Challenge
A large electronic equipment manufacturer faced the challenge of transforming its planning and decision making capability. The company needed a more structured and fact-based approach that facilitated the best possible decisions in a variety of common situations for each of its functional entities (sourcing, manufacturing, distribution, logistics and service organizations.) Individual business entities were using different Excel-based frameworks for performing cost/benefit analysis of key initiatives and for assessing business strategies for success during changing market conditions.
Instead of evaluating multiple strategic options and making informed, fact-based decisions, the manufacturer was losing critical managerial time on ensuring reliability and integrity of its data and assumptions.
Solution
Planner, SCA Technologies’ predictive, cost-modeling software suite, provided the electronic equipment manufacturer with a single web-based platform that had decision support tools to evaluate various strategies that addressed the needs across different functional entities. This platform had a built-in structure to address:
- Global supply chain scope from source, to manufacture, to warehouse, to international logistics for every stage of product movement.
- Financial rigor using activity based costing methods for reliable, optimized decisions that could be applied quickly to any situation.
Results
Planner enabled the electronic equipment manufacturer to identify the optimal supply chain configuration and to make decisions considering the following:
- Volume/capacity planning and changes in costs/prices for production factors
- Movement of products/assets between suppliers, plants and customers
- Production approaches such as BTO, BTS or inventory holding such as VMI, DOH
- Changes introduced by suppliers or customers such as lead times and order sizes
- Profitability by products and customer-based on landed costs.