High-Value Medicine Demands A High-Precision Supply Chain
One platform. End-to-end intelligence. Built for pharma.
Lilly’s supply chain moves some of the most valuable, sensitive medicines in the world across global API suppliers, multiple freight forwarders, temperature-controlled modes, and high-stakes outbound commitments. When an order slips, the consequences aren’t just operational. FourKites brings together real-time global multimodal visibility, inventory intelligence, yard digitization, and AI agents that act on your behalf so your logistics, planning, and yard teams are always working from the same platform.
Notice: This custom resource center was created exclusively for Eli Lilly and is not shared with other organizations. All content is intended solely for Eli Lilly’s internal review. All company names, logos, and trademarks are used solely for identification purposes and do not imply endorsement, partnership, or affiliation.
The Cost of Running Parallel, Disconnected Operations
When track-and-trace, yard scheduling, and inventory management operate as separate workstreams, each with its own data, tools, and manual processes, your teams spend more time chasing information than acting on it. For a supply chain moving high-value medicines to patients on tight clinical and commercial timelines, that’s a problem you can’t afford.
- Inbound blind spots: Supplier shipments tracked through email, spreadsheets, and carrier portals with no consolidated view across air, ocean, OTR, rail, parcel, and reefer
- Inventory risk hiding in transit: Inbound POs aren’t linked to production commitments or customer orders, so short-ships and missed delivery dates surface at the dock weeks too late to recover
- Yard operations still manual: Appointment scheduling, dock assignments, unloading prioritization, and gate check-in are disconnected — slowing throughput on high-value, temperature-sensitive inventory
- Reactive exception management: Issues get escalated after they’ve already become crises, rather than being resolved while there’s still time to act
One Platform, Connected Across Your Entire Supply Chain
FourKites’ Intelligent Control Tower doesn’t ask you to choose between track-and-trace, yard management, and inventory visibility. It connects all three into a single operating picture your entire team can act from. It integrates directly with SAP TMS via the ArchLynk accelerator, and AI agents handle the exceptions your team shouldn’t have to touch manually.
- Real-time multimodal visibility across truck, ocean, air, rail, parcel, and temp-controlled reefer, from supplier to delivery
- Inventory and Order digital twins that link inbound POs to production schedules and customer commitments, so you see risk before it reaches the dock
- AI-powered yard digitization and appointment scheduling that prioritizes the right trailers, at the right dock doors, at the right time
The Right Dose of Visibility: End-to-End, Not Feature by Feature
Inbound Visibility
Inbound to Outbound: Every Mode, One View
Challenge: Supplier shipments across air, ocean, OTR, rail, parcel, and temperature-controlled reefer arrive through fragmented carriers and freight forwarders with no consolidated tracking. And outbound sales orders to customers face the same visibility gaps on the other end.
Solution: FourKites unifies all shipment tracking — inbound from global suppliers and outbound to customers — including TMS and non-TMS loads, into one platform with automated milestone updates, predictive ETAs, and configurable views by mode, carrier, origin, and destination. The SAP TMS integration via ArchLynk delivers updates automatically without manual data entry.
Impact:
- Automated tracking across all modes and freight forwarders without manual check-ins for both inbound and outbound
- Predictive ETAs that surface delays weeks before they affect production or customer delivery commitments
- Configurable dashboards that let logistics, planning, and IT teams see what they need
- IoT temperature monitoring for reefer and cold chain shipments across both directions
Inventory & Order Intelligence
Know What’s At Risk Before It Arrives
Challenge: Inbound POs aren’t connected to inventory positions or customer commitments, so short-ships, missed delivery dates, and stockout risks surface too late to do anything about them.
Solution: FourKites’ Inventory Twin and Order Twin create a live digital model of your inbound pipeline — linking every shipment to the SKUs, batches, and production runs that depend on it. When an ocean vessel is delayed or a supplier short-ships, the platform immediately surfaces which downstream commitments are at risk and what options you have to recover.
Impact:
- See which production runs and customer orders are affected by any inbound exception in real time
- Trigger recovery options (alternate sourcing, expedite authorization, customer notification) while there’s still time to avoid premium freight
- Reduce safety stock needs as inbound pipeline visibility improves
Yard & Facility Operations
Digitize the Yard. Prioritize What Matters.
Challenge: Manually managing dock appointment scheduling, gate check-in, spotter tasks, and unloading prioritization creates bottlenecks for high-value, temperature-sensitive inbound inventory.
Solution: FourKites Dynamic Yard and Alan (AI Appointment Scheduling agent) bring ETA-driven intelligence to your facility operations. When a carrier is running late, Alan automatically reschedules the appointment. When a reefer has been in the yard too long, the platform flags it and assigns a spotter task before a temperature excursion occurs.
Impact:
- 80% reduction in time spent at gate with AutoGate autonomous check-in
- ETA-driven dock scheduling that prevents bottlenecks and protects product integrity
- Unloading prioritization based on what’s tied to production commitments (not just what arrived first)
AI Digital Workforce
AI Agents That Work Around the Clock
Challenge: Exception management, carrier follow-up, appointment rescheduling, supplier coordination, POD collection, and customer service inquiries consume significant manual effort across logistics, planning, and customer service teams.
Solution: FourKites’ Digital Workforce — Tracy (Track & Trace), Sam (Supplier Collaboration), Alan (Appointment Scheduling), Polly (Document Compliance), and Cassie (Customer Service) — handles these workflows autonomously, 24/7. When a shipment is delayed, Tracy investigates and coordinates with the carrier, Sam ingests the updated supplier data and links it to the affected orders, Alan reschedules the dock appointment, and Cassie notifies the customer. No one has to chase anyone down.
Impact:
- 90% reduction in manual exception management tasks
- 50% reduction in email volume within the first 8 months
- 2–3 hours saved per person daily across logistics and customer service teams
Analytics & Performance
Decisions in Minutes, Not Days
Challenge: When lane performance, carrier scorecards, OTIF compliance, and freight cost data live in separate systems, it makes root-cause analysis slow and cross-functional alignment hard.
Solution: FourKites FourSight delivers a natural language analytics interface that lets your team ask questions and get answers in minutes, without waiting on a data team. Connect directly to your Snowflake environment for enterprise-wide reporting. Get lane validation, carrier performance, freight cost visualization, and compliance data all in one place.
Impact:
- Natural language queries replace time-consuming manual data pulls
- Lane performance and carrier accountability data available at the speed of a question
- Direct Snowflake integration for multi-tenant enterprise reporting
See FourKites in Action for Lilly's Supply Chain
How Global Leaders Are Solving These Same Challenges
Bayer
Bayer Crop Science implemented FourKites in 2018 to address declining customer satisfaction and inaccurate ETAs across a global, multi-mode supply chain. After rolling out the solution globally, Bayer saw meaningful improvements in on-time delivery performance across regions, better container cost performance, and higher customer satisfaction scores — ultimately improving their Net Promoter Score. Bayer has since received multiple FourKites Golden Kite Awards for End-to-End Optimization, recognizing continued progress in global visibility, first-call resolution rates, and on-time delivery.
“FourKites capabilities are adding value to our customers and internal stakeholders that have never been seen before.” — Johnny Ivanyi, Supply Chain Senior Director, Global Head of Logistics Excellence, Bayer
Why This Matters for Lilly: Bayer faced the same challenge of unifying global visibility across a complex, multi-region supply chain. FourKites’ global deployment across regions with varying carrier sophistication directly mirrors Lilly’s North America and EMEA footprint.
Cardinal Health
Cardinal Health, which serves 29,000 pharmacies and nearly 90% of U.S. hospitals, partnered with FourKites to build a next-generation supply chain combining real-time visibility, predictive intelligence, and AI capabilities across medical equipment, pharmaceuticals, and PPE.
“It all goes back to providing an end-to-end solution, data-driven insights and delivering on our commitments no matter what is thrown our way, whether it’s a winter storm, COVID-19 or some other event. Our partnership with FourKites is a critical building block for making these things happen and the investment is proving to be more powerful than we originally expected.” — Joshua Dolan, VP of Global Logistics, Cardinal Health
Why This Matters for Lilly: Cardinal Health’s supply chain serves patients just like yours does, with zero tolerance for delays on high-stakes shipments. The same platform capability that powers their end-to-end visibility is available to Lilly today.
Kimberly-Clark
Kimberly-Clark used FourKites Appointment Manager to streamline scheduling across 16 distribution centers and production plants. By moving approximately 1,200 appointments per month through FourKites, they eliminated 300 emails and saved 480 minutes per day in manual scheduling work.
“We’re happy to be a 2022 Golden Kites Award winner. We are fully invested as partners with FourKites—not only the Visibility (any mode) platform, but now implementing Dynamic Yard, Appointment Manager, and gate management. I’m looking forward to seeing how we can connect those platforms and utilize them to further advance our end-to-end order visibility.” — Tony Poole, Sr. Transportation Manager
Why This Matters for Lilly: Kimberly-Clark’s facility operations challenge maps directly to Lilly’s yard and dock scheduling goals — and their results demonstrate the kind of day-one operational savings available from digitizing appointment management.
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