IT: Supply Chain Consultants Wins APICS Technology Partnership Award of Excellence

Manufacturing News, Source : The Manufacturer US
Published : 28 Nov 2006 16:26

WILMINGTON, DE – Kudos to Supply Chain Consultants, designer and supplier of the Zemeter Suite of supply chain management (SCM) software products, which has won the APICS (The Association for Operations Management) Technology Partnership Award of Excellence.

The joint award, which also honors Mother Parkers Tea and Coffee, Inc., recognizes a partnership between a technology solutions provider and a corporate customer where a product implementation achieved optimal results and increased overall success of the company. Supply Chain Consultants’ (SCC) solution for Mother Parkers enabled the company to better meet customer demands and reduce inventory. The award was presented this morning at the annual APICS International Conference and Exposition in Orlando, Fla.

Dominick Corigliano, Supply Chain Consultants’ (SCC) vice president, sales and marketing, said, “We are extremely honored to be selected as a recipient of such a prestigious award in the industry. We have been pleased with the positive results in Mother Parkers’ supply chain, and view this recognition as a casebook example of SCC’s dedication to meeting the needs of its customers.”

The selection criteria for the award are based in part on the innovation of the company’s product solution and its ability to help achieve the customers’ goals and objectives. APICS also considered the relationship between the solution provider and the customer and how they worked together to deliver optimal results creatively and effectively. SCC first performed a detailed assessment of Mother Parkers’ supply chain to determine what processes needed to be improved. Instead of simply installing systems, SCC helped Mother Parkers make incremental steps, so that as each step was implemented, Mother Parkers could gain experience and monitor one stage as they began working on the next.

Supply Chain Consultants worked closely with Mother Parkers to develop a customized scheduling application never before used in the coffee industry. The tailored solution allows Mother Parkers to aggregate multiple packaging lines to a specified grinder and schedule similar blends at the same time. Roasting schedules are also aggregated to ensure that each roaster is in sync with schedules for grinding, blending and packaging. Rather than installing the entire solution system at once, SCC chose to take incremental steps to ensure that Mother Parkers could closely monitor the grinder bins and packaging line schedules at each stage of the project in order to better meet customer demands and reduce inventory. Since collaborating with SCC, Mother Parkers has obtained a higher percentage of forecast accuracy and has seen a 20-point improvement in schedule attainment.

“SCC’s in-depth evaluation showed us that they understood the complexity and uniqueness of our supply chain challenges,” said Will Kappel, Mother Parkers’ vice president of supply chain. “SCC went above and beyond to learn our business and determine what methods needed to be executed to enable us to more efficiently serve our customers. We have seen a dramatic improvement in scheduling capability and can now monitor and measure schedule attainment at each level of manufacturing.”

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