The Three Things You Need to Get Right in Your Extended Value Chain

Customers want it all: deeper price reductions, broader product customization and, of course, faster and more reliable product delivery. At many companies, the reflexive response to these demands has been to outsource non-core activities, offshore whatever can be offshored, shift production and sourcing to lower-cost countries, and offer increased levels of product customization. In doing so, companies have exponentially increased their reliance on distant business partners and suppliers while straining their management processes and policies. It is difficult enough to plan, make and deliver goods and services with full control of these business processes; extending them around the world and across layers of different companies increases the challenge by several scales of magnitude.

So, where should companies focus, and what levers should they pull to ensure that products are delivered on time, with lead times acceptable to customers? Can this be done without running assets overtime and employing expedited delivery methods or without excessive amounts of inventory — actions that could "break the bank"? To deal with these complexities, companies are tracking more and more elements of their business at increasingly fine levels of detail. They are focusing on a growing number of performance levers to help alleviate some of the pain and are getting inundated with the latest management fads and improvement tools.

Our own research and client work suggest there are ultimately just three critical operational resources that businesses need to balance and get "right" in order to succeed: capacity, inventory and lead time. While this may be a very simple notion on the surface, the fact remains that most companies struggle with effectively optimizing these resources holistically and in an integrated fashion across their extended enterprises. This "silo" approach to optimizing each resource independently frequently leads to poor cost, quality and delivery performance. One need look no further than the trend to outsourcing for lowest cost to see the negative impacts that organizations are driving in lead-time performance, inventory performance or both.

The Three Critical Operational Resources

Three critical operational resources — capacity, inventory and lead time — ultimately determine how quickly, reliably and at what cost a value chain can deliver products to the end customer. But while most companies recognize the implications of each resource on its own, few understand their interactions well enough to make explicit and accurate business tradeoffs between them. Even fewer actually attempt to optimize all three holistically to satisfy customer requirements. Operations research experts can derive the interactions and tradeoffs on a mathematical basis, but unanswered is the question of how managers can use the insight to make the right decisions within their organizations.

To fully understand the interactions between capacity, inventory and lead time, it is important to grasp how each of these critical operational resources individually affects the dimensions that matter to customers — quality, price and delivery — with a particular focus on reliable, on-time delivery.

Capacity

Capacity, the most monitored of the three critical operational resources, consists of the machine capacity, labor capacity and physical space required to achieve a desired level of output within a desired period of time.

All businesses are concerned about capacity — they measure it, make annual or quarterly decisions about it, and track its utilization religiously. Few companies, however, appropriately take the notion of demand "uncertainty" into consideration when planning for their capacity needs. Even fewer look at capacity in conjunction with inventory decisions (for both raw materials and finished goods) and inbound/outbound order-to-delivery lead times. Why and how are lead time and inventory important when planning for capacity? Why and how does uncertainty affect capacity decisions?

Consider the example of a global electronic components manufacturer that we worked with. The company had a laser focus on cost and capacity utilization; however, the result was very low levels of inventory (to keep the cost down) and poor on-time delivery performance. When planning capacity, the goal was to have 80-90 percent capacity utilization "on average" throughout the year. On a weekly basis, however, demand spikes often significantly exceeded available capacity. Without sufficient inventory buffers or capacity buffers to account for short-term demand volatility, the only critical operational resource that had to "give" was lead time. And give it did, as on-time delivery performance across the network of plants was at 45-70 percent, one of the worst levels in this industry. Delivery reliability was singled out as a major problem by every single customer we interviewed.

When decisions about required capacity are made, demand levels, short-term volatility of demand and desired order-to-delivery lead time should be an integral part of the overall resource planning. Key decisions that must be made include where capacity should be located across the extended value chain (e.g., at the company, its suppliers or its customers), in what form (e.g., capital assets, labor, etc.) and at what levels. Is it better to build extra capacity into the value chain to buffer against the demand and supply uncertainties, or to hold inventory to protect against these volatilities in the extended business model? Or should a blended approach that does both be implemented?

Inventory

While the level of finished goods inventory has an obvious and direct impact on customer service levels, the ways in which on-hand inventory affects capacity and order-to-delivery lead time are not fully appreciated. Theoretically speaking, the higher the level of finished goods inventory on hand, the higher the achievable customer service level (assuming that the inventory includes the right goods in the right location). Also, increased levels of finished goods inventory allow a company to promise shorter order-to-delivery lead times to end customers and make it possible to accept longer inbound lead times from both internal and external suppliers.

However, decisions regarding raw material inventory also affect production capacity requirements — and, subsequently, order-to-delivery lead times for getting finished goods to end customers. For example, a paint manufacturer in the U.S. discovered that a significant portion of its plant's capacity was idled by "waiting for raw materials" to arrive from suppliers or "be found" in its own warehouse. Luckily, the manufacturing and labor capacity of the plant was sufficient to compensate for the poor inbound supply chain and ensure on-time delivery to customers. However, the additional cost between these inefficiencies could have been avoided.

Lead Time

Rather than looking at order-to-delivery lead time as a distinct, addressable facet of operations, companies inevitably view it as the result of a series of decisions made with regard to manufacturing capacity and inventory levels. Very few companies make decisions about capacity and inventory in conjunction with desired lead times and service levels, which inevitably leads to a disconnect between functional areas. For example, Production cannot meet delivery dates that Sales promised to customers. Procurement grants lead-time extensions to suppliers in exchange for piece-price reductions without fully understanding the impact of such a move on production capacity and raw material inventory levels. Finance demands reductions in the finished goods inventory levels without considering the impact this action will have on end-customer service levels and the company's ability to quickly produce and deliver. Production reduces raw material and component stock without considering the potential impacts on manufacturing capacity. As with capacity and inventory, decisions affecting value chain lead times can be leveraged to meet customer order-winning criteria.

How Key Trends Affect the Critical Operational Resources

Globalization, continued capacity consolidation, increasing product complexity and a growing acceptance of the extended enterprise business model each have an effect on all elements of the critical operational resources. As shown in Figure 1, the overall impact of current business trends on delivery performance is largely negative, as they lead to longer and more variable lead times, higher capacity requirements and increased uncertainty around product demand and order-to-delivery lead times. This is not surprising given that the trends are primarily occurring as companies seek lower costs. Nonetheless, it makes it increasingly challenging for companies to achieve increased customer service levels without increasing their costs, significantly changing their internal processes and/or making major investments in sophisticated information technology solutions to help mitigate or offset such negative impacts.

The "Silver Bullet" — Making the Connections



Developing "Buffers" to Improve On-Time Delivery Performance





Figure 2


Making Differentiated Customer Service Strategies a Reality











Figure 3




Figure 4




The Three "Silver Bullets": Using the Critical Operational Resources as a Strategic Weapon







About the Authors

Steve Mehltretter is a partner with A.T. Kearney's Operations Practice, where he serves clients across multiple industries. His primary areas of focus are operations/supply chain strategy and asset effectiveness. Mehltretter is based in A.T. Kearney's Toronto Office and can be reached at steve.mehltretter@atkearney.com.

Vadim Kapustin is a senior manager with A.T. Kearney's Operations Practice, based out of the company's Washington, D.C. office. His primary areas of focus are supply chain strategy and operational improvements. He has consulted with clients in the consumer packaged goods (CPG), food production, retail and wholesale, industrial goods, pharmaceutical and automotive industries. Kapustin can be reached at vadim.kapustin@atkearney.com.