SUPPLY CHAIN AND OPERATIONS IMPROVEMENT

Supply Chain Strategy
Effective supply chain management continues to grow in importance as a competitive differentiator for most companies. Many supply chains hold untapped opportunities, including cost and working capital reductions, as well as top line growth potential.

However, many companies find that supply chain improvement can be costly and frustrating, failing to yield the desired results.  For many companies, a main barrier is the lack of an effective supply chain strategy.  Without strategic context, companies often struggle with an overwhelming multitude of supply chain initiatives, running the risk of chasing the supply chain "buzzword-du-jour", without a clear path to realizing competitive advantage or value for the customer.

Operations Improvement
There are a variety of reasons that may drive an organization to recognize their need for a turnaround effort – financial solvency, operational inefficiencies, or even organizational dysfunction.  These issues may affect an entire company, division or even be focused in a single function. But, no matter where the pain resides, generally they share one common need -- the need for rapid solution development and execution to achieve stability and to begin their turnaround.

Our approach to these situations is straightforward - we work with our clients to identify troubled operations and help to quickly stabilize their performance.  Once stabilized, we continue to team with our clients to develop and execute the financial, operational, and strategic changes required to return the client to higher performance levels.  Our approach covers diagnostic, planning and results capture efforts.  Specific turnaround solutions include, among others:

• Rapid Turnaround Plan Development
• Unprofitable Operations Rationalization
• Interim Restructuring Leadership
• Profitable Revenue Generation
• Divestiture Identification And Support
• Organizational Restructuring
• Internal and External Constituency Management
• Intensive Cash Management

Sales and Operations Planning
Manufacturers across multiple industries have exerted significant efforts to achieve sales and operational efficiencies and have made considerable investments in supporting technology, yet they continue to face many of the same challenges they set-out to overcome.  An improved planning framework, beginning with Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP), provides the foundation for setting realistic and aligned objectives and the ability to execute against them.

Archstone Consulting’s extensive supply and demand chain strategy experience and operational expertise allows us to assist our clients in developing a pragmatic approach to creating value by designing and deploying sustainable Integrated Sales and Operations Planning programs and transformations.  Our team members are recognized as both effective practitioners and thought leaders in this area.

Our approach covers assessing, planning, designing and deploying a program to capture measurable benefits.  Specific aspects of our approach include:

• Embedding organizational alignment, change management, and communication processes into the process design and deployment
• Designing and implementing an S&OP program using ‘real life’ business experiences from many industries
• Tailoring the time frame to design and launch a fluid S&OP based on a client’s specific business objectives
• Designing an S&OP process independent of any specific technology while incorporating a client’s current and planned technology capabilities
• Establishing cross-functional human-to-human interactions - not just process maps
• Capturing benefits ‘as you go’
• Building a culture and governance model of continuous improvement to create sustainable value

Inventory Management
Significant direct costs that could be better deployed are often consumed and tied up. Typically, poorly operating working capital “pipelines” lead to a drag on financial performance due to slowed customer response, poor cycle times, significant discounting, higher costs of goods and use of incentives to move goods. Our services focus on optimizing and improving processes for managing inventory and working capital.

Fulfillment Management
As today’s global supply chains become more dynamic, service and cost become more difficult to balance.  Archstone Consulting has supported clients’ efforts to define the right capabilities required to achieve effective balance and utilize the supply chain to create value.  From global aftermarket support strategies to day-to-day reverse logistics operations, our staff has worked with our clients to strike balance and position the supply chain as a service differentiator.

Operations Lean
Executives have been seeking “game-changing” operations improvements for years. However, many are still struggling to achieve the step-function improvements in customer service and competitiveness that they require. Our services are designed to assist clients create tangible, sustained results that contribute to their overall competitiveness. We use a comprehensive, strategy-driven approach that applies Lean, Six Sigma and other continuous improvement techniques to overcome internal and supply chain challenges.

Turnaround Services
There are a variety of reasons that may drive an organization to recognize their need for a turnaround effort – financial solvency, operational inefficiencies, or even organizational dysfunction.  These issues may affect an entire company, division or even be focused in a single function. But, no matter where the pain resides, generally they share one common need -- the need for rapid solution development and execution to achieve stability and to begin their turnaround.

Our approach to these situations is straightforward - we work with our clients to identify troubled operations and quickly stabilize their performance.  Once stabilized, we continue to team with our clients to develop and execute the financial, operational, and strategic changes required to return the client to superior performance levels.  Our approach is comprehensive and covers diagnostic, planning and results capture efforts.  Specific Turnaround Solutions may include (but are not limited to):

• Rapid Turnaround Plan Development
• Unprofitable Operations Rationalization
• Interim Restructuring Leadership
• Profitable Revenue Generation
• Divestiture Identification And Support
• Organizational Restructuring
• Internal and External Constituency Management
• Intensive Cash Management

Cost Transformation
Many of the services Archstone Consulting provides meet at the juncture of helping our clients find new and innovative ways to optimize their cost structure. We believe that there are more levers than ever before to operate more efficiently and help those companies that capitalize on this opportunity to become more competitive within their peer groups.

At Archstone we integrate a variety of capabilities to help our clients develop a total picture of their opportunity to optimize their cost structure and then define a tailored Cost Transformation Roadmap. Some of the capabilities we integrate in our offering include:

1. Developing and implementing strategies to operate essential functions virtually through the use of Outsourcing and Offshoring.
2. Applying our Low Cost Country Sourcing expertise to reduce external spend.
3. Restructuring organizations to delayer and focus the organization on value-added activities that are linked to business strategy
4. Rationalizing assets to improve ROCE and optimize infrastructure spend.

Our experience helping clients transform their cost structure and implement new strategies is supported by Archstone Consulting's Change Management and Organizational Effectiveness expertise.

Cash Cycle Optimization
One area where we see many of our clients struggle is in the area of working capital efficiency. While optimizing inventory, receivables and payables seems straightforward, many of our clients struggle with realizing benefits from initiatives aimed at reducing working capital. At Archstone Consulting, we believe the working capital challenge is significant. Our observations and experience point to the following as the common challenges experienced by our clients:

1. Focus on root causes vs. symptoms - don't "bail water", stop the leak.
2. The ability to identify and resolve root causes to cross functional process problems. For example, issues such as excess inventory, a slow dispute management process and errors in billing involve multiple functions and a significant change effort to resolve.
3. Commitment to resolve issues of policy.
4. Understanding of structural issues that are defined by the industry and regulatory agencies that are pivot points to identify opportunities to realize additional benefit (for example, how do you hold less inventory when your customers place a high premium on high service levels)

At Archstone Consulting, our goal is to achieve meaningful and apparent results for our clients. In some cases we have been called in to address the problem after others have failed. Let us be the first and the last firm you call to address your operational needs. Please contact us to learn more.