The Consumer Products category had particularly strong entries from McNeil Nutritionals, British American Tobacco and Procter & Gamble.
BAT’s entry centred on its aim to become a globally integrated company working as one virtual team for the benefit of its customers. The company, which sells in 180 countries and has manufacturing in over 45 factories worldwide, has created a Supply Chain Excellence Toolkit which is serving to align its operations to a global strategy. McNeil Nutritionals Europe is part of Johnson & Johnson and focuses on nutritional products for consumers. Over the past two years the company’s supply chain team has transformed the European supply chain from a reactive organisation to a pro-active team with a focus on strategically important tasks. The judges thought that McNeil had created a great example of a largely virtual supply chain. “The low asset, 100 per cent outsourced strategy is a model that perhaps, not many companies can follow but it demonstrates that, at least in some industries, the traditional way of looking at supply chains can be fundamentally challenged,” say the adjudicators. The judges felt this was a prime example of how close collaboration could work well.
However, the winner had to be Procter & Gamble. P&G responded to the global economic crisis by focusing on business fundamentals and operational excellence to emerge stronger, supported by a strategy developed by the management team called the Budapest Supply Solution. The judges say: “The company developed a true end-to-end supply chain strategy focusing on six areas that strengthened the business during the crisis: improve organisation capability; increase manufacturing responsiveness; reduce working capital inventory; speed up material supply management; launch new products; and reduce total delivered cost.”
And the results supported this with customer service up 1.5 per cent to 99 per cent.
Winner
Procter & Gamble
Shortlisted
McNeil Nutritionals
British American Tobacco
Procter & Gamble
