Transforming Freight Forwarding at Wayfair: The Journey of NaviOS

CastleGate Forwarding

CastleGate Forwarding is Wayfair’s own logistics operation. It moves product from factories around the world to customers across North America and Europe, consolidating shipments upstream so there are fewer touches and less time between the factory and the person who bought the sofa.

Over 23,000 suppliers and more than 80,000 containers. By volume that is the equivalent of a top 20 importer into the United States. NaviOS is the platform the operations associates use to run it.

The same shipment, typed three times

Before NaviOS there were three places the work lived: NCT, CargoWise and spreadsheets. None of them checked each other, so there was no single source of truth and associates re-entered the same shipment up to three times, once per system. Over 40 fields, by hand, per shipment.

Nothing validated any of it. Errors stayed invisible until they surfaced at customs, which is the most expensive place to find them.

• Manual data entry

  Typing into spreadsheets produced frequent errors and inconsistencies, and customs and routing depended on that data being right.

• No integrations

  The tools sat in silos. Data had to be moved between them by hand, which duplicated effort and multiplied the chances of a mistake.

• Time lost to routine

  Associates spent a significant part of the day on tasks that could have been automated, which delayed everything downstream.

The fourth problem was the one that made the others worse. The tools were cumbersome enough that associates were frustrated by them, and a frustrated user works around a system rather than with it.

Twenty associates, three methods

To understand what the work actually looked like, I used three methods rather than one. Each answered a different question.

• Interviews

  One-on-one with more than 20 operations associates, to get detail on daily tasks and where they got stuck.

• Shadowing

  Time spent watching people work in their own environment, which is where the workarounds show up.

• Surveys

  Sent to a broader group, to find out how common the problems were and to catch anything the interviews missed.

From workshops to flows

I ran brainstorming sessions using mind mapping and affinity diagrams so that every idea got captured and grouped, then a Crazy 8s workshop to push past the obvious ones.

Four things came out of it: a centralized dashboard with real-time shipment updates, automated notifications for changes and delays, simplified data entry forms, and integrations that let data move between systems instead of being carried between them.

Then I mapped the flows. The existing ones were long and fragile. A customs specialist entered the same data into several systems in sequence, and any inconsistency introduced early survived all the way through. The redesigned flows integrate the systems, automate validation and notifications, and cut the number of steps a person has to hold in their head.

One platform, three changes

After the research, ideation and prototyping I implemented a set of changes in NaviOS aimed at usability, efficiency and accuracy, with systems integrated and routine work automated.

Documentation as part of the design

Four engineering teams were building from these designs, so handoff was not a final step. I prioritized documentation and collaborative practice throughout.

• Embedded comments

  Designs carried comments and guidelines for developers and stakeholders, in the file, next to the thing being described.

• Written specification

  User flows, functionality, reasoning and visual guidelines, so a decision could be understood months later by someone who was not in the room.

• Shared language

  Consistent communication across teams, which is what stops four teams building four slightly different versions of the same pattern.

Measured a quarter after launch

Measured one quarter post-launch with a subset of current and new NaviOS users.

NaviOS has significantly reduced the time I spend on repetitive tasks, allowing me to focus on more important work.

Operations associate, drayage

A satisfaction survey ran alongside. Associates rated their overall experience against NCT and CargoWise at 4.1 out of 5, performance at 3.6, and ease of use at 3.4.

After the launch