Guiness Rolls Out The Barrels

Andrew K. Reese
Created:

Technology helps this Irish brewer manage the movement of beer across the Atlantic.


The ability to use the predictive reports on expected month-end performance to proactively address any issues flaring up on the horizon has produced a critical change in how Guinness operates, Cullen says. "The way that we used to measure, the metric would come out maybe two weeks after the month-end and was retrospective. Now I've got a pretty good predictor two weeks into the month of where the month-end's going to be, so I've probably got an additional month of lead time available to me to take action to solve any issues. That's a lot of time in the supply chain these days."

Reese is editor-in-chief of Supply & Demand Chain Executive, Food Logistics' sister publication.

 

My Goodness, My Supply Chain

Guinness beer destined for the corner pub on Main Street U.S.A. leaves the Dublin brewery in kegs that are subsequently loaded into 40-foot containers, which are loaded onto trucks that drive to Dublin Port, where the containers are offloaded into a customs bay before being moved into a holding pen.

From there, the containers are loaded onto a feeder ship that sails from the more shallow Dublin Port to a deep-sea ocean port (Amsterdam or Southampton, for example, or even Liverpool) and offloads the beer into a holding area until the arrival of the ocean vessel. The ocean vessel takes the containerized beer across the Atlantic to, first, New York, followed by port calls in Norfolk, Charleston, Houston and, finally, Los Angeles.

In port, the containers are offloaded, taken through customs, then picked up and delivered to a Diageo warehouse. Transit times, gate-to-gate, range from about 21 days to New York, up to 33-36 days for Los Angeles, depending on which of several different carriers is transporting the beer, weather, time of year and other factors — when everything goes right. —A.R.

Most Popular