Strategic Solutions

Most supply chains developed organically over long periods of time and as a matter of course have become less effective and efficient.  Emphasis has been on controlling and reducing certain supply chain costs, today while not minimizing these goals for most companies heavy emphasis is on service levels, order-to-shipment delivery visibility along with continuous improvement for these areas.

Summary of reasons for a network redesign or supply chain optimization analysis are:

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• Change in business model, effect of acquisitions

• Improve customer service – deliver faster, even on MTO

• Redesign the supply chain to positively impact revenue and profit

• Improve logistics performance and cost

• Determine if facilities can be consolidated, reduced and/or repositioned

• Design for improved inventory management

• If applicable, design must consider and meet Omni-Channel service requirements

• Overall, increase supply chain agility and flexibility to meet special customer needs

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The tools we utilize are designed to model your entire supply chain from end-to-end as shown in the graphic above and then perform optimization in order to determine total landed costs for your products.  The model is built by first creating a baseline to replicate your current supply chain network including your costs for inbound and outbound transportation or freight, production, inventory and distribution.

Once the baseline is validated then a series of scenarios are created via collaboration and are run in the model to project expected costs and service outcomes.  Expectations from network redesign are: realignment of manufacturing and distribution footprint, reduced transportation costs, improved customer service and improved EVA of your supply chain.

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If a manufacturer is going through change and adding B2C to its B2B thus moving into serving an Omni-Channel customer base with eCommerce being planned then we would perform a study to fully understand what a future state would look like.  We would perform additional “big data” analytics similar to the detail in our eCommerce Distribution Section to develop and design the right total solution.

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Why perform additional software analytics?

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• Most traditional network projects lack future state planning and are not designed for a changing marketplace requiring a lot of ad hoc analytics at a high level. 

• If you did a network optimization/ design 5 years ago it would not likely be the network for today’s marketplace. 

• 5 years from now there will be more change than the last 5 years. 

• The Amazon effect is hitting manufacturers, distributors and retailers. 

• Technology is moving to cloud solutions providing data visibility up and down the supply chain, freight routing is becoming more of a commodity, and last mile fulfillment is becoming a commodity. 

• All these changes will drive changes in the distribution network.

We believe businesses need to understand that engaging in designing a new network model will help clients understand the changing marketplace and how it might affect their future state distribution network. ​​