Case 1: Cost Reduction / Client Satisfaction
Type of Business
Computer Hardware & Software for the top end of the High Tech industry. Specifically the management of spare parts for Europe with a scope of 8.500 Line Items, 16 countries and 45 warehouse locations. Most maintenance contracts with clients required a Field Service Engineer to be on site within 4 hours of a unit being down.
Problem
Inventory Levels of spare parts in Europe were too high with the number of international Priority One (P1) deliveries similarly too high. These P1 deliveries resulted from not having the right parts in the local country at time of demand. They had to be individually expressed to the destination country.
The local country Service Managers determined, with their local teams, how many of each part should be in each location. Most of the staff involved had no experience of material planning (i.e. most had the background of Field Service Engineers).
In summary, the inventory had to come down, the customer service levels had to improve and the total cost of transport & warehouse handling had to reduce.
[ download the case 1 pdf to read the approach, solution, result and follow up ]
Case 2: Client Satisfaction / Employee Satisfaction
Type of Business
Build / Customise-To-Order Software kits for IT company selling into EMEA
Problem
Client satisfaction critically low and client was threatening to stop the business. Daily Level of Service averaged below 40% for 6 weeks, versus an agreed daily level of 95%. Employee satisfaction at an all time low. Staff were overworked and under appreciated. Growing distance & distrust between Customer Service (CS) staff and production work force. Finger Pointing was the order of the day.
[ download the case 2 pdf to read the approach, solution, result and follow up ]
Case 3: Cost Reduction / Process Simplification
Type of Business
Personal Computer company (in the top 3 world-wide). They offered a service of providing back-up CD’s on demand from consumers.
Problem
Internal process considered to be too costly and complex. Orders were received via a web shop and automatically entered into the companies ERP system. A small inventory was held of each of the 1800 different CD’s. The material planners ran MRP twice daily to generate batch production orders. They also reserved material against customer orders and updated order statuses. Once available, the CD’s were picked, packed and delivered to the consumer.
[ download the case 3 pdf to read the approach, solution, result and follow up ]
Cost reduction & client satisfaction