Читать книгу Supply Chain Management Best Practices - David Blanchard - Страница 31

When it comes to measuring overall supply chain performance, companies typically focus on benchmarking metrics, such as those established in the Supply Chain Council's SCOR model, which we'll look at later in this chapter. Delivery performance, fill rates, perfect order fulfillment, cash-to-cash cycle time, inventory turns—these are some of the standards by which supply chains are judged, to determine whether they're best-in-class, fair-to-middling, or knocking on death's door. So let's take a look at how some top-performing companies are tracking their supply chains.

Automaker Hyundai, for instance, uses its parts distribution operation to build customer loyalty. The company's goal is to provide high levels of customer service while keeping its costs as low as possible. In this case, the customers are Hyundai dealers, and through dealer satisfaction surveys the company has learned that order fill rate is the number-one driver of satisfaction among its dealers.

So to ensure that it's keeping its customers happy while keeping its costs down, Hyundai measures the facing fill rate, which is the order fill rate from the warehouse assigned to the dealer. The higher the fill rate, the higher the level of dealer satisfaction. Concurrently, the company can reduce its transportation costs—the goal is to ship parts out of an assigned warehouse on a dedicated delivery schedule. If Hyundai needs to ship parts from another warehouse outside that delivery route, it most likely will need to use an expedited carrier, which is much more expensive.

Hyundai's facing fill rate on orders is about 96%, which is considered good for the automotive industry. The automaker also measures the fill rate for its entire warehouse network, which is 98%, also a high score for automakers. But the company wants to get that fill rate even higher, to reduce its use of premium transportation.

Transportation costs, however, are just part of the total supply chain cost, which also includes inventory and productivity costs. Hyundai monitors the amount of inventory it carries at any given time, with the understanding that best-in-class for the automotive industry won't necessarily equate to another industry's goals, such as the high-tech industry. Automakers carry a deep inventory of parts because their vehicles are designed to last for years. Computer makers, on the other hand, have comparatively small inventories of parts since high-tech products are often considered obsolete after just a few months.

To stay on top of current automotive industry trends, Hyundai belongs to an independent automotive and heavy equipment group that collects performance and cost metrics from member companies and provides benchmarking services.⁹