A combination of unnecessary complexity, lack of coordination and disconnected sites across several geographical regions including Auckland, Taranaki, Wellington and Sydney was causing a large New Zealand business a range of Supply Chain issues.
We came on board to help the business resolve these problems and improve supply to all its customers. This meant carrying out a complete review and re-design of its Supply Chain.
In partnership with the business’ senior leadership team, we set the goal of transforming the Supply Chain into a business enabler. To achieve this, we centralised the Supply Chain function and made several key appointments:
- We appointed a Supply Chain Director, with overarching control, to manage the end-to-end function for all the various decisions.
- We appointed a Supply Manager to review the supply and procurement process, ensuring lead times on raw materials and packaging were managed to meet customer demand.
- We appointed a Distribution Centre Manager to support raw material packaging and the flow of finished goods, providing better visibility across the inventory levels and identifying and reducing SLOB stock holdings, while at the same time improving the overall DIFOT for the business.
Evidently, this was much more than a standard recruitment brief. But by working together as partners in performance, the business was able to tap into our deep knowledge of how effective Supply Chains operate and our experienced perspective of what a “good” Supply Chain structure looks like.
After a complete redesign of a complex Supply Chain structure and the appointment of key positions across the Supply Chain, the business saw immediate improvement of key Supply Chain metrics across demand accuracy, DIFOT, and availability of supply.
And as a result, we were able to help them achieve their ultimate goal of improving supply to key customers and move their business forward.