World Class Supply Chain Design For New Product Line:

Industry: Business Equipment (large corporation)

Problem/Opportunity: Competitive costs pressures dictate designing new products supply chain to meet/beat the best global performers. Use supply chain management as a competitive weapon.

Mission: Design a world-class product delivery network with state of the art supply chain practices to yield benchmark performance for a new family of products.

Results: Benchmarking and simulation predicted these key results:

• Reduce total supply chain inventory by 35%
• Reduce manufacturing costs by 30%
• Reduce transportation/logistics costs by 50%

Actions: Led a cross-functional team in the design and development of a customer driven supply process excelling in People Management, Quality Management, Environmental Management, Productivity Management and Supply Chain Management. Highlights are:

• Focus factory designed to respond to customer requirements/orders:
• Flexible facilities and workforce
• Flow process for material delivery and assembly
• Integrated vertical operations
• Systems configured-to-order and modules built-to-demand
• Direct ship from factory to customer/integrated equipment delivery
• Direct contact with customers for feedback on satisfying customer requirements
• Integrated returns and recycle of product

• Supplier strategy for material supply:
• Limited/local supply base
• All certified suppliers
• All requirements contracts
• Flexible, short lead time, lean operations
• Daily Kanbans (EDI)
• Point of use delivery in returnable totes
• Supplier managed material until point of use
• Single freight supplier for all inbound and outbound logistics
• Direct ship of spare parts to field locations
• Return and recycle own materials (spares)
• Work with Engineering to developed configurable product system design:
• Postponement, configure-to-order
• Common base product
• Mass customization

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