A large U.S. manufacturer recently planned and implemented a plant productivity program across its entire network of 65 plants. Significant raw material was being lost during processing. Equipment at the dairy plant chosen was poorly utilized and its operating margin had been impacted negatively over the last several years. A root cause approach to define plant productivity has led to operating margin improvements of about $18MM (approximately 8%) across the manufacturing network over a 12 month period.

The primary reasons for success will be covered in this presentation, and include operational excellence and people. A very clear definition and effective implementation of improvement initiatives was established in the short–term while setting the foundation for the long–term. In addition, the corporate governance structure has also been leveraged to enable "Boardroom-to-Shopfloor" communication, thus creating an effective feedback loop to drive gains across the entire manufacturing network.

The program has so far not only addressed shortcomings in the core manufacturing operations within the plants, but has also directly and favorably impacted other supply chain functions such as production scheduling and logistics within the organization.

In today's global economic environment, procurement organizations need to avoid risky purchases. Such risks come in many forms and dimensions—excessive pricing, fraudulent suppliers, counterfeit material, etc. The downstream supply chain impact of these purchases can be devastating. In large scale organizations such as government procurement agencies, these risks are particular onerous. Not only can they mean higher costs and the potential for fraud, waste, and abuse, but they can also result in unwanted scrutiny from oversight bodies, legislators, and the media. Such risks can be drastically prevented and acted upon through the use of advanced analytics.

These techniques and solutions can proactively identify risk associated with procurements, build near real-time visibility into risks, and provide actionable feedback in the procurement process and systems before the contract award occurs. Through its patent-pending high risk procurement offering, Accenture has demonstrated how this solution can be quickly scaled and integrated with purchasing systems to dramatically reduce procurement risk and enable high performance.

With the help of a case study, this session will discuss the modeling of supply chain activities in order to obtain accurate Cost-to-Serve. The session will also explore visibility in the extended supply chain as a driver towards accurate modeling.

The corrugated shipping container is a supply chain fundamental: its shape, size, and strength impact handling, storage, and transportation cost. Walmart's goal of $10 billion in savings from a 5% packaging reduction has triggered tremendous focus on packaging. This presentation shows how any company using cardboard boxes can leverage packaging optimization to improve supply chain efficiency and reduce costs.

Mercury Marine's SIOP (Sales, Inventory, & Operations Planning) process had recently gone through a business transformation in the U.S. outboard division that resulted in significant forecast accuracy improvement as well as improvements in fill rate and inventory turns. Operations outside of the US and across other product lines were experiencing weaker results.

A global supply chain assessment was conducted to develop a roadmap encompassing people, process, and technology to drive SIOP process improvements and alignment across all global regions and product lines. The roadmap set the vision for establishing regional accountability for demand planning with clearly outlined roles and responsibilities. Process education including a common SIOP language was conducted across all regions of the world.

A global calendar of events links all product lines and regions today. The final section of the roadmap, technology enhancements, is now underway to further mature process capabilities. The SIOP process has significant impact on business results and global alignment is critical to maximize its effectiveness.

Transforming service operations through a divestiture is akin to fixing an airplane while in flight. In 2010 Ciena Corporation won, via a bankruptcy auction, the Nortel metro Ethernet networking division. Repair and return spares and service operations continued to be operated under Nortel transition service agreements. Our task was to transition from Nortel to Ciena's worldwide infrastructure by 1 February, 2011. The transition had to ensure continued execution of 24-hour dispatches, next day shipments, repair operations, and call center operations. This presentation will describe how we approached the challenge, difficulties encountered along the way, lessons learned, and the customer service metrics after the transition. This is a real world example of Plan, Source, Make, and Deliver through the lens of a high-tech service and spares supply chain.

Corporations large and small are uncovering that the best way to mitigate cost pressures and revenue loss is to review past operations and re-think the go-to-market strategy and effectiveness of supply chain capabilities in emerging markets. What sets mediocre organizations apart from top performing companies is their ability to go from their vision to value. This presentation includes a structured and systematic process to going about deriving the most value. The methodology focuses on doing the right thing, doing it the right way, getting it done, and keeping everyone on the same page. The presentation will also demonstrate how large companies have conducted major transformations, successfully unlocking transformative productivity in record times.

Today's Supply Chain is characterized by its increasing global complexity. Organizations across the sectors have pursued global sourcing strategy with varying degrees of adoption - while Manufacturing took on a goal of increasing component sourcing; Consumer Electronics, Retailers & CPG companies went up to 100% of product sourcing from "low cost countries." The increase in lead times due to the lengthening of the supply chain introduces higher degrees of uncertainty while the customer demand has shifted towards more customizations leading to higher product complexity.

Total Landed Cost (comprised of overall cost of labor, total cost of materials and total cost of transportation, comparied to locally manufactured cost) heavily influences decisions to outsource product(s) to locales with low-cost manufacturing capabilities. These models have captured the key static costs, but have not been able to truly capture the dynamism associated with the true costs of a sourcing decision. Advanced analytics based on "Total Enterprise Cost" provides not just an answer to these but a platform for large scale transformational change in end-to-end supply chains.

These generally ignored dynamic triggers impact value chains downstream of sourcing. These triggers from the TEC modeled into integrated network optimization help in constraint-managed design of next-generation sourcing policies besides providing long term cost leadership.

U.S. consumers are saving more and spending less, retailers are consolidating, commodity inflation is driving down margins, and revenue is declining in developed markets but growing in emerging countries. Leading CP companies have deployed traditional cost cutting measures in response to these challenges. Now their focus is quickly shifting to the structural changes needed to effectively compete in this new marketplace.

In 2011, Schwan's, a multi-billion dollar food company operating over 450 depots across the U.S. to deliver food at home, has undertaken a monumental effort to rationalize its 30-year-old distribution model. This effort targets reduction of complexity in the network to improve total margin contributions to the business.

Discussion will cover the unique approach to delivery network optimization that included non-traditional elements such as sales transformation, 3PL utilization, discrete route optimization, and alignment with strategic initiatives within the enterprise.

SCOR, Lean, and Six Sigma are tools that share common roots and common purposes. Each tool brings something unique to the process of continuous improvement and when used together in a coordinated approach, new ways to accelerate improvement and improve customer service can be created. This presentation includes implemented programs that have yielded amazing results for this global logistics company.

As business networks grow in size and complexity, it is vital for organizations to leverage key insights from their trading partners and effectively collaborate with them. This session discusses how new cloud-based approaches can help organizations connect, transact, and collaborate with their business networks in real time to increase the effectiveness of their supply chain and proactively manage risks.

Dell's entry into the retail channel in 2006 was aimed at delivering growth in the non-CTO (Configure To Order) customer segments. The challenge was to understand retail channel functions and counter competition's initiatives to increase market share. After due research, CPFR with key retailers was identified and undertaken as one of the top initiatives. Collaboration with LFR (Large Format Retailer) through information sharing at different levels of planning & execution resulted in significant improvements in revenue, margin, & market share.

CPFR Project Methodology

• Identify retail challenges and do root cause analysis working with the retailer.
• Internal and retail partner buy-in to re-engineer the process.
• Set up key performance indicators and build analytical models for insight generation.
• Ongoing review with retailer to discuss results and frame consensus action plans.

Key results:

• Increased margin realization by 4%
• Forecast accuracy improved to 89%
• Inventory level reduction – 35 to 22 days
• Enhanced cross-functional alignment
• Better product transition across seasons
• Increase in ocean shipments

Effectively managing inventory to reduce working capital is a focus for every company. The challenge is greater for high-tech and semiconductor companies due to generally higher volatility of demand and cost of products. Companies can be more strategic in managing their inventory by using supply chain models that provide decision support for executives and managers. This presentation covers inventory management concepts and an example of a strategic inventory-modeling tool. The model helps make inventory investment decisions and various trade-offs in the supply chain—e.g., inventory versus service level, inventory versus forecast accuracy, and can consider multiple variables concurrently. The ability to model various scenarios prior to making decisions makes the model incredibly powerful.

While a strong understanding of supply chain concepts and at least intermediate Excel skills to convert the concepts to a spreadsheet are necessary, the everyday user does not need to be a master at either. A fundamental understanding of supply chain is sufficient to use the model and make decisions or management recommendations.

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) initiated its supply chain transformation in 2010 to standardize processes, provide organizational alignment, and create enterprise-level transparency, from the VA central office in Washington D.C. down to individual facilities across the nation.

Using the SCOR framework to baseline the organization, the Office of Acquisition and Logistics conducted a supply chain maturity assessment which led to the development of a performance management framework, prototype metrics dashboard, and governance plan that will shine a light on supply chain issues, illuminate best practices, and energize continuous process improvement. This presentation describes the evolution of SCOR in the VA and is a "work-in-progress", from baseline evaluation through maturity model assessment to performance management framework and prototype dashboard design.

The world's first community for horizontal collaboration in logistics was launched last year. This is an equivalent partnership between two global pharmaceutical companies, a neutral orchestrator, and a specialized pharma 3PL. The orchestrator acts as an agent of the pharma companies to synchronize and bundle their European transport flows in real-time. The 3PL is responsible for correct execution and delivery of the physical flows. Information and data flows are handled in real-time by a horizontal collaboration control tower which runs "in the cloud" on the new Microsoft Azure platform.

For the involved shippers, this project will result in logistics cost and carbon footprint net savings in the order of magnitude of 20-30%, while increasing customer service levels. In addition, the achieved volume consolidation makes it possible for the first time to deploy intermodal transport (rail) in a temperature-controlled pharma logistics environment. As an example of "blue ocean" business model innovation, this project will be closely monitored and supported by the EU 7th Framework Program for sustainable transport.

The Canadian Supply Chain Sector Council (CSCSC) has worked with stakeholders in our sector to identify workforce development issues since the release of its seminal "HR Study of the Supply Chain Sector" was released in October 2005. That report led the establishment of the Council as a collaborative voice to harness the energy of the sector to address the key issues that were identified. Work has focused on three primary areas of activity:

• The provision of accurate and relevant labor market information for the sector,
• Influencing education and training to enhance the competencies of employees engaged in the sector, and
• Encouraging the development of better HR policies and practices for use by employers within the sector.

In 2011 the Council launched an update on the initial 2005 study, to chart progress on challenges identified in 2005 and to scope out emerging trends and their impacts. Preliminary data is now in and the prognosis is not good. This session will seek to provide an overview of the "stormy weather" just on the horizon, with specific information from our initial key findings. Comments will be made on the top four issues currently faced by employers in the sector: challenges in recruitment, lack of leadership skills in new recruits, lack of succession planning in organizations, and the impact of retirements. Participants will be equipped with links to the interim report, register to get copies of the final report, and receive a USB key with tools and techniques to deal with the "hazards."