An apparel and home fashion retailer shipped to a variety of stores daily. The actual distribution of items to their various retail stores across the country was managed by four different third-party service centers.
Due to the client’s business model, where each store receives new product daily, there was significant complexity for ensuring that tens of thousands of cartons were sorted properly and delivered to the correct store with only a 24-hour turnaround time.
The service centers felt there was an opportunity to improve their service levels, so they invited Carpedia to help determine best practices regarding process, layout, and labor utilization across the network.
Due to the client’s business model, where each store receives new product daily, there was significant complexity for ensuring that tens of thousands of cartons were sorted properly and delivered to the correct store with only a 24-hour turnaround time.
The service centers felt there was an opportunity to improve their service levels, so they invited Carpedia to help determine best practices regarding process, layout, and labor utilization across the network.
The Carpedia team was tasked with travelling coast-to- coast to understand current practices and help develop the go-forward operating model to allow each Service Centre to sustain double digit growth.
Key changes included:
- 35 unique changes were developed for implementation across the network
- Managed the demands and balanced the requests of 5 different companies to agree and implement a standard operating model
- Created a labor planning tool to give visibility to the Service centers and allow them to flex their staff daily due to the high-volume fluctuations
- Investigated best practices and shared learnings across the independently owned service centers
- Improved active management through Carpedia College training and on-the-job coaching
The Results
At the conclusion of the engagement, the strength of the entire network had been enhanced. Management now had the confidence, and more practically the tools and processes, to be certain that their items would be arriving in the right places at the right times.
Specific results include:
- 24% Improvement in productivity
- 20% of products were received a day earlier
