Customer Success Story: Milliken

About Milliken – Driving innovation across industries since 1865.

Established in 1865, Milliken is a diversified global manufacturing company producing textiles and fabrics, specialty chemicals, floor coverings, performance materials, and health products across multiple industries. Headquartered in South Carolina, USA, Milliken operates more than 70 locations across 15 countries.

Rachel McAllister, Product Owner enablement IT at Milliken, says:

Milliken is an older company. We’re about 150 years old now, and as you can imagine, we’ve grown a lot organically and through acquisitions. And with that comes a lot of different processes.

The Challenge – From legacy to leading edge with SAP TM on S/4HANA.

To modernize operations and replace its custom ERP system, Milliken partnered with Westernacher Consulting to fully implement SAP Transportation Management (TM) on SAP S/4HANA. The goal: optimize shipments, consolidate loads into trailers, empower teams with better carrier selection strategies, and manage freight contracts directly within the system.

Keith Rourk, Director Corporate Logistics and Transportation at Milliken, explains:

The challenges that we wanted to tackle with TMS, the legacy knowledge, the manual processes and the limited data, the impacts from a business perspective, you’ve got business continuity. When you have legacy knowledge and you have an individual that moves on from one role to another, that knowledge goes with them if it’s not in a system or in a process that’s written out.

Deep expertise and real results – Following the successful go-live, Milliken can now:

• Plan sales orders and stock transfer orders (STO) for ocean and air shipments, and delivery-based planning for road shipments.
• Optimize road transportation planning with routing guides, freight costs, and priorities.
• Maintain freight contracts and streamline freight charge calculations.

The Results – End-to-End visibility and automation drive smarter logistics.

As a result, the company has achieved end-to-end transportation visibility, centralized operations, and automation across key functions. Manual processes have been eliminated, enabling teams to focus on value-added activities. Automated carrier selection, balancing costs and priorities, has delivered measurable freight cost savings.

• Full systemic processing of shipments
• 90% automatic carrier assignment
• 97 shipping points over 40 locations

David Heichemer, VP Corporate Sourcing & Logistics at Milliken, says:

The results we’ve seen since the TMS go live are really the payback that we initiated and thought about, we’re actually seeing and delivering, which is exciting.

The Results – Carrier selection made easy.

According to Heichemer, Milliken’s previous network forced them into a rigid process for selecting and deploying carriers. With the new system, they now have far more flexibility – exploring multiple options and automatically identifying the most cost-effective solution. This allows them to confidently tell their business units that they are consistently choosing the lowest-priced option and the best carrier for their needs.

Katie Nix, Agile Sr. IT Project Manager at Milliken, concludes:

I would recommend Westernacher as an implementation partner for transportation management. They bring deep expertise, assemble the right teams, and provide end-to-end project support. They’re never afraid to roll up their sleeves, solve problems, and ensure we get the right solution in front of our plants.