SpiralVeyor® Logilift
; Logistics Spiral Elevator
; 30% lower investment
; “SpiralGrip” super grip spiral belt
; Continuous flow
; Compact footprint
; High throughput
lanes, inventory volumes, and desired service levels.
Supply chain design tools also consider that same type of
information, and when the company’s sales forecast is
included, they can generate the forecasts that 3PL bidders
require.
While your current network might be optimized to suit
the 3PL’s resources when the previous contract was signed,
your incumbent 3PL may be unwilling to change to meet
the proposed redesigned supply chain, or it might lack the
infrastructure to provide a better solution. Hence, a
planned network redesign may show managers that they
should put the contract out for bid and seek other, more
appropriate logistics service providers.
WHY WAIT?
If suppliers always delivered on time,
production always adhered to its plan,
and customers always ordered what
your forecasts said they would order,
then supply chain management would
be simple. But it is not, because business conditions and circumstances are
constantly changing, and therefore, no
company can afford to establish a supply chain network and simply assume
that it will always be the optimal
design.
Fear of the time and cost involved
often encourages supply chain managers to postpone an evaluation and redesign. In practice,
however, most such projects start with a quick estimate
involving perhaps 20 days of work. This initial stage is a
time for roughly assessing the potential for alternative
designs and for determining that there is indeed a business
case for changing your current configuration. The second
step typically requires between 50 and 100 days to accurately calculate the cost of change and the potential reduction in supply chain costs.
Supply chain design tools are particularly versatile and
are invaluable in performing the necessary assessments. For
a wide variety of important issues, these tools provide
insight and analysis where once only opinion prevailed.
Now, management can make better decisions that have
been rigorously assessed and justified. Managers can assess
the merits of multiple scenarios, knowing that they are
comparing like with like. This is because supply chain
design tools deliver an optimum solution for each scenario.
This rigorous justification helps win over colleagues across
the organization and thus speeds up implementation of the
new supply chain configuration. ;
Simon Bragg ( simon.bragg@andaele.com), Richard Stone ( stone@home9.demon.
co.uk), and Julian van Geersdaele ( julian.vangeersdaele@andaele.com) are all
independent consultants.
