Archive for the ‘Distribution’ Category

The following is a guest blog post from Sam Polakoff, President, TBB Global Logistics.

Now sit down and think about it for a moment. Exactly when did your company establish its current distribution network? In all likelihood, the answer is three or more years. Is your business the same as it was three years ago? Probably not. What factors commonly drive change necessitating a shift in supply chain strategy? There are many including, but not limited to, the addition of key customers,  product introductions, changing sources of supply, competitive threats, mergers, acquisitions, natural disasters and shifting demographics. So how do you rationalize using yesterday’s supply chain for today’s business needs? At best, you are getting by with higher costs and lower margins. You may feel as if you are losing the battle to stay competitive in a difficult economy.

To compete effectively in a dynamic business environment, continuous evaluation of the marketplace is a critical success factor. Once knowledge is in-hand, your supply chain must be built in an agile manner allowing for efficient shifts to accommodate expected and unexpected change.

I recently spoke to the owner of a U.S. manufacturing company that dates back to the early 20^th century. He was explaining how he was in the final stages of divesting the company of all its hard assets. They had long ago moved manufacturing offshore. They had evolved into a substantial importer managing a series of company-owned distribution centers. Today, all of the distribution is outsourced and the old company headquarters building is up for sale. The shift to a virtual company is near complete. The executives are now free to work on product innovation and the related sales and marketing. They still compete effectively but with higher margins and more agility. This old line company has adapted and overcome, multiple times, aligning and realigning supply chain process with strategic business objectives and changing marketplace conditions. The results are higher profits, supply chain flexibility and happier customers.

Establishing and using key performance indicators will serve as confirmation of effective supply chain process or as a red flag requiring attention. Aligning supply chain with strategic business objectives and keeping your finger on the pulse of the customer will propel you forward on the road to prosperity.

I’m a picture guy.  In our kind of work, we have to be able to take a lot of data and make sense out of the process or processes that generated it.  I used to work with a fellow named, Bill, who has a PhD in Operations Research, and is probably one of the smartest people I’ve ever met in my life.  Bill is a guy who can look at six or seven big tables of numbers and then say something like, “… and the answer is 7.563.”  He was usually right.  I don’t have that talent to create the linkages among lots of different types of information in my head to come up with a conclusion like that.  That’s why I like pictures.

Recently, one of my colleagues and I were visiting a manufacturing plant to assess their production scheduling process.  The client invited us to visit the plant because they knew they had a problem.  As we followed the scheduler through his day, we began to understand the root causes of the problem.  So how did I choose to communicate what we’d found to the client?  You guessed it; I drew a picture.

When the plant manager first opened the file containing the flowchart of their existing process, she told me she only needed to see that it took me three letter-sized pages to document to the process to know that the process was much too complex and cumbersome to be fixed with a couple of “quick hits.”  Why is it that she knew without studying the details that we needed a full redesign to fix this process?

I think many of us are just built that way.  I know there is a lot of clinical and academic research that shows how we human beings use our sense of sight as a first preference for observing the world, and that there are specific parts of our brains that are able to detect visual patterns or the lack thereof.  However, I don’t think we need to see the results of that research to know why the phrase, “a picture is worth a thousand words,” is such an enduring statement.  It rings true with all of us.

That’s why I like a software product called Tableau.  It is marketed as a visual analysis tool and I think it does its job quite well.  Although I don’t claim to be an expert user, I have found it quite useful when I need to understand what’s going on in a large dataset.  Let me illustrate using an example from a recent transportation analysis that we did for one of our clients.

Our client had grown by acquisition and managed its transportation in a very de-centralized manner.  Each of the sites contracted individually with their own set of carriers, using their own set of criteria for selecting and then awarding business to the carriers.  Profit Point was called in to help the client understand the cost-savings opportunities that would result from a more centralized approach to carrier contracting and management.

Our first priority was to find out what was going on at all of the different sites so we developed a database from the client’s freight payment records to do it.  Now, picture this (pun intended).  We now have over 63,000 individual shipment records to analyze and we needed to do it in a way that told a story that we could understand and that we could then communicate to the client.  The first thing we did was look at the spend by plant and by carrier.  The spend by plant was more of a prioritization issue, to understand which of the plants had the highest freight spend, but the spend by carrier became the first part of our story as you can see in the two pictures below.

This second chart was a very powerful image to help the client quickly see that the number of carriers being employed was out of control.  You don’t even need to be able to read the name of the carrier on the Y-axis to know that there are too many carriers in this picture.  Many of these carriers had only a single load all year long, but were still carried in the system.

We also wanted to show the client the significant different in pricing policies across their carrier base.  The following slides show how we used some more of Tableau’s functionality to make our point.

By plotting cost vs. distance for all of the shipments, we were able to see the general correlation of cost with distance that we expected, but we also saw a number of outliers that we wanted to better understand.

We then highlighted a group of very high-cost shipments and kept only those points to see what we might find out.

Using a simple stacked bar chart, it was very apparent that carrier “C-g,” the red bar in the chart at left, was the main player in this group.  Once “C-g” was identified, we were able to demonstrate that their cost was always greater than the average cost for shipments with distances greater than 200 miles and by as much as 50-66% for shipments with distances greater than 1000 miles.

Again, these pictures allowed us to find one of the smoking guns inside this mass of data.  Suffice it to say that we found many other opportunities through similar visual analysis.

Because of these pictures, and others like them, it was an easy sell.  Using a tool that makes it easy to use the built-in “intelligence of our eyeballs,” we were able to develop a convincing call to action for our client, who went out to the market with a targeted freight bid and reduced their transportation spend dramatically.

As technology continues to penetrate more and more aspects of business and our everyday lives, it makes more and more data available for us to turn into useful information.  But it’s only useful information when we can put it into a form that we understand and can communicate it to others.  That’s why I’m a picture guy.

To learn more about Profit Point’s transportation services, call (866) 347-1130 or contact us here.

Profit Point’s transportation procurement optimization service reduces outsourcing costs by quickly analyzing multiple carrier bids and provides insightful data for decision makers

Profit Point, a leading Supply Chain Optimization company, today announced the introduction of Transportation Procurement, an optimization service that will cut costs for manufacturers and distributors that outsource some or all of their shipping to third-party carriers. The service provides transportation analysts and procurement managers unsurpassed ability to quickly analyze carrier bids and evaluate the best combination of carrier discounts, enabling them to negotiate rates to ship at the lowest total cost.

“Our clients are looking for new ways to reduce costs and gain productivity in every aspect of their business.” said Alan Kosansky, Profit Point’s President. “With the constant fluctuations in the transportation market, this service enables clients to manage their core carrier base and make effective decisions quickly, negotiating with carriers from a position of strength.”

The company’s optimization service and technology provide the analytical horsepower to the transportation or procurement professional to quickly evaluate different mixes of carriers and lane assignments, making trade-offs among both quantitative and qualitative business goals. The service’s richness and flexibility enables clients to dictate constraints to enforce site-specific, regional or global limits on the number and types of carriers that are included in the awarded lanes.

“We have deployed carrier bid optimization software to our clients in the past; however we have found that many of our clients prefer to leverage our deep analytical expertise. By partnering the client’s negotiating team with the analytical insights we provide them, they are able to reach the best possible outcomes in their negotiations with carriers,” said Kosansky. “And when our clients are ready to bring the analysis in house, we readily provide our Profit Procurement for Transportation software.”

Most large manufacturers have hundreds of carriers and thousands of lane options available to ship products from their manufacturing and distribution centers to their customers. The firm’s procurement optimization service addresses all inbound and outbound transportation routes, including rail, truck (bulk, packaged, and LTL), and marine bids, and simplifies the selection process while lowering the overall transportation costs.

To learn more about Profit Point’s transportation procurement optimization services, call us at (866) 347-1130 or visit www.profitpt.com.

About Profit Point:
Profit Point Inc. was founded in 1995 and is now a global leader in supply chain optimization. The company’s team of supply chain consultants includes industry leaders in the fields infrastructure planning, green operations, supply chain planning, distribution, scheduling, transportation, warehouse improvement and business optimization. Profit Point has combined software and service solutions that have been successfully applied across a breadth of industries and by a diverse set of companies, including The Coca-Cola Company, General Electric, Logitech, Rohm and Haas and Toyota.

Profit Point’s data integration and scheduling optimization services deliver reliable results with reduced operations costs.

North Brookfield, MA

Profit Point today announced that its Profit Data Interface^TM software has been selected by Rohm and Haas Company (NYSE: ROH) to integrate its scheduling processes with the company’s ERP data warehouse. The company, which last reported nearly $9 billion in annual sales, produces innovative products for nine industries worldwide through a network of more than 100 manufacturing, technical research and customer service sites. Optimizing and supporting the production and distribution scheduling across this network is a complex and ever-changing process.

“Rohm and Haas has a history of improving our operations to enhance customer service levels and reduce cost,” said Dave Shaw, the company’s Business Process Manager for MFG and Supply Chain. “Production scheduling, which entails constant change to meet demand, is one of the toughest challenges in the supply chain. In the past, the lack of a reliable data interface has limited our ability to react quickly and with a high degree of confidence in our results. Profit Point’s Data Interface software has given us near real-time access to highly reliable data, so we can respond quickly and know that our plan is right.”

Profit Data Interface is a robust application that helps decision makers boost the effectiveness of their ERP data by extending its usefulness with optimization applications. By leveraging existing ERP systems, the software provides a robust and proven method that supply chain managers can rely upon to optimize their critical business processes and improve profitability.

“Rohm and Haas is a recognized leader in the chemicals industry with a reputation for supply chain excellence,” said Jim Piermarini, Profit Point’s CEO. “We have supported their scheduling processes for years. So, it was clear that the next evolution was to directly connect their optimization software to the date store using our Data Interface product.”

Profit Data Interface, which integrates with SAP® and Oracle® data stores, can be used to optimize the entire supply chain including network planning, production and inventory planning, distribution scheduling, sales planning and vehicle routing.

To learn more about Profit Point’s supply chain software and services, visit www.profitpt.com.

About Profit Point:
Profit Point Inc. was founded in 1995 and is now a global leader in supply chain optimization. The company’s team of supply chain consultants includes industry leaders in the fields infrastructure planning, green operations, supply chain planning, distribution, scheduling, transportation, warehouse improvement and business optimization. Profit Point’s has combined software and service solutions that have been successfully applied across a breadth of industries and by a diverse set of companies, including General Electric, Dole Foods, Logitech and Toyota.

About Rohm and Haas Company:
Leading the way since 1909, Rohm and Haas is a global pioneer in the creation and development of innovative technologies and solutions for the specialty materials industry. The company’s technologies are found in a wide range of industries including: Building and Construction, Electronics and Electronic Devices, Household Goods and Personal Care, Packaging and Paper, Transportation, Pharmaceutical and Medical, Water, Food and Food Related, and Industrial Process. Innovative Rohm and Haas technologies and solutions help to improve life every day, around the world. Visit www.rohmhaas.com for more information.

Contact:
Richard Guy
Profit Point
(866) 347-1130
http://www.profitpt.com

LQM Petroleum Services is one of the largest international marine fuel oil brokers in the world, with core competencies in marine fuel oil brokerage, futures markets and outsourced bunker procurement solutions. With its deep expertise in marine refueling, LQM recognized that marine operators lacked a comprehensive refueling and inventory management system.

When it came time to build the system, BOptimum^TM, LQM partnered with Profit Point to optimize the software algorithm in its bunker refueling recommendation software system. Read our case study to learn more about how LQM partnered with Profit Point to optimize its BOptimum bunker refueling recommendation software system.