Once again the Hi-tech and Electronics sector provided the Overall Winner for this year’s European Supply Chain Excellence Awards. Infineon Technologies deservedly took the top trophy having returned to the competition this year with renewed vigour to come away with a prize. But it wasn’t just their sector they won, they carried off the top prize!
It’s hardly surprising that the Electronics sector fields such a large number of excellent supply chains – over the years we have seen such icons of supply chain management as, Dell and Cisco Systems win overall. The dynamics of this particular industry sector are testing and demanding, with high volumes, considerable product complexity and ever-shorter product life cycles.
Infineon demonstrated a winning, competitive supply chain structure. Its strongly customer-focused and well integrated supply chain, with outstanding customer service, and a particular focus on transit, warehouse and order confirmation cycle times were noted. A particular aspect that impressed the judges was its Supply Chain Planning Complexity Reduction Project, which does just what it says – continually striving to make an inevitably complex supply chain planning landscape ever more transparent and accurate, as well as leaner and faster.
But other sectors impressed too. The runner up to the Overall trophy was from the Retail and Distribution sector. Tesco Direct is a new operation, only trading since September 2006 and yet it already has revenues of €290 million. As the judges said: ‘From a truly standing start wherein even the development team wasn’t in place at launch, a completely new supply chain, providing a true multi-channel capability, has been created. Many elements have been implemented elsewhere in this sector but what makes this achievement unique is the scale, degree of business integration and complexity of the supply chain challenges.’
With winners as worthy as these, one wonders what examples of excellence we can expect to see next year.
