Practical examples - Procurement and Logistics

Supply Chain consultancy for a global manufacturer of plastic hoses (with 9 factories worldwide, including China, Mexico and Eastern-Europe).
Need for strategic re-orientation, because customers were moving to low cost countries and raw material costs were fluctuating heavily.
By working closely together with Product Development (modular design), Sales (focus on profitable customers), Finance (transparency of cost prices and profit margins) and Production (managing complexity, introduction best practises), a solid basis was made for the Supply Chain to run efficiently.

Departmental management of a Japanese multinational of diesel motors.
After two years the Supply department was adrift because of lack of management.
People development, professionalizing supply processes and strongly improved cooperation within the supply chain resulted in increased productivity, improved customer service levels and renewed ISO-accreditation.

Introduction of a new procurement strategy within a chemical company.
The traditional procurement department suffered from high working pressure and insufficient focus.
By simplifying administrative processes, time was freed up to focus on cost and risk management. This included increasing supplier partnerships, - service levels and joint product development.

Increasing supply chain efficiency for the largest newspaper publisher in The Netherlands.
Ambitious growth objectives demanded improvement in quality and reduced costs within the Supply Chain.
A savings potential of several million euro’s was identified by harmonisation of objectives between departments and introducing workable agreements, shared services and stock reductions. A decision making model and management info was developed to manage this change.

Reducing logistic costs for an international publisher.
De-centralised Supply Chain management resulted in inefficiency and high costs.
Reducing over-specifications, re-routing logistic streams and bundling European procurement resulted in a logistics savings of 16% per year.