Customer story · Rietveld Logistics
From months to one day.
Rietveld Logistics first automated its inbound order processing with an external party. That took months, and every change went through that party. Now the team builds the workflows itself.
- 1 day
- for a workflow that used to take months
- 4 systems
- fed from one incoming order
- A few hours
- to automate a new customer
Every order is different
An inbound order brings in a lot: packing list, commercial invoice, bill of lading, certificates of analysis. Sometimes as separate PDFs, sometimes as one PDF, sometimes in Excel. And the email itself often contains information too.
An earlier automation with another party did work, but had a long lead time. The automation sat with that party, which made changes time-consuming or nearly impossible.
One of the hardest cases, in one day
One customer delivers everything in a single combined PDF, sometimes scanned. It covers multiple containers, with batches spread across those containers. That split has to be right, so the WMS shows clearly what is arriving.
With another party, this customer took several months. With StencilFlow, the complete workflow was up and working within one day.
From that one PDF
- The WMS knows what is arriving
- A draft declaration is ready in the customs system
- The terminal system can track the containers
- The cargo is prepared in advance in Portbase
“In some cases it is even a scanned PDF, with coffee stains and everything.”
When something is off
Customer data is not always complete, and documents sometimes contradict each other. The review screen shows at a glance which mandatory data is missing and which checks failed. For example, whether the weight on the BL matches the commercial invoice or the packing slip.
The source documents sit right next to it, so a colleague can check them immediately, fill in what is missing and send the order on. That keeps wrong information out of the systems.
In the background, until it is needed
If everything goes well, all systems are fed automatically and nobody has to look at it. If someone does need to look, the user gets an email and clicks through to the right order. The dashboard also shows what is still open per order type.
From go-between to builder
The Process Optimization Manager used to be the link between operations and the external party. Now changes and workflows are made and tested directly, and taken into production as soon as they work.
Rietveld works with two builders, who can change everything in test and production. Operational colleagues only see the workflows and orders they need to act on.
“I have come to enjoy the work a lot more. Where I used to wait for external parties, I can now really change it all myself, under our own control.”
Colleagues are thinking along again
Ideas for improvement used to stall: it would take too long or cost too much. Now operational colleagues come up with improvements sooner, because they see those improvements get picked up quickly.
New customers are no longer a nervous moment either. How they deliver their information no longer matters: Rietveld asks for a few examples and builds the workflow around them, within a few hours. Where the team sometimes used to think “we’ll just do that by hand”, it now gets automated.
A lot of power, but no black box
That much building power calls for responsibility. The StencilFlow agent works within fixed boundaries and only does what it is authorized to do. The whole process is shown as a diagram, the StencilFlow agent explains what is happening and changes only the part it was asked to change.
Testing is done with real historical orders. After a change, the StencilFlow agent checks whether those orders still give the same result, and the team gets an overview. That shows right away if anything changed unintentionally.
“Everything that gets built is not a black box but really a white box.”
Why StencilFlow
Rietveld compared several AI solutions. The deciding factor was that the team can do everything itself: from the order types and the review screen to the checks and API connections. With other parties those capabilities may well be in the system, but the vendor does the configuration, which means the speed and flexibility StencilFlow offers are not achievable.