If you’ve ever walked through the pasta aisle of your local supermarket, chances are you’ve come across Barilla, the world’s largest pasta manufacturer. Known for its premium-quality pasta, sauces, and Italian culinary products, Barilla has built a global reputation for excellence since its founding in Parma, Italy, in 1877.
Following the reorganisation of its logistics processes accompanying its exponential growth, Barilla needed to find a centralised technological solution that could integrate its existing systems and facilitate communication between the ecosystem, carriers, and retailers over the long term.
Driving pasta-bilities with Barilla
Each year, the company transports approximately 600,000 tonnes of products, half of which move by road, across more than 100 countries. With around 110,000 full truckload shipments annually, Barilla’s international logistics operations depend on a highly complex and dynamic infrastructure. In 2014, as part of a strategic reorganisation to support its global expansion, Barilla recognised the need to enhance its logistics framework, particularly the process of assigning loads to carriers. The company sought advanced solutions to optimise its transport operations by making them more agile, efficient, and seamlessly integrated with existing IT systems.
Barilla faced several significant challenges:
• Managing delivery volumes across a vast and diverse international landscape.
• Relying on manual processes for assigning shipments such as methods that were time-intensive, error-prone, and cost-inefficient.
• Coordinating a wide variety of carriers and routes, reflecting the company’s expansive global footprint.
• Limited ability to anticipate or respond quickly to carrier availability issues, disrupting service and planning.
Rigatoni on the Road: Logistics Done Right
To tackle the growing complexity of its global logistics operations, Barilla partnered with Transporeon, a modular, neutral, and collaborative global transport management platform. Acting as a digital bridge between Barilla, its carriers, and distributors, the platform seamlessly integrated with existing IT systems, bringing greater visibility, automation, and control to the entire supply chain.
The partnership has delivered significant efficiency gains across key areas of Barilla’s transport and warehouse management such as:
• 20% Reduction in Waiting Times: The early adoption of Transporeon’s Time Slot Management tool has helped streamline loading and unloading operations by optimising dock scheduling, ensuring smoother flows between warehouses and distribution points.
• Automated Transport Assignment: With the Transport Assignment solution, Barilla has eliminated manual shipment allocation. Routes are now automatically assigned based on factors like geographic coverage, carrier suitability, and delivery guarantees, improving accuracy and saving valuable time.
• Real-Time Response to Disruptions: The Rate Management tool allows Barilla to respond instantly to unforeseen events, automatically identifying alternative carriers when needed. This flexible solution covers all of Barilla’s global shipments, maintaining over 95% assignment accuracy across a vast network of routes and partners.
• Smart Centralised Control: All logistics data is centralised at Barilla’s control centre, where routes are assigned using two automated modes: No Touch Order for pre-contracted shipments and Best Carrier for ad-hoc needs.
From Penne to Precision
The result? A more agile, resilient, and digitally connected supply chain. Today, Transporeon’s solutions are used in all of Barilla’s Italian facilities and most of its European factories. After a decade of collaboration, this scalable digital partnership remains a key driver of Barilla’s international growth and innovation.
Gianluigi Mason, Logistics Director Italy, Barilla said, “To support our extensive national and international network, adopting innovative solutions like those offered by Transporeon is essential to effectively manage our logistics volumes, which exceed 600,000 tonnes annually. In an increasingly interconnected world, embracing digitalisation and modern supply chain strategies is key to maintaining our leadership in the global food industry. This commitment also extends to advancing intermodal transport as part of our broader sustainability goals.”
Andrea Chiaravalli, Account Manager at Transporeon, concluded, “The ability to customise every aspect of the transport process is a key value we bring to our partners. Our team has worked, and continues to work, closely with Barilla to develop a tailor-made solution that ensures the right transport capacity is available every day. This is achieved through a precise and intelligent matching of routes and carriers, fully aligned with Barilla’s operational needs. We can’t wait to see how we can continue to support them in the future!”
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