RCCL Inventory Management

The Client: Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines (RCCL) has 28 ships, including Azamara and Celebrity cruises lines. RCCL prints over 296 various products that include menus, tracking sheets, trip itineraries, letterheads and stationary, and business forms for all of its ships.

Background: RCCL outsourced all of its print buying and mass distribution operations to Corporate Express, a distribution and office supply provider. Corporate Express purchased all printed materials for RCCL and then distributed the printed goods to a centralized RCCL warehouse for storage and mass distribution. Since RCCL’s print and distribution process lacked automation, RCCL experienced a difficult time making on-time shipments and responding quickly to low inventory levels for various ships around the world.

The Challenge: RCCL’s corporate purchasing department found print buying operations to be inefficient and cumbersome, causing higher than normal lead times between ordering, printing, and delivery. RCCL needed a better way to manage their printed assets to achieve accurate and on-time deliveries to their various communications to ships worldwide.

The Solution: Rex Three streamlined all print and distribution operations by creating an on demand, print purchasing process where products were printed in-house and automatically replenished once they reached an indicated inventory level. To accomplish this, Rex Three IT developers communicated with RCCL’s procurement system in real-time to initiate purchase orders and manage multiple purchasing requests, without having to create a new system from scratch. Rex Three stored printed materials onsite and when inventory levels at RCCL’s main warehouse ran low, triggers alerted Rex’s inventory department to pick and pack indicated goods for immediate distribution.

Since Rex Three’s IT developers freely communicated with RCCL’s procurement system, Rex Three was able to streamline all of RCCL’s invoicing and inventory operations. The online tool allows corporate purchasing to designate minimum and maximum quantities to better respond to the demands of RCCL’s various ships. The tool was designed to give RCCL’s corporate purchasing department detailed product information, skew status, replenishment trends and product availability.

The Results: Rex Three received 98% on RCCL’s supplier performance ratings, which considers on-time delivery, service and support, quality, and efficiency. For over three years, Rex Three’s supply integration tools has saved RCCL money in printing services, while giving RCCL’s corporate marketing and purchasing departments better asset management and consistent on-time delivery through increased efficiency. RCCL’s partnership with Rex Three also reported to have reduced production errors related to billing and distribution, saving the company a significant amount of money in soft costs.