The Michael Lewis Flight Plan
One Platform to Unlock Growth, Eliminate Shipment Blindness, and Scale Without Constraints
With 96 years of airline logistics mastery and 47% growth in 2024, airlines want what you offer. But you can’t bring on new customers. Complete shipment blindness forces you to hold $30M in excess inventory, blocking the space and capital you need to expand.
FourKites transforms shipment blindness into predictive visibility, manual coordination into intelligent automation, and operational constraints into growth capacity with one unified platform. That’s why we built this resource hub exclusively for MLCo, with solutions addressing every operational barrier standing between you and your next growth phase.
MLCo Flight Status
Current Operational Challenges
Your operational gaps prevent scaling to meet market demand:
Inventory Constraints Blocking Customer Growth:
- Holding $90-120M inventory with 3-4 weeks on hand when 2-3 weeks is sufficient
- $30M in excess safety stock compensates for supplier uncertainty
- Can’t bring on new airline customers—out of physical space and working capital
- Need to reduce inventory by one full week to free growth capacity
Complete Shipment Blindness Across Global Supplier Network:
- 95%+ of 30,000 annual purchase orders receive zero acknowledgment from 602 suppliers
- No visibility into production status, shipping, lot codes, or expiry dates until arrival
- First visibility when carrier calls requesting delivery appointment
- Can’t validate supplier claims or respond when customers want to pivot orders
Unable to Deliver the Agility Airlines Demand:
- Airlines nominate products with 180-day lead times, then want changes 3 months later
- No data proving what’s in production, shipped, or available to reroute
- Can’t proactively redirect shipments during disruptions (hurricanes, emergencies)
- Conservative 7-day lead times protect service but can’t compete with 4-day expectations
Manual Processes Prevent Scaling:
- Hours daily manually tracking carrier performance across 32,579 annual routes
- Email-based appointment scheduling, supplier follow-ups, POD collection
- 20-25% brokered freight has no visibility
- Need to handle growth without proportional headcount increases
Temperature Control Across 80-90% of Shipments:
- Every truck carries perishables requiring HACCP compliance
- Blind to shipment temperature data until arrival
- Customers expect “Amazon-like” real-time tracking with proactive notifications
- No self-service portal forces manual inquiry responses
The MICHAEL Lewis Flight Plan
Solutions That Enable Customer Excellence
Unlock Growth Capacity
Solution 1
Cut One Week of Inventory to Unlock Growth Capacity
Challenge
$30M in excess inventory blocks space and capital for new customers
FourKites visibility tools let you safely remove one full week of inventory from your network—up to $30M freed from safety stock. Predictive insights across your 602-supplier network in 54 countries replace buffer inventory with real-time data on what’s acknowledged, in production, shipped, and arriving. Know exactly what’s coming, how much, when it will arrive, and its condition before it reaches your dock—including lot codes, expiry dates, temperature data, and actual quantities versus PO quantities. Redirect the freed warehouse space, labor capacity, and cash flow to bring on new airline customers while maintaining the 97-99% on-time delivery performance that protects your critical customer SLAs.
Automate Coordination
Solution 2
Automate Manual Coordination With Intelligent Agents
Challenge
Hours daily spent chasing suppliers, tracking carriers, processing updates
FourKites Intelligent Agents work 24/7/365 to handle the routine coordination consuming your team’s time. Automated inbound data ingestion captures information from 602 diverse suppliers—from QuickBooks operations to Coca-Cola and Pepsi—through flexible integration (portal, EDI, API, email parsing). Agent-driven email exchanges automatically request missing information, standardize unstructured data, and load it into your systems. Automated track-and-trace eliminates manual carrier follow-ups across 32,579 annual routes. Your experienced staff focuses on strategic airline relationships and problem-solving, not data entry and status calls.
Scale Without Headcount
Solution 3
Scale Operations Without Adding Headcount
Challenge
Need to handle growth and complexity without proportional labor increases
45+ automated workflows enable you to scale up while maintaining or reducing labor requirements. Intelligent Agents handle appointment scheduling across 4 MLCo facilities and 8 3PL locations, POD collection (closing the 20-25% brokered freight gap), carrier performance tracking, and exception management. As volume increases from new customers, automation absorbs the additional coordination work—allowing your current team to manage more with less manual effort.
Gain Strategic Agility
Solution 4
Gain the Agility Airlines Demand
Challenge
Can’t respond to customer pivots, validate supplier claims, or manage disruptions proactively
Exception-based insights across your complete inbound and outbound network give MLCo leadership the agility to act strategically. View your entire portfolio of 30,000 annual purchase orders in real-time—see what products are shipping, quantities in transit, precise locations, and shipment condition across every mode. When customers want to change 180-day lead time orders, prove exactly what’s in production versus what can pivot—stop accepting “already in production” as an answer you can’t verify. When hurricanes threaten, proactively reroute Dallas-bound water shipments to Atlanta for Florida staging before they leave suppliers. Predictive alerts on lot codes, expiry dates, and quantity variances arrive before shipments do, not after.
Enable Self-Service
Solution 5
Deliver 24/7 Customer Self-Service With AI-Powered Support
Challenge
Customers expect “Amazon-like” real-time tracking; manual inquiries consume staff time
FourKites Intelligent Agents Tracy (Track & Trace) and Cassie (Customer Support) enable your airline customers to get the information they need 24/7/365 without calling your team. White-labeled self-service portal provides real-time tracking across all modes and temperature monitoring for the 80-90% of shipments requiring HACCP compliance. Automated proactive notifications keep customers informed (“truck shipped, arrives in 12 hours” or “weather delay crossing Rockies, expect 9-hour delay”). Reduce your conservative 7-day lead times toward 4-day service by managing risk with data and automation instead of buffer and manual responses.
Cleared for Takeoff
Business Impact Overview
Enable Growth:
- Remove $30M (one full week) from $90-120M inventory position
- Free physical warehouse space to bring on new airline customers
- Scale operations without proportional headcount increases
- Handle increased complexity across 12 facilities and 54 countries of origin
Gain Strategic Agility
- View entire open PO portfolio across 30,000 annual purchase orders in real-time
- Validate supplier claims with production and shipping data
- Proactively reroute shipments before they leave suppliers during disruptions
- Respond to customer pivots on long lead-time orders with confidence
Transform Operations
- Shift from reactive coordination to proactive exception management
- 70% reduction in manual update processing across 220,000 annual outbound orders
- Automated carrier scorecarding replaces hours of daily manual tracking
- Reduce lead times from 7 days toward 4 days while maintaining delivery reliability
Deliver Exceptional Service:
- White-labeled customer portal with real-time tracking across all modes
- Automated proactive communications and exception notifications
- Temperature visibility and HACCP compliance across 80-90% of shipments
- Self-service reduces inbound customer inquiry calls
Smooth Landing
Built for Your Resource Constraints
Our implementation approach addresses your “highly constrained resources and limited bandwidth” directly. FourKites project management team guides the entire process while you maintain minimal involvement. Flexible supplier integration—portal, EDI, API, email parsing—works with your 602-supplier diversity from QuickBooks operations to enterprise systems without forcing changes. Sprint-based deliverables with clear resource requirements defined upfront. Start with highest-impact suppliers and facilities, expand as benefits demonstrate value. Integrate existing tools (Thermoking, Airclick) to preserve investments. No TMS required—works with current email-based processes. European support available for Dinteloord facility and carrier network.
Co-Pilots Already in Your Network
Your supplier network includes companies from the 1,600+ brands already using FourKites. When suppliers are existing FourKites customers, you gain instant visibility into their shipments to your facilities—immediate value that protects business relationships while eliminating setup delays. Our team identifies overlap and closes gaps across the rest of your network with flexible integration options.
Ready to Take Your Operations to Cruising Altitude?
How Clearwater Paper Transformed From Manual Coordination to Customer Excellence
Clearwater Paper faced the same challenge as MLCo: teams stuck in manual coordination instead of focusing on customer service. Here's how they transformed their operations:
From "Tender-a-Load-and-Forget-It" to Proactive Service
"Before we started with FourKites, we had little to no collaboration with teams, internally or externally. Our transportation team was inundated with emails from carriers as well as customers. They were isolated with little cross-team communication regarding carriers. Our internal FourKites team bridged that gap and allows for better information sharing."
"Prior to FourKites, there was little to no reliability in the information we were providing to customers. Now, our FourKites track and trace team is able to get ahead of loads, deal with customer issues and has taken a lot of pressure off the Customer Service team, as we are now able to make rapid and concise responses, providing best-in-class communications to our customers."
Results Achieved
Eliminated manual communication burden across operations
Improved carrier relationships through shared visibility
Enhanced customer service with proactive updates
Reduced detention charges through better coordination
Transformed culture from reactive to proactive operations
What Operations Leaders Say About Reaching New Altitudes
"AI handles routine tasks while our teams focus on strategic activities that require experience and business understanding."
"Co-innovating and implementing the digital worker, Tracy, has helped Unilever teams make our supply chain management more efficient. Within four weeks, we observed notable improvements to exception management and tracking quality. This allows our people to focus on strategic initiatives."
"Once we started our rollout with FourKites, there was a strong demand for FourKites access from across our organization."
Trusted by Brands Scaling Complex Operations
Including 9 out of the top 10 CPG brands
