UPSIDE Consulting has won a new customer based on their initial analysis approach

UPSIDE Consulting was invited by a potential customer to perform an analysis of the Supply-Chain area. The company is an industrial producer in the wood industry.

UPSIDE Consulting was invited by a potential customer to perform an analysis of the Supply-Chain area. The company is a fast-growing industrial producer in the wood industry.

Problem: The customers Supply-Chain organization is mainly reflected in the logistics departments of each production facility and not leveraging on the advantages of a group with centralized functions. The current set-up is by this limiting the further growth and not possible to optimize over the whole network in high utilization scenarios.

Objective: Create a Supply-Chain organization with central functions ready to face future growth. Development of a roadmap with all key tasks necessary implement in order to cover all aspects of a modern, state of the art Supply-Chain department

Methodology: Following the UPSIDE Consulting standard approach the analysis contained:

• preparation phase with data analysis, questionnaire creation and evaluation,
• 4 days in situ interviews and operational review,
• conclusion phase.

Approach: During the preparation phase a questionnaire was updated to the customers circumstances and introduced to the Supply-Chain Director. The questionnaire contains mainly questions helping to understand the current organization, operation model, management cycles, processes as well as requesting volume-cost related data. After the completion of the questionnaire from side of the customer the answers were reviewed, and doubts were clarified. Based on this information the in-situ visit was prepared and framed.

The in-situ visit targeted the deep dive into the company’s business model and in specific the Supply-Chain Management set-up. Hereby a core component were discussions with the Top Management and the Supply-Chain Director as well as interviews with employees on the operational level. This visit was used as well by the consultants to participate in regular operational meetings, reviewing tools and systems used, verifying current reports, and checking in detail key Supply-Chain relevant processes (in this case: Order processing, Warehouse Management and Loading process, Inventory Management and Production Planning).

During the conclusion phase the consultants were structuring and consolidating the collected information and mirroring it with their technical knowledge and experience. As outcome of this gap analysis weaknesses were identified and articulated as improvement potentials. The improvement potentials themselves were transformed to projects and included in a matrix based on their impact (cost saving or service improvement), complexity (duration, success probability, cost/investment) and urgency. This matrix helped to prioritize the projects in core or 2nd priority projects and recommendations as well as creating a roadmap.

Deliverable: The analysis and conclusions with proposals to Target Operating Model, Management Cycle, Key processes, Systems and specific improvement areas were summarized in a final presentation. This presentation was agreed with the Supply-Chain Director and defended to the Top Management. Next to the presentation a roadmap was created prioritizing the most urgent projects from the consultants and customers Top Management perspective.

Based on this initial work the Top Management decided to move ahead and asked UPSIDE Consulting for implementation of the first 3 projects.