Supply Chain Metrics 4 - Supply Chain Check-up

How do you know that you need help in the first place, though? Benchmark studies and process maps are both expensive and time-consuming, and many companies whose earnings put them well outside of the Fortune 1000 realize that their supply chains aren't all they ought to be, but they are still hesitant as to what to do about it. Consultant Mike Donovan of R. Michael Donovan & Company offers a relatively short but challenging checklist that provides a basic assessment of how healthy your supply chain might be. If you answer "no" to any of the following questions, or even worse, if you don't even know the answers to some of these questions, then the time to get serious about fixing your supply chain problems is right now:

Do your order fulfillment rates meet management's specific and measured customer service strategy?
Are your delivery lead times competitive and predictable?
Do all of your supply chain departments agree on which products are made-to-stock and which are made-to-order?
Do sales and manufacturing share equally in determining the mix and investment in inventory?
Are the appropriate calculations being used, rather than "rules of thumb," to establish the desired mix and levels?
Are management's inventory investment plan and customer service objectives being compared against the actual results that are achieved?
Are short-term forecast deviations being monitored and adjusted, and is long-term forecast accuracy continuously improving?
Is your inventory accuracy consistently above 98 percent?
Are you able to avoid carrying excess safety stock buffers?
Are your excess and obsolete inventories being measured, and are they less than 1 percent of total inventory?

Time for a Turnaround

Automaker Nissan Motors is a good example of a company that recognized it was in trouble and used strategic benchmarking to launch a complete corporate turnaround. David Morgan, president and CEO of consulting firm D.W. Morgan Company, points out that Nissan was one of the relatively few companies that sat out the boom years of the 1990s, charting instead a decade-long course of failed products and poor financial results. In the year 2000, Nissan decided enough was enough as it began an initiative aimed at achieving an 8 percent profit on each vehicle sold.

"Through data collected in its supplier benchmarking program, Nissan discovered that suppliers were consistently producing inferior products at higher than average prices. In effect, Nissan was giving away $2,000 on every car sold. Further, Nissan's distribution costs were the highest among automakers," Morgan explains.

Once it became aware of these problems, Nissan quickly responded by improving its supply base. "Today, Nissan employs sophisticated benchmarks for every partner doing business with them. Any partner that fails to meet established standards is notified of corrective action that needs to be taken," he notes.

It took more than just benchmarking to effect these changes, of course. For one thing, Nissan expanded its closely held supply base to include global component suppliers. It also embraced many of the same lean manufacturing and quality philosophies that fellow Japanese automaker Toyota had pioneered. As a result of all these initiatives, Nissan has become a benchmark for the automotive industry. As Morgan points out, since 2000, the company's stock price has nearly doubled, and in 2005, vehicle sales were up more than 10 percent. Not too bad for a company that had been written off as comatose at the turn of the millennium.

Part 5 coming soon....