Supplying fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) is big business. It is also one of the most competitive and time-critical sectors, with literally millions at stake with each market fluctuation.
Manufacturers are under constant pressure to meet shorter lead times, operate more efficiently and reduce their costs. Businesses today face a situation where they need to be open for business 24 hours a day, seven days a week. This means that an efficient supply chain is critical for competitiveness.
Robert McBride Ltd, the UK`s largest manufacturer of retailer brand household and personal care products, knows this better than anyone else.
"Consistency is crucial," says Peter Blanchard, head of customer support. "Retailer brands are all about change, a fact which brings massive pressure to the sequencing of work."
Some of the growth enjoyed by Robert McBride has been from a series of acquisitions. This resulted in management being faced not only with multi-site manufacturing plants, but also with different ways of working, procedures and systems, at some of its sites.
The company identified the need to offer its customers a totally co-ordinated and responsive approach. Blanchard explains: "We reached the point a few years ago where we realised our systems and procedures for doing the same things at different sites were like trying to compare apples and pears. We needed to find a solution that would enable us to drive the change to a consistent and efficient method of responding to our customers needs."
An initiative by workflow and e-process company Staffware provided that solution. "It is a move which will benefit South African retail companies as well because, if the market demands it, Staffware will make the solution available locally," says Mark Ehmke, Managing Director of Staffware South Africa. The two companies have launched a Web-based supply chain application for customers in the retail sector. This application is one of the first industry solutions to combine both a software vendor and its customer to promote a tried and tested supply chain application, already installed at the Manchester-based manufacturer of retailer brand household and personal care products.
The business systems development team did not take long to be convinced that Staffware offered them the ability to manage the change using a systematic, enforceable approach - workflow was the driving force behind a change in culture.
Tim Seaman, managing director, commercial of Robert McBride, says: "The introduction of workflow into our company has proved essential to our continued success as a customer-focused and responsive company. "As each process has been rolled out, the benefits were immediate, in terms of control, traceability, visibility and improved management information. Workflow has supported the growth of our business in an increasingly complex environment."
"Workflow provides discipline and totally guarantees that nothing can be left out of the process - ever," continues Blanchard.
Prior to implementing a pilot of Staffware`s workflow solution, a business team at Robert McBride analysed the company`s processes. "It was crucial for us to understand our processes as they currently existed before we tried to put them into workflow. Each process was then broken down and changed - a true business process re-engineering exercise. Only when the business team was happy with the results did we start to implement the workflow infrastructure."
Once convinced of the potential success of the changes Robert McBride took a "big bang" approach to its pilot implementation. Blanchard explains: "We chose not to run any of our existing systems in parallel with the workflow solution - we wanted our people to understand from the start that workflow was the ONLY way to complete a process. So we took away the options."
Staffware`s workflow solution has enabled us to halve the time we take from initiating the process for manufacturing a new product to it reaching the end of a production line.
The pilot workflow applications were initially prepared for two processes: product launch and customer contact actions. Following the success of these initial applications, further processes were completed including promotions, product quotation, authority to order and customer samples.
Each process was initially re-engineered by a business-led team, and then transferred to a workflow solution by the dedicated IS workflow team.
Blanchard explains: "When the systems were in place, we really began to understand the full power of workflow - the nature of the technology meant that we could make improvements and refinements with ease as the impact of the level of control became clear."
Blanchard adds: "Workflow has changed the order in which we do things. For example, a bar code for a new product is mandatory, but it is not required at the beginning of the process. The rest of the planning work can be done while the bar code is being sourced, it becomes an `option` up to a certain level in the chain.
"Before we finalise the launch of the product, the bar code will have been allocated - the workflow system will not allow the launch to be processed until it has. Effectively it removes the option for error."
Robert McBride initially ran the Staffware solution on an HP/Unix platform, but the company recently decided to migrate to a Windows NT 4.0 environment. Gary Wilson, IS development manager at McBride`s, explains: "When we started the Staffware pilot we had 32 licences, workstations were provided for each of the manufacturing sites and due to the numbers involved we had a certain degree of control.
"We have now rolled out Staffware workflow to many more users for a number of processes across the company. Migrating to Windows NT and replacing PCs with NCs brings improved manageability and remote support for users. A high level of flexibility was absolutely fundamental when we were looking for the best workflow solution - Staffware`s products have this flexibility built in."
For the future, McBride`s believe that the `Extended Enterprise` (customers and suppliers using workflow across systems to aid efficiency) is possible but is reliant on technology keeping up with market demands. This complements Staffware`s own philosophy of providing its users with inter-enterprise solutions. By using the Internet to extend its solutions outside the enterprise, Staffware can result in enormous benefits and efficiencies to distributed organisations.
To date, Staffware`s workflow solution has brought multiple benefits to McBride in terms of time savings, halving the time taken from initiation to final production and increasing the productivity of customer-facing staff by 25%.
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