We focus on the management of inventory – not control – with the objective of supporting the sales and service missions with optimal inventory investment. SCO is a strong believer in the use of modern processes such as:

• Collaborative Demand Planning
• Sales & Operations Planning
• Continuous Replenishment
• Real-time Inventory Reporting
• Regular Cycle Counting

We strive to make good employees better performers and deliver more reliable inventory management without increasing monetary investment. Typical of the projects we have worked on are:

Mercy Hospital of Buffalo
[Division of Catholic Health System of Western New York]
SCO was retained by the CEO of this major medical facility to help improve their inventory management. When we arrived on site there was little internal confidence in the inventory control system and related record keeping despite the fact that the hospital was supplied by Cardinal Health the world’s largest distributor of medical products. The hospital was always short of key medical supplies on Monday mornings and during the week while some departments ran short of inventory there was plenty on the books. SCO had a team of three people [one of them - an experienced licensed nurse] who spent most of a year working with various departments of the hospital as we moved from floor to floor to identify and correct inventory practices. The project succeeded so well that while the CEO has moved on from Mercy Hospital he is willing to serve as a continuing reference for SCO.

American Lactalis
[Division of the World’s #3 Dairy Group]
SCO was retained by the Division President to rectify their inventory management process. The key indicator was continuous inventory shortages on key products during major selling seasons while at the same time the company was forced to write off products that exceeded their date codes. The president also told us not to introduce costly software because he didn’t have a budget for this kind of investment. Our solution was to design and implement a manual Sales & Operations Planning process in order to provide a more cohesive team approach to the planning and forecasting functions because they were the crux of the problem. When we left the management review of our analysis and proposals, we were congratulated by many for having accurately identified the issues and nailing the solution. The President has left the division but continues to serve as a reference for SCO as does the General Manager of Logistics who was the internal project coordinator.

Swiss Water Decaffeinated Coffee Company [Canada]
SCO was retained by the company CEO specifically to help him position and launch a formal Sales & Operations Planning Process for this coffee processor. SCO President Jack Ampuja handled this project as a solo effort: he was the only presenter to a six person executive management team for two full days. Jack’s material covered S&OP history, concept, implementation plan and leading edge examples. In preparation for this project, Jack interviewed a recognized coffee expert from Kansas State University to link the commodity buying idiosyncrasies of raw coffee into the S&OP process. Jack also helped the CEO define specific S&OP roles for the executive team. Here too the CEO still serves as an SCO reference to others.