| Your challenges - Examples |
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- Limited visibility on flows and cost (more...)
- Company is under cost pressure (more...)
- Performance issue with current carriers or providers (more...)
- Resource limitations to carry out projects (more...)
- Difficulty in coordinating across geographies & business units (more...)
- Company is under restructuring or merger/acquisition (more...)
- New product introduction – the supply chain must be set-up (more...)
- Difficulty to implement identified savings (more...)
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Example 1
My company is a diversified manufacturing holding with each business unit being rather autonomous. The logistics are managed at a site level and there is no common information system. As a result neither corporate nor the business units have a supply chain visibility beyond the accounts payable information. How can we get a first overview of the supply chain? How can we then develop a more detailed visibility without investing in a huge IT support system?
Example 2
My company has an Entreprise-wide Resource Planning system but there is no consolidation of the transportation spend, nor of the warehousing cost and little on inventories. Can we still leverage the information within the ERP? Is transactional data useful for decision-making? What data scheme should be specified? How to analyse the resulting data? What level of aggregation should we consider for our particular business? How long will that exercise take and how many resources will it consume?
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Example 3
My company is under cost pressure and a series of initiatives are being considered including in transportation and logistics the cost of which has increased steadily as the company became more global. How much savings could we expect to obtain? Where would the savings come from? Should the department of purchasing or that of logistics drive the initiative? How many resources should be mobilized?
Example 4
My company is under severe cost pressures and radical measures are required across the board. Outsourcing is a main initiative to transform fixed cost into variable ones and cash in the difference. Is it applicable to logistics? How much could be saved? How shall we outsource? Would 3PLs maximize our savings or the load factors of their trucks? How to ensure that the savings actually materialize? What level of control would we retain? Would there be operational risks in the transition? What will happen with our staff in logistics?
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Example 5
Our company has become so complex with a web of carriers, freight forwarders and 3PLs that we do not know who performs what and at what level of performance. Each supplier claims to have the best service and our internal staff gives conflicting feedback as experiences differ from one site to another even with the same carrier. This may hurt our business but the units don't give feedback to corporate, they just sort it out locally resulting in maverick buying and diluted negotation power. How can we gain visibility on performance based on facts? How to clarify the dependencies among suppliers in our network? What guidance to provide to units to stabilize the situation?
Example 6
After a fact-based monitoring exercise, we have realized that many of our carriers or 3PLs do not perform to specifications and this hurts our credibility. How can we bring urgent remedy? Are we going to pay extra for better service? How can we ensure that the other carriers will not be just as poor performers? What cost-effective control mecanisms to put in place to avoid repeat under-performance in the future?
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Example 7
A major supply chain restructuring program is under way with a sizeable sourcing component. All the purchasing and logistics resources have been mobilized but projects are being delayed. Priorities are not clear as business units and corporate are not always aligned leaving the operations in flux. The data is difficult to collect. How can we restructure the program? What external objective assistance can we get without losing control ? Can we leverage the incumbents without losing bargaining power? What project should be done first? What sponsorship in the company do we need?
Example 8
We have enough people to work on projects but the amount of data collected is so large that manual operations are no longer sufficient to build a reliable picture of our supply chains, their true cost and performance, let alone imagine alternative solutions rather than gut feels. What tools could we use at each phase of the project? Will the tools be effective? How reliable are they? Can the associated cost be mutualized? Would we lose control? Can our staff be trained on it? What would we keep afterwards for continuous improvement?
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Example 9
Our company is made of multiple business units and many geographic zones. On the supply chain, the lines of authority cross each other with a predominance of local decision and management. As a result, there are few synergies in the group. Even our global low cost country sourcing program cannot address transportation as it crosses regions of task attribution. What organization to put in place to maintain local responsibilities while leveraging the network economics of transportation? Is there an opportunity cost in centralising it all or decentralizing it all? What common practices and tools to define for common understanding while accounting for local differences? Shall we have varying approached mode by mode?
Example 10
Our logistics supplier base is enormous worldwide but common companies give us no benefit when used across regions. Where does it make sense to incite them into a coordinated approach? What would motivate them to consider us as a strategic account when we would still account for less than 2% of their total turnover? What approach to take when volume concentration does not mean anything in transportation? How can we support our low cost country sourcing when our forecast volumes are so uncertain that suppliers would not even give us a quote in spite of our size?
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Example 11
My company is under restructuring and synergies must be created among business units while logistics was historically managed locally. What kind of synergies can we find? What benefit would they bring? How to generate them? How to overcome local resistance to changing business practices? How fast can we get some tanglible results? What are the sweet spots and the holy grails?
Example 12
My company is merging with another: supply chain cost savings targets have been defined at the due diligence stage and now need to be met. Where are the improvement opportunities? How to achieve them? What are the implementation hurdles? How shall we start?
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Example 13
A completely new product is being designed and an entire new supply chain must be put in place. We are just weeks away from the actual launch and the logistics have not even been designed. What solution can I find without over paying for an all-express service? What performance targets shall we define? How to quickly evaluate alternative designs? How to swiftly get suppliers without loosing bargaining power? How to negotiate in spite of a small start-up volume?
Example 14
A variation of a current product is to be launched and the current logistics structure is functioning well. Shall we leverage the incumbent providers or bring new ones? Can we look at alternatives without awaking our competition? How to evaluate the supply chain cost in the new product introduction? Have such cost been accounted for in the business plan? What if the logistics cost turn out to be prohibitive?
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Example 15
My company has just gone through a strategic sourcing exercise and identified sizeable savings after careful data collection, sophisticated analysis and tough negotiations with suppliers. However, the savings are not being implemented. What are the sources of loss? How to accelerate the implementation? Are the new suppliers already discouraged? Who is responsible for the implementation?
Example 16
My company is in the implementation phase and the main hurdles have been identified as reasons for delays. A new structure is in place but the market has changed (including fuel cost increases) and the supply base is already clamoring for a price increase. Shall we just accept, rebid, or not implement? What tools shall we use to track the implementation progress and measure the results for the financial reporting?
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