|
Helping
Foodbrands to Pull out of the Distribution
Death Spiral (White Paper PDF 141K)©
Problem
To Be Solved:
Foodbrands
America is a major manufacturer and marketer of frozen
and refrigerated products. It services nationally recognized
foodservice, retail and refrigerated convenience food
companies, including Dominos Pizza, Sysco, Fleming,
and Alliant Food Service.
Foodbrands
was struggling to keep up with their business growth.
Case costs were up significantly. Order fulfillment
errors had skyrocketed. And productivity measures were
unacceptably low.
The
Challenges
Foodbrands
faced major challenges that created significant operational
inefficiencies:
- The
company's DC line managers were operating in a very
reactive mode just to keep up with increasing product
volumes, they were too close to the situation to adequately
address the issues.
- Foodbrands
couldn't keep up with dramatic volume increases, resulting
in ineffective distribution processes.
- Foodbrands'
IT systems no longer adequately supported the volume
of product moving through its distribution channels.
The
Solution
Foodbrands
turned to Solertis to quickly and effectively address
these urgent challenges. Solertis developed a strategy
that involved hands-on training of Foodbrands' distribution
management, and improvements to the company's logistics
processes and operations.
Solertis
did a fabulous job in getting this broken thing fixed,"
said Dick Buell, President and COO of Foodbrands. "They
provided supplemental management all the way through
training to daily meetings, weekly planning, and monthly
outlooks."
One
of Solertis' major roles in the project involved working
with the employees who run theoperation on a daily basis,
according to Jesse Laver, a practice leader with Solertis
who was instrumental in helping Foodbrands through this
crisis:"We were on the floor, mentoring the supervisors
and front-line managers in their own environment day
in and day out. When the problem arose, we would coach
them on how to think through the issues and how to be
a more effective manager. We firmly believe that the
people who best know how to improve any operation are
the ones are doing it at that level, every day. By helping
these key members of the work force to develop new thinking
skills, Foodbrands is now in a stronger position to
address its distribution challenges.
What
makes Solertis unique is that we can benefit clients
at all levels, from the ground up," continues Laver.
"For Foodbrands, at 6 a.m. we'd be in the freezer to
work with front-line supervisors, and at 4 p.m. we'd
be sitting at the boardroom table talking strategy with
the vice president. We bring significant value to our
clients by integrating at all levels of the enterprise."
The
Results
Solertis
was able to help Foodbrands achieve the following:
- 30%
productivity gain, primarily through hands-on, practical
training of the floor supervisors at the company's
distribution centers
- Optimum
operational functionality by improving processes and
IT systems
- Reduced
case costs by 52%
- Decreased
the number of order fulfillment errors by 53%
Get
results like these for your company. Contact
Solertis now.
|
