Cost price analyses study to improve the monitor and forecast of Ewals Cargo Care

 Overview

Company Description

Ewals Cargo Care is a family owned transportation company, which is founded in 1906 by Alfons Ewals. The main office is found in Tegelen near Venlo. Besides this, Ewals has 29 other offices in Europe, which lead to a local presence in 14 European countries with approximately 2.000 employees.

The organization has grown into a strong international player. Our customers are offered a broad spectrum of logistics products ranging from full loads, part- and project loads, Control Tower set-ups and Value Added Logistics to global forwarding. Especially, but certainly not exclusively, we are known for our European multimodal network that includes more than 3500 Mega Huckepack XL(S) trailers. In addition, we can rely on a solid network of partners. Ewals is continuously improving work processes and investing in the development of our employees.

Within the company, Procurement falls under the ‘Product Management’ stream. The Procurement division. is responsible for ensuring the availability of resources needed by Operations (i.e., trucks, trailers, ferries, trains and support services). At any moment of time, the correct amount of capacity needs to be ensured. As an intern, you will be active for the Procurement division within Product Management.

Project Description

In the market of today, we notice that the cost price of our resources is highly volatile. Price movements are affecting our suppliers, and therefore us. Macro-economic developments are highly related to these price movements. If we look specifically at the costs of a new trailer, the costs increased during 2022 with approximately 40%. One of the main reasons for this increase is the lease price, which increased significantly due to the interest rates, steel prices, tire prices, labor prices and gas prices. Another example, the price of AdBlue (component of trucking costs) increased for over more than 200% during 2022, which affected our cost price for transportation. In the current situation, price movements are noticed too late (i.e., when the actual costs already increased). Therefore, we are behind the curve/playing catch up in terms of increasing our service price to our clients.

The primary role of the student will be conducting the research to what extent there is a possibility to be able to better monitor the cost price developments while creating a model that is able to provide a prediction for the future cost price. The overall coordination of the project will be done by the intern supervisor. It is important for Ewals to mitigate the risk of unexpected cost price increasements. 

Goals of the Project

The aim of the project is to make an analysis on which useful costs drivers/triggers there are in the market. This should enable Ewals Cargo Care to develop a model that can evaluate the true influence of price movements affecting our suppliers, measure and forecast the impact on our cost price, utilize the data and translate it to business information.

Deliverables

• Identification of the key influencers of each of our cost components and their parameters.
• Analyse which useful costs drivers are known in the market.
• A model that is able to evaluate the influence of price movement affecting our suppliers and measures and forecasts the impact on our cost price.

Essential Student Knowledge

• Supply chain.- Logistical, – Transportation knowledge
  (and affinity);
• Macro – economic knowledge/ endeavors(statistical prowess preferred);

More information: escf@tue.nl