The Challenge
A leading British company supplying cutting edge high technology products, systems and tools to world leading industrial companies and scientific research communities was faced with a number of supply chain challenges.
Amongst others lead times were long and varied significantly, while promised delivery dates were not consistently met, and inventories were excessively high and unbalanced.
An earlier attempt of implementing a Sales, Inventory and Operations Planning process had failed.
ESCIMCO was tasked to re-implement the Sales, Inventory and Operations Planning process in each of the four different business units located in the United Kingdom. The aim was to get better control and alignment of all the business functions in the value chain of the company.
The Approach
ESCIMCO documented and agreed upon a future state Sales, Inventory and Operations Planning process to align all four businesses around a common process and achieve their buy-in. Based on the future state document a gap-analysis was performed. This analysis highlighted the areas that needed addressing, for which an implementation roadmap was compiled.
A series of workshops invigorated the Sales, Inventory and Operations Planning process, while addressing the specific upgrading requirements in the process for each of the businesses. Roles & responsibilities were redefined and properly assigned, while instilling a good discipline in the meeting cycles. ESCIMCO coached four rounds of meeting cycles increasing the maturity of the process and cross-functional cooperation. Steadily the during the coaching period the process was handed over to the local process facilitators.
Additionally the inventory (components / work-in-process / finished goods) was addressed by reviewing current inventory against inventory management best-practices and benchmarking with competitors. Inventory reduction and balancing actions were defined, prioritised and executed, leading to a controlled inventory reduction.
The Results
ESCIMCO successfully re-implemented the Sales, Inventory and Operations Planning process in each of the four UK-based business units, during a period of 6 months. Extensive change management assured that all value chain functions contributed to the process and gained value from it, while further maturing in the process itself.
Lead times stabilised and promised deliveries dates were more consistently met. Inventories were balanced with customers’ demand and reduced with 34% during the first full year, while having an opportunity to reduce by a further 10-15%.
