Enabling Supply Chain Optimization for Simpson Strong-Tie
Simpson Strong-Tie's Supply Chain Strategy
Simpson Strong-Tie follows Barclay Simpson's Nine Principles of Doing Business to maintain a competitive edge in the market. They prioritize customer focus and service excellence to achieve an impressive North American fill rate of 96% - 97% and a North American retail fill rate of 99%. They take an average of 4.2 days to ship across all product lines/locations, and have a same-day shipping rate of 70.2%, ensuring timely order fulfillment. Additionally, the company emphasizes a long-range view, avoiding complex network platforms and striving for standardization and uniformity in its supply chain processes.
Business Challenges
Despite its industry leadership, Simpson Strong-Tie faced supply chain hurdles like manual demand planning, limited production visibility, and disjointed analytics. The absence of statistical forecasting and standardization hindered efficiency and demand prediction, leading to increased lead time variations and inadequate inventory management.
Organizational Goals
Simpson Strong-Tie's goals included achieving accurate demand planning, optimizing inventory management, and enabling efficient production scheduling to enhance customer service and reduce costs.
Chosen Solutions
Collaborating with SAP and ifm's Supply Chain Solutions team, Simpson Strong-Tie embarked on a digital transformation journey for demand planning, inventory optimization, and production planning & scheduling.
Collaborating with ifm's Supply Chain Solutions team
In the beginning of 2017, Simpson Strong-Tie partnered with SAP and ifm to tackle issues across its supply chain. By implementing SAP as their global ERP system with ifm's SAP certified soutions, the company achieved significant improvements in multiple areas:
- Enhanced forecast accuracy: Improved forecast accuracy led to better anticipation of customer demands, minimizing lead time variations and ensuring timely order fulfillment.
- Cost savings: Automated processes and optimal inventory levels reduced operational costs, resulting in substantial savings.
- Increased customer satisfaction: Streamlined operations and responsive production scheduling improved customer service, leading to higher satisfaction rates.
Solutions In Depth
Demand Planning
Simpson Strong-Tie recognized the need for accurate demand planning to optimize its supply chain operations. Utilizing ifm Supply Chain's standard features, the company was able to follow an established process for demand planning that included statistical planning, process standardization, and forecast performance tracking. These tools helped planners and supply chain teams make more data-driven decisions, anticipate customer demands more accurately, and align their production and inventory levels accordingly. With ifm Supply Chain's demand planning solution, Simpson Strong-Tie achieved improved forecast accuracy, reduced lead time variations, and enhanced overall operational efficiency.
Inventory Optimization
The company collaborated with ifm Supply Chain to improve its inventory management by implementing harmonized analytics and standardized processes. This involved automating processes, maintaining master data, and establishing inter-company plant-to-plant relations. With ifm Supply Chain's easy-to-use interfaces, prioritized exception messages, and advanced inventory management
algorithms, Simpson Strong-Tie was able to maintain predictable inventory levels, reduce instances of stockouts, and optimize working capital. As a result, the company experienced cost savings and improved customer satisfaction.
Production Planning and Scheduling
Simpson Strong-Tie leveraged ifm Supply Chain's production planning and scheduling solution to streamline their operations and enhance customer service. With this tool, they were able to visualize capacities, adjust schedules easily, and respond proactively to customer needs. The interface was user-friendly and provided a clear overview of production capacities, facilitating long-term capacity planning through sales and operations planning (S&OP). As a result, Simpson Strong-Tie achieved better production efficiency, shorter lead times, and increased customer satisfaction.
Tangible Business Improvements
Simpson Strong-Tie experienced significant improvements across several aspects of their operations with ifm's supply chain solutions extending their SAP platform:
- Improved forecast accuracy and lead time variation between plants
- Time and labor savings through automated ordering and exception message management
- Optimal and balanced inventory levels to maximize service and minimize cost
- Predictable capacity and customer service issues
Next Steps in Process Improvement
Simpson Strong-Tie is planning to continue enhancing their processes with ifm's supply chain solutions. Their goals include developing customized capacity simulation dashboards, optimizing their supply network, and using personalized exception messages to promote inventory rebalancing.
Conclusion
Simpson Strong-Tie understands the vital role that supply chain management plays in their operations. They chose to use ifm's supply chain solutions, which integrate directly into SAP, to quickly enhance and extend their processes on a global scale. Initially, they concentrated on maintaining consistent and durable processes, but since then, they have continued to enhance and refine their practices while adopting new technologies offered by ifm. By staying up-to-date with supply chain advancements, Simpson Strong-Tie will continue to be an industry leader and deliver exceptional products and services to their customers.