Komtur goes the extra 5279 miles
How three Komtur branches turned an urgent request and a misrouted shipment into an on-time delivery.
How we did it
A patient in Germany urgently needed an antiviral medicine that was available in the United States, but unavailable locally.
Jan Koeller in our Berlin office contacted the manufacturer and connected our US team with the right person to arrange access.
Finding the product was only the first step. Before we could purchase it, the exclusive distributor had to qualify Komtur as a customer, and we had to qualify the distributor as a supplier. The purchase also required authorization from the manufacturer.
Our teams completed the qualifications, contracts and order processing within a day. The prepayment went through just five minutes before the Thursday evening cutoff.
The plan was tight but workable: receive the medicine at our US facility on Friday, then send it onward for delivery by Monday morning.
Then the shipment went the wrong way.
The distributor had sent it by ground instead of next-day air. Waiting for the scheduled delivery would mean missing the deadline.
Working with the distributor, we intercepted the package at a FedEx facility and arranged a dedicated courier. After a drive through four states, the medicine reached our US team late on Friday night.
We shipped it on Saturday morning, and our Freiburg team coordinated the onward delivery. The medicine arrived in time.
Two continents. Three countries. Three Komtur branches.
The original transport plan had failed. The coordination behind it held.