Background and challenges
A leading U.S. wire and cable manufacturer had built a strong market position around customer service, short lead times and a broad stock-keeping unit offering. Rapid growth, however, had increased complexity across the supply chain and placed a strain on production and warehousing. L.E.K. Consulting was engaged to perform an end-to-end supply chain assessment and identify opportunities to improve efficiency, reduce costs and support future growth without compromising service.
The diagnostic found strain across production and warehouse operations, with opportunities to strengthen planning, optimize inventory and order allocation, improve procurement and freight management and enhance performance across sites and work centers.
Approach
We conducted a comprehensive operational diagnostic across the full supply chain, spanning planning, inbound supply, sourcing, manufacturing, distribution center operations and final-mile freight. The team combined plant visits, management working sessions and detailed operational and financial analysis to identify improvement opportunities across the network.
End-to-end supply chain diagnostic
The assessment identified a broad portfolio of end-to-end supply chain initiatives, with value concentrated in four key areas:
- Planning and coordination: Strengthening demand and production planning, improving coordination across plants and optimizing production scheduling
- Cost and procurement discipline: Enhancing supplier management, improving payment terms, strengthening procurement processes and capturing strategic sourcing savings
- Asset productivity and manufacturing execution: Improving data visibility, asset management, production rates, downtime performance and operator training
- Network and logistics efficiency: Optimizing inventory strategy, reel allocation, storage and picking methods, lane management and carrier mode selection
We quantified the impact of these opportunities and translated the findings into a practical implementation roadmap, enabling the client to prioritize initiatives, sequence execution and move quickly toward value capture.
Results
Working closely with the client leadership team, we successfully:
- Identified 10%-16% in full run-rate net income uplift across the end-to-end supply chain, with minimal capital expenditure and incremental labor costs required
- Freed up 25% of incremental production capacity
- Developed a practical implementation roadmap, with most initiatives able to begin immediately and the overall program designed for execution over roughly one year
The project delivered a clear enterprisewide view of where value could be created across its supply chain while preserving the customer-centric agile operating model that had supported its growth.
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