covered both deliveries and part replenishment for a completely new infrastructure across Canada. This included special handling and care for the equipment during the pick and pack process. Once orders are packed, they were shipped out to clients through SCI’s transportation network.

“SCI worked with Surgically Clean Air’s supply chain team to understand their distribution requirements and production constraints which led to a unique logistics and transportation solution answering for both efficiency and adaptability,” explains William El Khouri, Group General Manager, Transportation and Services for SCI.  “We scaled up the main critical operation within weeks and kept on adapting our capacity and capabilities as we learned about their evolving needs.”

Within the first 6 months of 2022, SCI fulfilled 1,895 orders for Surgically Clean Air with a 95% on time average for their SLA. Once the company’s fulfillment operations were set up with SCI, Surgically Clean Air could focus their efforts back on sales, customer care, and growing their business.

“We knew SCI would take care of our orders across Canada,” says Jamil Frig. “Even when last minute requests have arisen, their staff and senior management have been very responsive.”

“SCI is a mature 3PL provider with experienced staff offering reliable, efficient, and cost-effective fulfillment solutions across Canada. They have been an excellent and patient partner as we continue to grow our business in this extremely dynamic environment.”

Jamil Frig, VP Operations and Supply Chain, Surgically Clean Air
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How SCI Helped Launch Cepheid’s Direct-to-Consumer Healthcare Operations in Canada – Case Study

About Cepheid

Cepheid Canada is a division of the global health sciences company, Danaher. As a world leader in diagnostic tests and test systems, Cepheid helps hospitals, clinics and long-term care facilities save lives with fast, accurate tests to diagnose COVID-19, influenza, tuberculosis, and other life-threatening infections.

Scaling fast in a new market

As part of the company’s strategy to shift sales from a distributor model to a direct-to-customer healthcare approach, Cepheid planned to launch its Canadian operations in Fall of 2021 with localized healthcare logistics. To get into the market quickly with its COVID-19 test, Cepheid needed a healthcare logistics partner to localize their Canadian inventory in country, support their coast-to-coast distribution requirements, and meet complex Health Canada compliance regulations.

direct to consumer diagnostics test covid-19

In the Spring of 2021, the team began its search for a 3PL partner with a North American footprint and extensive supply chain compliance experience in the direct-to-consumer healthcare sector. “Our top priority is always serving our patients. We knew we needed a logistics partner who shared that commitment and had the experience and expertise to execute,” recalls Tom Healy, Global Director of Strategy, Technology and Asset Management at Cepheid.

Direct-to-Consumer Healthcare Logistics Ready in Record Time

The company was impressed with SCI’s end-to-end healthcare specific 3PL services, including GMP-compliant warehouses, pick, pack and ship services and sophisticated inventory control. In addition, SCI’s experience carefully handling direct-to-consumer healthcare related products was a big plus.

Cepheid also needed a 3PL partner that could support the repackaging and labelling of products as well as shifting customer requirements during critical infection outbreaks. SCI’s experience with managing medical devices and their adherence to supply chain compliance requirements demonstrated they were up to the task. SCI also had recent experience managing critical personal protective equipment and diagnostic devices supply chain compliance for both the Canadian government and a large social services organization during the COVID-19 pandemic.

SCI offered an experienced project team and proven processes to support the complex EDI implementation and back-end integration with Cepheid’s ERP system. “SCI not only understood our business but helped us navigate local requirements and had the warehouse solution and IT capable systems ready to go two weeks ahead of schedule,” recalls Prasanna Havinal Global ERP Manager for Cepheid.

Supporting Cepheid’s explosive growth

In late 2021, demand for Cepheid’s diagnostic kits exploded, and SCI’s operations were immediately mobilized to scale quickly and meet the unforeseen order volumes.

As a new business in Canada, Cepheid staff depended on SCI to help it confront start-up challenges with flexible support. For example, global supply chain conditions meant a shifting mix of inbound parcel and pallet shipments, while outbound shipping windows were changing by the hour and a large pending Canadian Government contract was being booked for COVID – 19 test kits.

“Cepheid and SCI worked together to deliver a direct-to-patient supply chain solution and executed a flawless implementation in a very short development cycle.”

- Tom Healy, Global Director of Strategy, Technology and Asset Management, Cepheid

In addition to managing the fluid logistics situation, the SCI operations team built and integrated a custom performance management solution that let Cepheid’s supply chain and executive teams manage critical performance metrics in real time.

“Cepheid was very clear about their needs and worked side by side with our team to find new ways to continuously improve processes”, remembers Peter Tostevin, Vice President of SCI’s healthcare division. “They constantly challenged our team to align with their mission of finding ‘a better way’ to get these important products to end users.”

Teaming up for success

Thanks to a smooth implementation, Cepheid was able to meet the growing demand for its COVID-19 tests and other diagnostic products.

Direct to consumer healthcare Cepheid

Another key success factor was the strong relationships between SCI’s IT, account management, operations and executive teams and their counterparts at Cepheid. These relationships were crucial for helping the company navigate Health Canada compliance requirements and to continuously streamline processes while keeping the project on track.

“We were racing against time to get our solutions into the hands of healthcare workers so they could keep Canadian patients safe.” Recalls Tom Healy Global Director of Strategy, Technology and Asset Management at Cepheid.  “The SCI healthcare logistics team was responsive and flexible and supported us throughout this incredibly successful operational launch.”

“We also can confirm in many cases that SCI’s ability to execute warehouse services for the
shipment of COVID-19 test kits provided the critical diagnosis required to save patients. SCI
should be very proud that the solution they have put in place has made a real difference within the Canadian market.”

- Tom Healy, Global Director of Strategy, Technology and Asset Management, Cepheid
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Supporting Saysh’s D2C Fulfillment with the Section 321 Exemption

E-commerce sales continue to soar globally as online shopping becomes faster, more accessible, and more convenient. Alongside this growth, smart direct to consumer retailers are looking for ways to take additional costs out of the supply chain without sacrificing customer experience. One strategy where brands are seeing strong results is cross-border shipping using the Section 321 exemption in the Canada-US-Mexico free trade agreement. This agreement allows small consumer orders to enter the US from Canada duty free.

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