Supply chain improvement for a chemicals player
Supported a PE-owned multinational to identify significant cost savings in Warehousing and logistics operations, and to design the transformation.
Our expert team built on deep industry knowledge and detailed analysis to bottom out robust savings opportunities and design a complete transformation programme to deliver these efficiencies over 6-8 months.
Context
Having previously worked for both the European CEO and Supply Chain Director and created new S&OP processes for this group, Eden McCallum was asked to identify and quantify specific opportunities to improve customer service and save money in the client’s European warehousing and logistics operations.
This came on the back of a traditional consultancy’s high-level benchmarking-based diagnostic that predicted £10m of savings to be captured from warehousing and logistics in Europe, a number that raised scepticism within the local team without better evidence. They wanted clarity on the truly achievable customer service and cost levels, and how and where to make changes to capture those benefits within the next 12 months.
Approach
Our team, led by consultants with deep specialism in warehousing and logistics, looked at the end-to-end supply chain and information flows to understand what was driving on-the-ground warehouse and logistics activity, customer service outcomes and costs. Through a combination of experience, analytics and client working sessions, we identified quick wins as well as major structural opportunities in changing the operating model. Our work identified real, tangible savings that totalled 30% more than the previous top-down benchmarking work, and found them in different areas of the supply chain.
In a second phase, we designed the 6-8 month transformation programme to deliver each workstream, and agreed savings capture rates to feed into budgeting.
Impact
The size of the opportunity and the scale of change to the operating model justified creating a new European Logistics Director position and bringing in an external hire to lead the transformation.
He and his team are working to the clear blueprint we developed and with the support of the Group and European executive. The transformation is well underway, and tracking to plan.