Patti Radcliff was hired to establish an end-to-end supply chain for a company that had recently been divested and had less than six months to establish supply chain infrastructure before the transition agreement with the divested company concluded. This company was a franchisor and the franchisees had suffered years of poor service and were anticipating rapid improvement in service after the divestiture.
It was imperative to establish a functioning supply chain. However, there was very little historical data from the former parent company to help inform decisions regarding inventory levels, buying trends or franchisee requirements. The new organization would require supply and demand planning, strategic sourcing capabilities, warehouse management and fulfillment functionality, an ecommerce platform, reporting capabilities and customer service/problem resolution staff.
Patti Radcliff,
Supply Chain & Operations Leader
“I took a multi-pronged approach,” said Patti. “First, I developed an org chart and hired a strong team to fill the positions. I held meetings with the franchise councils to determine the failures they had experienced, improvements they wanted to see, and various products they deemed crucial to their operations. I then reviewed revenue statements to estimate product needs based on the work they performed and reported to corporate headquarters.” Radcliff added, “With that information, I developed a demand forecast, performed a full count of all products in the warehouse and placed Purchase Orders with current suppliers to bridge the gap in supplies.
Her team began negotiating contracts with suppliers and freight companies to manage cost, improve SLAs, and provide visibility to product in transit. She created min/max stocking levels in the warehouse and created processes with a 3PL to manage the warehouse and fulfillment functions. She also created a feedback loop to allow for continuous improvements and to understand where further infrastructure was needed and set up reporting capabilities to track cost, savings, OTIF performance, Days of Inventory on Hand (DOH), and sales trends.
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