Assessment, Benchmarking & Analysis

Assessment, Benchmarking, & AnalysisSupply Chain Competitive Advantage is achieved when customer expectations are consistently met and regularly exceeded. Aggressive competition and escalating operating cost for labor, facilities, equipment, fuel, systems, and insurance demand a continuous improvement process that begins with logistics operations excellence founded on best practices.

Achieving best practices in logistics operations is a fundamental requirement for the winning enterprise. Creating the path forward to achieve best practices is a four-step process providing our customer with an in-depth analysis of current operations, relevant benchmarking, gap and risk/benefit analyses and specific recommendations to improve logistics operations.

Business and Logistics Strategy

    • Define the business and customer requirements creating a competitive advantage.
    • Define and quantify the value of the competitive advantage.
    • Create operational objectives in terms of the current capability and relative costs.

Current Logistics Operations Baseline

    • Examine logistics operations, organization structure, key processes, enabling tools and technology, and key performance indicators.
    • Collect, organize, and analyze financial, historical production, inventory, shipment, and productivity data.
    • Observe logistics operations from management and operator perspectives, including interviews with key personnel in each function.
    • Assess interactions with external environments including customers, suppliers, manufacturing sites, maintenance contractors and other external suppliers.
    • Interview the key business partners for impact of operations on external suppliers and customers.
    • Prepare a SWOT analysis of the baseline conditions.
    • Relevant Benchmarking
    • Analyze the current logistics baseline identifying the relevant categories for benchmarking.
    • Identify documented sources for leading practices in logistics and supply chain.
    • Develop benchmarking questions to surveys a relevant cross section of industry respondents.
    • Collect and catalog the benchmarking data identifying best practice for relevant categories.
    • Prepare a side-by-side comparison between the current baseline and benchmarked best practices.
    • Identify gaps between the current baseline and benchmarked best practices.

Path Forward Recommendations

    • Assess the risks and benefits associated with the status quo versus best practice.
    • Identify key opportunities for improvement.
    • Describe recommendations and tactics to close the gap for key opportunities.
    • Develop the path forward plan to achieve excellence in logistics.