Challenge
High supply chain costs and relatively low service to distributors in Latin American markets prompted a major office equipment maker to seek Norbridge's help. Project objectives were to:
- Evaluate changing customer requirements
- Determine best practices by competitors and others serving Latin America
- Recommend ways to boost supply chain performance
Approach
Conduct interviews of manufacturers, distributors and third-party logistics providers
- Determine customer expectations by country type
- Identify current and future practices of leading technology and consumer goods manufacturers
- Develop specific examples of best practices
Synthesize learnings from primary and secondary sources
- Supply chain network design, product flow paths, use of third parties, channel strategies, inventory management, IT and staffing
- Quantitative indicators of supply chain operating cost, staffing levels, inventory levels, cycle times and delivery reliability
Provide compelling report to management
- Evolving customer needs
- Best practices by competitors and others
- Objective view of required performance levels
- Fact-based recommendations for priority actions
Value Added
- Identified opportunities to reduce supply chain costs by 2 percent of revenue and raise product availability by 15 percentage points
- Enabled client team to validate hypotheses and prioritize initiatives
- Obtained senior management buy-in for change program
