case-study

BACKGROUND

In May of 2018, AGS began providing 3PL short-term service, along with warehousing and local delivery service, to a retailer of high-end lighting products for both residential and commercial customers. Headquartered in Georgia, this company has retail stores and showrooms in Washington D.C., Atlanta, Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Austin, Charleston, Houston, Denver and Scottsdale. AGS began with the Washington D.C. location in May, of 2018, and later that year added Atlanta, New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles showrooms. In 2019, they added Scottsdale, Denver and Austin. In 2018, AGS handled 189 shipments from May to December.  Another 156 shipments, with an additional 51 in a staged or appointed status at one of their locations, have been handled between January and May 2019.

HOW IT WORKS

The AGS customer consigns prepaid drop shipments to AGS locations from their vendors, using LTL and parcel companies. The AGS station then stages the orders until final delivery is requested, which is usually within 4-6 weeks. The final delivery to the end user is always time-specific, with inside lift-gate service provided for one to three pallets of lighting fixtures. The AGS delivery driver is responsible for a customer delivery ticket, which details the items being delivered and are checked and signed off at the time of delivery, along with the AGS delivery receipt.

AGS’ state-of-the-art tracking system, myAGS.com, plays a significant role in the entire process and showcases the 3PL capabilities of AGS. When an AGS HAWB (house airway bill) is created for the drop shipment from a vendor to AGS, information is entered into myAGS.com by the customer as to the purchase order number, commodity code and description of items listed on the customer’s delivery ticket. This can be anywhere between one to thirty items in any one shipment. All of this information can be pulled up and viewed on the myAGS.com website.

When the AGS station receives the shipment, they update the receipt information on the “parts detail” screen of the designated HAWB. This information is also viewable on myAGS.com so that the AGS customer can view the inventory of their products at the various AGS locations, thus having “real-time” visibility of their products that are waiting for delivery to end users.

Most deliveries from the AGS 3PL location are local, within the boundaries of the city in which they are located.  However, occasionally the end user will be outside of the local delivery area, so the delivering AGS station is assigned the responsibility of sourcing reliable carriers for the “beyond” transportation.

With so many AGS 3PL stations involved with this customer, it is truly a “nationwide” service, with drop shipments arriving from many different points in the U.S. The services used for this customer, as outlined above, are receiving, warehousing, recording inventory on myAGS.com, for customer visibility, and final delivery to the end user. AGS has used this proven method of “total” service with many customers, and this one happens to “light up the world.”

With our nationwide coverage for storage and logistics sites in the U.S., AGS can provide temporary storage of shipments, whether over-sized data center equipment or high-end lighting fixtures. They offer complete customer-centric supply chain solutions, including state-of-the-art communication and tracking through myAGS.com.