Business Issue
This large U.S. retailer operated a 200 store grocery chain and offered pantry items in two thousand other stores. Replenishment fill rates dropped below 80% when the retailer outsourced grocery distribution to a single-source provider. Since the vendor was only required to report ten performance metrics, management lacked the visibility required to identify and fix the various problems.
Approach
A large task force was formed which included the retailer, the vendor and several consulting groups. We were responsible for designing and implementing the measures which were to be used by the task force. The following is a list of the major tasks undertaken.
- Defined a large set of performance metrics to allow detailed management oversight of daily logistics operations.
- Coordinated the running of daily standard queries from the vendor's operational data to support reporting requirements.
- Built an executive dashboard to provide overall performance metrics.
- Built ad hoc reports to support root cause analysis. Often these reports were then standardized to support on-going monitoring of the situation.
- Posted reports to an internal web page to allow broad management access to the information.
Result
As a result of the reporting structure that was established:
- Managers were able to review daily performance and to filter the reports by location or product segment.
- Performance issues were identified and prioritized. Project teams were then assigned to address the issues.
- Overall fill rates were increased to over 90% within the course of 3 months.
