Levitt-Safety delivered PPE to the front lines with reliability
When COVID-19 lockdowns disrupted global PPE shipments, Orkestra stepped in to help Levitt-Safety gain visibility and control over their international supply chain.
With Orkestra, Levitt-Safety was able to:
The challenge
Before March 2020, most of the world had never heard of the acronym for personal protective equipment (PPE), but Levitt-Safety, Canada's leading PPE supplier, suddenly found their industry in the spotlight when the global demand surged beyond what they could meet.
Levitt-Safety's supply chain was, like many other PPE suppliers, based in China. But with the world in lockdown, it was impossible for them to manufacture their orders, fulfill existing products and deliver on-time. Additionally, documentation requirements for exporting goods from China became stringent in order to ensure product integrity, in particular for PPE. This was further compounded by a fear of documentation fraud and strict approval requirements to deliver in Canada.
With air travel suspended across the world and skyrocketing air freight costs, Levitt-Safety's margins were eroding and they were unable to meet customer demand. That’s when Levitt-Safety turned to us.
The solution
We implemented Orkestra to enable the team at Levitt-Safety to track their shipments in real-time, view flight schedules, and monitor projects ETAs. The team at Orkestra worked closely with their 3PL partner network to secure capacity, negotiate rates, and deploy a team on the ground in China to smooth out any export license and documentation concerns as they came up.
Through Orkestra, the team got updates from their manufacturing vendors and forwarder to track product readiness dates, view transit times, pickup schedules, documentation approvals by customs authorities, and measure landed costs per shipment and product.
The results
With Orkestra, Levitt-Safety was able to get real-time information on their shipments, seamlessly coordinate with their partners, and measure their costs all from one place. The biggest success was that they were able to deliver life saving PPE to the front line workers all across Canada with confidence.
Heidi Levitt
Co-CEO at Levitt-Safety
“1.75 million masks and face shields arrived yesterday on our charter from Shanghai. So far, this one came in on-time with no round the world tours or delays. The Orkestra SCS team did a great job of demystifying the logistics experience for us.”