Elanders Solutions in Supply Chain
Everything you see filling the shelves of your local store, every product that arrives at your door from your on-line purchase, every piece of product information packaged with your new purchase came together through a supply chain. Supply chains exist in many different forms from simple to complex, and are a network of players rather than a function of a single department.
In recent years, globalization, e-business, and technology have unleashed new levels of competition forcing companies to re-engineer the way they do business. This re-engineering has trickled to supply chain managers, pushing them to meet the customer demands for multiple product options and faster delivery. Take Amazon for example, they started out as a simple online bookstore and have evolved into a go-to source for millions of products, some created by Amazon and some drop-shipped by other businesses. Eric Frazier, through Whitman Syracuse University, published a nice concise summary of Amazon’s growth.
While businesses like to think they are the managers and organizers of this flow of goods, it’s really the consumers that are the driving force. Powered by technology advancements and increasingly boundless connectivity, our new consumption habits are redefining the supply chain and placing immense pressure on companies. Check out this infographic on How the Consumer is Driving Supply Chain Digitization.
In this new era of curated e-commerce that combines direct fulfillment and drop shipping from various points of distribution, you need a partner who knows what they’re doing both on a local and global scale. Below are a few short synopses of the various solutions Elanders has put in place for our clients.
Just-in-Time-Deliveries
For one of our major clients, we are located in close proximity to their production units, in several countries on three different continents. In each supply chain center, we provide the client with 24/7 just-in-time production, kitting, assembly, and inventory management services. All orders are handled automatically through the integration between Elanders Order Management system and the client’s IT system.
Through this collaboration with Elanders, the customer is able to focus on their core competence and improve both time-to-market and decrease their costs.
Customer statement: “Elanders has been a loyal supplier for many years now and we know that we can count on them to deliver high quality, on time.”
Global Configuration and Fulfillment
One of the market leaders in the IT industry decided that they no longer wanted to handle the product configuration and the distribution. Elanders was a natural choice for handling this service for them.
Today, large volumes of products and components are being produced and sent to Elanders supply chain centers in each market for warehousing. When the end customer places an order, the products are configured and customized to each market and to each customer’s requirements. Elanders Order Management System, which is directly integrated with the client’s IT system, manages this whole process. The same system also provides the customer with real-time data as well as statistics for all orders processed, stock levels, etc. For this customer we also print the user manuals and are responsible for the procurement process for some of their standard components to be shipped together with the product.
Through this solution, the customer has significantly shortened lead times, decreased capital employed, and also reduced distribution and component costs.
Customer statement: “We have been using Elanders for a long time now and know that we can trust them to serve our customers in the best possible way.”
Global Just-in-Time Deliveries
A global car manufacturer with plants in several countries had a need to find a partner that could supply all their factories with owner’s manuals in a cost effective way. Our solution was to create a model where the plants would place orders based on actual need.
Elanders would produce against forecast, manage the inventory, and deliver according to actual demand. Fulfillment services were also added to the just-in-time deliveries.
The new solution brought cost reductions in several different areas. Another benefit from this solution was that it enabled publishing on digital devices.
Customer statement: “By letting Elanders do the production planning, we managed to streamline the process and achieved cost reductions on print, warehousing, and fulfillment.”
Reverse Logistics
A global computer manufacturer uses demo servers on fairs and demo centers around the world and were in need of a solution to reuse and refurbish these servers. For this Elanders has developed a process where all the used servers are collected from around the world and then refurbished at Elanders’ supply chain center. The configuration is checked to ensure that nothing has been changed since the server was sent out. Thereafter, an advanced disk wipe is done to erase all existing data. The servers are disassembled and all components are packed, labelled, and returned to the customer to reuse and resell the components as refurbished.
The result was an increase of over 50% of recoverable assets and a single source solution to manage the complete returns process.
Customer statement: “We were able to increase our earnings from the refurbishment market through Elanders cost-efficient solution.”
Elanders manages all aspects of bringing your product to the market in the most efficient and cost effective way. Trust Elanders to design the solution that best serves your requirements and includes any or all of these supply chain areas:
- Global Order Management
- Sourcing & Procurement
- Custom Configuration & Manufacturing
- Warehousing & Inventory Management
- Packaging
- Fulfillment & Distribution
- Returns Management & Refurbishment
- e-Commerce