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Automotive, Aerospace & Industrial
Winner: BASF
As we know from Infineon’s performance in the past – winner of the Overall Award in 2007 – the international semi-conductor company has a strongly customer-focused and a well integrated supply chain, with outstanding customer service, and close adherence to transit, warehouse and order confirmation cycle times. The company has developed a highly flexible supply chain to create competitive advantage and the judges felt that “they had leveraged the ability to respond to changing customer requirements by being able to reconfigure an outsourced supply chain quickly.” The judges believed that Infineon had continued to develop its supply chain in an excellent way however, there were two other contenders for the trophy.
Sandvik Tooling’s entry concerned a global supply chain organisation with some 7,000 employees across 25 production sites and three main distribution centres. It has cut inventory levels, while still offering stock availability of above 95 per cent. The company has established a supply chain centred on three hubs capable of delivering just about anywhere around the world within 48 hours. The judges were impressed by the leanness of the operation and the efficiency of its logistics support. They were also taken by the company’s use of cross-functional teams that support development across units, so helping the local lean working groups with the development of local processes. So the judges Highly Commended Sandvik Tooling.
But, one company stood out. “BASF reacted to market and industry conditions with a supply chain transformation that achieved global cross-functional harmonisation.
“How do you take a 60+ billion euro company and define simple customer requirements?” said the judges. “They defined a small number of customer interaction types for the whole business and then aligned their supply chain accordingly.” For the judges “this was a transformation clearly targeted on benefits and it affected the entire organisation – it was an astounding achievement to get a large organisation to move in this way.”
Highly commended
» Sandvik Tooling
Shortlisted
» BASF
» Infineon
» Sandvik Tooling
Supply Chain Standard, December 2011
