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Case Study #9: Shorter Cycle Times/Obsolescence
Problem
This telecommunication’s company, a client of GlobalWare’s, grew very quickly, through a series of acquisitions. In these acquisitions, the Company typically continued to use the existing supply base and product management practices in place for each given product family. The resulting proliferation of product components and packaging options reached the unmanageable level of 500 active SKUs. Each product family had its own unique box design, artwork, documentation requirements, and packaging specifications. Forecasting the 500 SKU’s was not typically accurate and inventory obsolescence reached 16%.
Solution
GlobalWare Solutions created an internal GWS team to shorten release cycles (decrease production time for release events), and decrease inventory obsolescence. The GWS team, supported by direct and proactive program involvement from the Company, reduced lead times for release events and reprints. The Company’s Purchasing group was empowered to control inventory by ordering smaller quantities and at more frequent intervals. The GlobalWare team also worked closely with he Company’s Product Managers to consolidate packaging designs, artwork and documentation covers. GlobalWare reengineered box designs to create 3 box templates to satisfy all product requirements. Boxes became generic across all products. The boxes were personalized with clear product title labels, thermally imprinted at the kitting station.
Manufacturing solutions for lower volume products, such as new product introductions, beta products and end-of-life products were built-to-order to match actual product requirements. An example of a short run solution is the use of a CD-R in place of CD-ROMs. CD-ROM’s require expensive mastering and molding with appropriate to run sizes of 5000 or more. CD-Rs can be produced in a run size of 1. In another such example, digital on-demand print replaced off-set printing.
Result
The results were dramatic. Within a year, the Company’s inventory obsolescence was reduced from 16% to 1%. Release cycles were reduced from 15 days to approximately 3 days. Reprint cycle times were reduced by 66%.
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