Supply Chain Assessment

Background

A national beverage company was struggling to understand how to diversify the co-packers used for manufacturing, planning and distribution. Increased co-manufacturing costs prompted our client to consider doing this work internally as well as expanding their co-manufacturing network.  Our client wanted to identify gaps and prepare to successfully transition the business without disrupting customer service.

Approach

We worked with our client to perform a gap analysis and provided a list of recommendations to help ensure the successful transition of their business. Particularly, placing focus on the identification of all supply chain optimization and supply chain analysis opportunities. The assessment provided a road map for organizational improvements. Utilizing a small team of experienced supply chain professionals, our approach incorporated a review of available source documents, relying heavily upon a series of structured interviews conducted with client personnel. Interviews were set to match relevant subject matter knowledge with the following work streams: source, physical network, customer relationship, process planning, systems, and people.

At the conclusion of the diagnostic, we provided a read-out via conference call that discussed the following per work stream:

• Summary of questions and topics within each work stream explored
• Overall readiness and gaps
• Recommendations on path forward to address gaps and critical priorities

Results

The results collected through the assessment created a gap Analysis, which showed the client’s the current state against their desired state. The analysis allows us to develop a proposed roadmap of changes to help enable initiatives around people, processes, and technology to ensure that they are ready for a transformed way of working throughout the supply chain.

The provided optimization model successfully dropped the customer’s transportation costs, while simultaneously freeing up its operations, customer service, sales and finance employees to focus on top line growth.  Post-implementation, we maintained close communication to monitor the ongoing success. Efficient execution and change management has ensured that total savings were above plan.