5. Conclusions
This paper deals with an application of lean methodology to the field of transportation and, in particular, to routing operations. It contributes with an application of a different approach suggested by Villarreal, et al., (2010) and Villarreal (2012) to identify and eliminate specific waste associated with the transportation of goods to improve its efficiency. This is applied to the distribution of goods from the Monterrey DC to its corresponding customers of a firm leader of the Mexican brewing industry.
The most significant improvement areas are related to the performance and availability factors. The particular wastes to be reduced are: Excess customer service and waiting times, excess route distance, truck fill loss capacity and the reassignment of NIT activities from internal to external status. The application of this improvement scheme proved to be very helpful to provide a guide to support management on investment decision making.