Whirlpool experience with supply chain restructuring

Filed in archive Implementation on October 27, 2008

Business Week has published a nice article, at the general level, on the efforts of Whirlpool to improve its supply chain (the link to the article).

One of the challenges the articles describes is the extra complication of the improvement efforts as a result of Maytag's acquisitions: "The difficulty of the work increased by a factor of two...because the companies were basically the same size."

This has some important messages for planning supply chain overhauls:

- When planning for big restructuring initiatives, prediction and getting information about the possible M&A is a fundamental part because it affects the final SC design decisions (e.g. the location and size of the DCs, etc.)

- Include some degree of flexibility in your plans and design to allow "Plug-and-play" capabilities if necessary (e.g. SOA architecture at the system design level).

- It's better to go through the transformation in a phased approach: This helps you to draw back when the investment doesn't make sense; long projects don't let the company free the cash to the new priorities or see quick wins...

What do you think?