Knowledge Logistics IT Intelligent activity
Paul Ridden, managing director of Skillweb, looks at how logistics businesses can harness tools such as mobile computing solutions to improve service and reduce costs.
R
e-engineering the business processes within a large-scale supply chain operation is a daunt- ing task even just to consider. The operational management will be torn between the downward pressure to cut costs and provide improved service levels, and the practical realities of the day-to-day operation. Meanwhile, the day-to-day employees are more often than not resistive to any change, often appearing to exaggerate practical issues to create barriers to progress. There is an overused adage, ‘You can’t manage what you can’t measure’, but we all know that in reality a large propor- tion of the industry is successfully run by good, hardworking and diligent transport and logistics professionals. This is where the problem starts, because whilst local knowledge is a powerful tool that delivers signifi cantly to the quality of a distribution service, if a management team is unable to evaluate the performance of its service offering against customer demand it has no means of becoming more effective.
MULTIPLE DYNAMICS
So what to do? There are many leading supply chain businesses with this exact dilemma – a large workforce of hardworking
34 June 2012 Storage Handling Distribution
and dedicated professionals on one hand, but a driving commercial need to reduce costs, streamline operational processes and enhance customer service on the other. The senior management are faced with the challenge of how to impose change that could disrupt or undermine those areas of the operation that are already working effectively and represent the lifeblood of the business. There are multiple dynamics to how a distribution business operates and there is often a signifi cant push to improve service. This can often be considered as a bit of a given with a continual drive towards a more responsive transport network, but we all know that the reality of this is that overheads creep up making it more diffi cult to get to grips with spiralling costs, achieve operating effi ciencies and effectively target carbon reductions.
Mobile computing solutions can now provide complete visibility of the movement of goods and resources through the supply chain. By combining this real-time capture
underperformance. For example, BT Supply Chain was able to reduce its transport fl eet operation used to supply 22,000 service engineers with parts by over 25% and remove six sites from its depot network. The transport management provided complete visibility of the movement of goods through the supply chain, capturing more than 100 million collections and deliveries with over one billion tracking events. This historical data enabled the analysis of the delivery needs of internal customers such as BT Openreach and BT Payphones to identify areas of improvement in terms of both effi ciency and service. BT Supply Chain’s major challenge was maintaining the right balance of responsiveness and cost-effectiveness within the delivery process. By analysing vital operation data, it has been possible to support better decision-making regarding the restructure of the transport operation and manage the overall change process to meet the needs of both customers and engineers
“Mobile computing solutions can now provide complete visibility of the movement of goods and resources through the supply chain”
of critical collection and delivery data with sophisticated reporting, businesses can not only optimise item lifecycles and operational workfl ow, but also access meaningful business intelligence to make informed management decisions.
REMOVE UNDERPERFORMANCE
Skillweb has assisted a number of businesses with large transport operations to evaluate the service offering they are giving to customers and restructure their distribution network to deliver improved availability of stock whilst removing any unnecessary
www.shdlogistics.com
in the fi eld, whilst achieving considerable operating effi ciencies.
In order to streamline and optimise the supply chain infrastructure, a deep understanding of the actual patterns within the distribution process is required. This added insight will support an open relationship between all internal and external stakeholders where operation challenges of the service delivered can be shared and mutually agreeable compromises made.
www.skillweb.co.uk
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