Jeff Brady, senior manager, transportation for Jack in the Box Inc., San Diego, Calif., looks outside of the box to maintain a successful logistics and supply chain structure.

Refrigerated & Frozen Foods: Summarize Jack in the Box’s approach to logistics and supply chain.

Jeff Brady: Our approach is a holistic one—blending all associated areas to drive the lowest landed cost to the customer. We look at long-term strategic vendor relationships and manage commodities and partner with marketing, restaurant operations, logistics and event planning. We take a vested approach with our external warehousing and our inbound and outbound transportation partners. These facets of our business roll up to a specific vision that ensures alignment with our mission through our Strategic Supply Chain Alliance approach. This is defined in three categories: 1) cost management, 2) supply management and 3) service management, and executed through trust, transparency and relationships.

R&FF: How is Jack in the Box’s retail supply chain function organized in regards to refrigerated and frozen foods? How is the foodservice supply chain function organized?

Brady: Our supply chain exists solely to serve our restaurants and guests and to do so in a near-invisible manner. To accomplish this, we must execute on service and drive continuous value to our restaurants and to our business partners in all areas. Specifically to refrigerated and frozen foods, we are widely recognized for having best-in-class food safety programs, and this is apparent throughout the company’s culture. In the supply chain, this means we must drive accountability to all areas, including vendors, third parties, distribution—all the way down to the carrier base and to each and every associate. Additionally, our supply chain is organized in such a way that we are very active with our franchisee community, and we have a mutually active role with our Supply Chain Advisory Committee, as well as other cross-functional teams to drive discovery and value.

R&FF: In June, you gave a presentation at the Food Logistics Forum on how to manage mounting pressures when it comes to trucking. Name a few tips.

Brady: I focused on the outsourcing model specific to fleet operations, using high-quality and vested strategic partnership principles. I believe in this model for its

cost and service aspects, as being key to any company’s risk-mitigation strategy, with risk mitigation, including insurance liability, asset procurement costs, maintenance strategies/costs, carrier capacity, dealing with changing federal and state legislation within the trucking industry and ensuring a stable and well-qualified driver workforce is available to us. That said, some keys to this or any outsourcing relationship include developing a vision based on principles and values, ensuring accountability, communicating consistently, speaking with real references of potential partners, focusing on the “what” is needed and not the “how” to do it and getting out in the field to see it, touch it and feel it. Most importantly, I’d stress the need to be transparent in your actions and relationships, thereby developing trust and helping to focus on something that is mutually beneficial and long term.

R&FF: What are a few of your company’s supply chain projects for 2012? 

Brady: We are constantly looking for opportunities to improve our supply chain. 2012 has already been a year of big change with some of our outbound service improvement focus, continuing to work with our vendor community on longer term arrangements to mitigate commodity increases, inbound freight and backhaul improvements, stabilization and living within our new world based on our recent implementation of the Oracle ERP, etc. We will continue to evaluate all aspects of the supply chain for the remainder of FY 2012. The sky is the limit!

R&FF: What are some key transportation initiatives that took place over the past year?

Brady: 2012 has been a year of both course correction and change with regards to our transportation network. On the outbound side, we’ve improved our restaurant delivery service from a FY 2011 system-wide on-time percentage of 96.4% to a current run rate of 98.7%. This was a priority, and we’ve improved from a FY 2011 system-wide on-time percentage of 96.4% to a current run rate of 98.7%. We’re proud of this accomplishment and of our strategic partner and distribution center teams that helped us get there.

Additionally, we made some broad routing changes to drive increased utilization and to better leverage our fixed-expense structure. We achieved a 1-million-mile accident-free streak in our Southern Calif., fleet, as well as a 1.5-million-mile accident-free streak in our Pacific Northwest distribution center. Lastly, we emphasized collaboration with our third-party fleet partner. By doing so, we retained drivers, improved training and improved our system-wide management base.

As it relates to the inbound side of the network, one of my priorities has been to improve the use of intermodal. Year to date, we have increased our intermodal use by 32%, and we believe there is more room to grow with the increasing number of temperature-controlled assets in the market. With the Oracle implementation in the business, we’ve re-looked at how we route inbound freight, and how we work with our third-party partner for inbound services. After initial transition, we optimized asset and load utilization for Jack in the Box-controlled inbound freight and are running at 98-99% utilized, as measured to our standard.

We’re also very proud that, while doing this, we’ve strengthened our partnerships with both strategic third parties we use for transportation management. This has benefitted our organization across the board.

To read more about this interview, go to www.RFFmag.com.

MEET JEFF BRADY

Jeff Brady is the senior manager, transportation for Jack in the Box, Inc., where he joined in 2011 after being with PETCO as the director, store logistics for four years. Brady is a leader with 20-plus years of logistics management experience, including logistics and distribution in multi-distribution center and complex transport networks throughout a variety of industries.