How Hilti elevates its supply chain decision-making
Introduction
In an era of unprecedented supply chain volatility, marked by Red Sea diversions, geopolitical crises, and frequent port congestions, global logistics leaders can no longer rely on reactive management.
During a recent joint industry webinar, Hilti, a worldwide leader in professional construction tools, software, and services, shared its journey of supply chain transformation together with Wakeo, its trusted visibility platform for over six years. The session explored how Hilti transitioned from basic container track-and-trace to a fully predictive, data-driven supply chain design powered by Wakeo’s innovative Trusted Routes platform.
1. Hilti’s operational footprint & key supply chain highlights
Headquartered in Liechtenstein, Hilti generates over CHF 6.3 billion in sales across 120+ countries with 30,000+ employees. Operating one of the longest end-to-end supply chains in the industry, from raw materials and 19 factories down to job sites, Hilti’s logistics model is built around four key pillars:
- Direct Sales Business Model: Hilti sells directly to end customers, taking full responsibility for the entire delivery journey from manufacturing plants down to active construction sites.
- 300,000 Daily Customer Touchpoints Worldwide: With hundreds of thousands of daily site interactions, delivery precision is critical; any tool or chemical delay directly halts multi-million-dollar construction projects.
- Moving Over 45,000 Containers Annually: Hilti manages massive global freight volumes across complex product lines, including standard tools, 6-meter long channels, and dangerous goods like explosives and temperature-sensitive chemicals.
- Vulnerability to External Disruption: Unpredictable global events, such as US tariffs or the Strait of Hormuz crisis frequently disrupt maritime lanes and jeopardize delivery schedules.
2. Deep Dive into Customer Pain Points
Prior to implementing Wakeo’s advanced decision-support solutions, Mario Salzer and his global transport operations team faced four core systemic challenges:
2.1. Unreliable Ocean Carrier Transit Times & Low OTD Performance
Historically, supply chain planning relied on transit times provided directly by ocean carriers or freight forwarders. However, carrier schedules frequently represent "best-case scenario" estimates rather than actual operational reality. For example, on key routes, carriers promised transit durations of 51 days, whereas actual vessel execution averaged 64 days. Because Hilti’s ERP system was configured using these incorrect lead times, downstream delivery estimates were consistently missed, dropping Hilti’s On-Time Delivery (OTD) performance below 50%.
2.2. Financial Drain from Emergency Expedited Freight
When ocean shipments encountered unpredicted transshipment delays, operational teams had to react swiftly to protect customer commitments and avoid site disruptions. In these cases, Hilti relied on premium air freight and express courier services to make up for lost time. Given Hilti’s seven-figure annual air freight budget, even occasional emergency rerouting created significant financial leakage.
2.3. Product Shelf-Life Expiration & Cargo Scrapping Costs
In addition to hardware, Hilti manufactures and distributes specialized construction chemicals that carry strict shelflife expiration dates. When containers bound for emerging markets (such as Africa) sat idle at transshipment hubs for extended periods, the remaining product shelf life was drastically reduced. In worst-case scenarios, shipments arrived at destination ports past their commercial expiration window, forcing Hilti to scrap entire containers and pay costly local waste recycling fees.
2.4. Administrative Bottlenecks & High ERP Maintenance Overhead
Updating master planning parameters in an enterprise ERP environment like SAP ERP is computationally heavy and labor-intensive. In the past, recalculating lead times across thousands of Material Master records required cross-departmental alignment and hundreds of manual working hours. Without reliable, real-time lead-time intelligence, planning teams were caught between constantly modifying dates manually or accepting inaccurate system schedules.
3. The Solution: Wakeo’s "Trusted Routes" & Market Intelligence Platform
To solve these systemic challenges, Hilti expanded its long-standing collaboration with Wakeo. Having initially deployed Wakeo in 2020 for real-time container track-and-trace, Hilti integrated Wakeo’s Trusted Routes solution to move from reactive tracking to proactive network design.
Functioning as an independent, unbiased market benchmark, Trusted Routes leverages artificial intelligence, satellite AIS vessel tracking, historical carrier performance data, and real-time market risk metrics to provide supply chain teams with absolute data neutrality.
Key Capabilities of Wakeo Trusted Routes:
- Realistic Transit Time Benchmarking: Compares carrier-announced transit times against actual historical and live vessel execution across specific port-pair combinations.
- Multi-Dimensional Reliability Scoring: Evaluates route stability by factoring in carrier transshipment reliability, blank sailing histories, and schedule volatility.
- AI-Powered "Nearby Alternatives": Proactively suggests alternative origin/destination ports or alternative carrier routing configurations that offer shorter lead times, lower risk, or improved cost-efficiency.
- Real-Time Disruption & Risk Mapping: Integrates Wakeo’s Market Intelligence engine to identify geographic disruption zones (e.g., Red Sea, canal bottlenecks) and immediately map them against active container fleets.
- Carbon Footprint Visibility: Calculates accurate CO2 emission metrics per lane and carrier, enabling logistics leaders to align transport decisions with corporate sustainability goals.
4. Detailed Analysis of Hilti’s 4 Practical Use Cases
Use Case 1: Master Supply Chain Planning Calibration (Hamburg to Tokyo)
The Challenge: On the critical trade lane connecting Hamburg to Tokyo, one of the carriers used by Hilti offered an official transit time of 51 days. Relying on this figure in SAP resulted in poor delivery reliability and an OTD performance below 50%.
The Solution: Using Trusted Routes, Hilti benchmarked this carrier's real-world execution data, revealing that actual transit times averaged 64 days. Rather than relying on carrier promises, Hilti updated its SAP ERP planning parameters to reflect the realistic 64-day baseline.
The Impact: Master planning stability increased dramatically. Hilti’s global On-Time Delivery performance surged to 83% without adding artificial buffer stock. Furthermore, having accurate lead times eliminated surprise delays, drastically reducing the need for costly emergency air freight.
Use Case 2: Real-Time Crisis Management & Geopolitical Risk Mitigation
The Challenge: During sudden geopolitical crisis, such as the Middle East one, executive leadership urgently required visibility on exposed shipments, affected inventory values, and potential customer impacts.
The Solution: Leveraging Wakeo’s Market Intel module, Hilti accessed a dedicated crisis management table that mapped geographic disruption zones against active shipments in a single click. By pairing this data with pre-departure insights from Trusted Routes, Hilti’s transport team could evaluate alternative carrier paths and build reliable contingency rerouting plans.
The Impact: Provided executive management with total transparency and actionable insights. Hilti was able to quickly formulate contingency rerouting strategies, maintain operational control, and protect customer supply continuity during major global market upheavals.
Use Case 3: Protecting Sensitive Chemical Cargo & Shelf Life Limits
The Challenge: Shipping temperature-sensitive construction chemicals to developing markets (e.g., Africa) involved high risks of delays during transshipments. Prolonged transit times caused products to exceed their expiration dates before reaching job sites, resulting in scrapped containers and recycling costs.
The Solution: Hilti leveraged Trusted Routes in two distinct ways: first, by selecting direct ocean lanes to eliminate the delay risks associated with transshipments, and second, by filtering for carriers with a high Reliability Score to guarantee that announced transit times would be respected.
The Impact: Product expiration waste was virtually eliminated, protecting Hilti’s customer quality commitments, improving brand reputation, and saving substantial capital previously lost to product scrapping.
Use Case 4: Network Design & Data-Driven Carrier Tenders
The Challenge: Expanding into new geographic regions required establishing optimized transport lanes without relying exclusively on freight forwarder recommendations or legacy routing habits.
The Solution: Hilti leveraged the "Nearby Alternatives" feature within Trusted Routes to analyze adjacent port options and evaluate alternative carrier routings during global ocean tenders.
The Impact: Hilti gained more clarity and insight to optimize network design in new regions.
5. Tangible Business Impact & Strategic ROI
By embedding Wakeo’s Trusted Routes into its global transport operations, Hilti achieved remarkable operational and financial returns:
- On-Time Delivery Performance Reached > 80%: Improved delivery precision from under 50% to over 80% without introducing costly safety stock buffers.
- > 10% Reduction in Air & Express Freight Costs: Eliminating emergency shipments saved over 10% on a seven-figure annual air freight spend, delivering substantial bottom-line savings.
- Working Capital & Inventory Optimization: Accurate transit time data allowed inventory managers to optimize safety stock levels across regional distribution hubs.
- Enhanced Tendering & Carrier Negotiations: Challenging carriers with independent market data secured more competitive ocean freight rates and realistic service commitments.
"With Trusted Routes, we moved from pure visibility into becoming true designers of our supply chain. Having independent, real-time data gives us a huge advantage in negotiations and allows us to deliver reliable commitments to our customers." Mario Salzer, Transport Operations Team Lead, Hilti HQ
The Future of AI-Driven Supply Chain Decision Making
Moving beyond basic reactive tracking toward predictive decision support allows supply chain organizations to protect profit margins, enhance customer loyalty, and build resilient global networks. As Wakeo continues to innovate its AI recommendation engine, Hilti remains at the leading edge of modern, data-driven logistics management.