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| Marina Bay Sands Hotel, Singapore |
I spend
last week with our operating company in South Asia. They run five factories in
Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and India and sell general building and technical
insulation solutions all over the region.
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| Marina Bay Sands - insulated by ROCKWOOL products |
It was my
first trip back to Singapore and Malaysia in 12 years. And as the economy
growths with app. 6% per year, the economic wealth in the countries had doubled
in the same period. The skyline is changed with many new high rises coming up.
Marina Bay in Singapore is particular remarkable, and the city’s new land mark:
Three high rises connected at 57th floor with an infinity pool, bars
and restaurants on top.
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| Our good local management at one of our production facilities in Asia |
We recently
hired a new supply chain director in South Asia with the responsibility to
build up a new supply chain function. We spent the week on discussing how to organize
the new supply chain function to best practice. We were completely aligned as to
what processes that belong to a supply chain function. Supply chain should take
end-to-end responsibility for the processes of sourcing the raw materials,
planning the production, and delivering finished products to our end customers.
Our vision for supply chain is to drive supply chain excellence end-to-end
focusing on the “3C’s” - Customers, Costs and Capacity contributing to higher
profitability of the Group
Before the new
supply chain organization was put in place, customer service (order process
handling) reported to sales, logistics (warehouse and transportation) were
either reporting to sales or to production, procurement was reporting to the
local factory manager, and planning were either reporting to sales or to
production.
After the reorganization
into one supply chain function, sales can now focus on nurturing and developing
new customers, and then let customer service concentrate on the order handling
processes itself. Previously, production planning focused on filling the
production line and ensuring good production KPIs, now the new planning function can take a holistic view on balancing the sales forecast, capacity and
inventory both on a short term (0-12
week) basis and on a medium term (3-15 months) basis (Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP)). Managing the warehouse both in terms of manning
efficiency and inventory accuracy are now organized under a local logistics
manager. And finally procurement processes and policies are put in place to ensure
that every dollar is spent professionally.
