A SmartBuyer supply chain specialist worked alongside the manufacturer’s Procurement and Operations teams to evaluate its global supply chain, identifying inefficiency and opportunity and delivering £400,000 in savings.
supply chain savings
CLIENT
Global
manufacturer
CATEGORY
Global
supply chain
SPECIALIST
Supply
chain evaluation
OUTCOME
£400k
saved
A global supply chain overspends in the joins between functions. Purchase price sits with Procurement, freight with Logistics and safety stock with Planning, so each is tuned on its own and the landed cost of a part, including transport, duty, handling and the inventory held against delay, is rarely seen in one place. Each decision looks sensible alone, so the combined cost is rarely anyone’s to challenge.
A consultancy programme would not suit this. A fixed framework produces a long report on the whole operation, while the cost sat in specific flows that only someone who has evaluated manufacturing networks before knows to test. The in-house team also inherits the assumptions behind its own routings and suppliers, which is why the evaluation needed an outside view.
A global manufacturer sourcing and moving goods through a worldwide network of suppliers and transport flows, where purchasing, logistics and inventory decisions were taken separately across the operation.
Client identity not disclosed.
The specialist started from the full cost of getting goods to where they are needed, not from supplier prices alone, and kept Procurement and Operations in the room throughout.
EVALUATE
Build one landed cost picture
Mapped suppliers, shipping lanes and cost by flow into a single landed cost view, so costs that each function normally reports on its own sat in one place and could be compared across the network.
IDENTIFY
Test the map for the usual leaks
Checked the network for the leaks common in manufacturing: overlapping suppliers on similar parts, routings chosen by habit rather than cost, and buffer stock sized for past delays, then ranked each by value.
DELIVER
Tie each saving to an owner
Took the ranked findings to Procurement and Operations and agreed the actions with them, so every saving rested on a decision someone in the business held and the evaluation turned into delivered savings.
£400k
£400,000 in savings was delivered across the global supply chain, coming from the findings the business chose to act on.
Procurement and Operations have one landed cost picture of the network to work from, so the next decision on a supplier, lane or buffer can start from the full cost.
The manufacturer has an order of work it can apply to the next round of improvement without starting again: cost the flow, rank the findings, then agree the actions.
Costing the network as a whole
Supplier price is only one part of what a part costs by the time it reaches a line. The specialist costed the network end to end, which put transport, duty and the inventory held against delay beside purchase price. Savings that look small inside one function, such as a lane change or a trimmed buffer, became visible once they were costed together.
Ranking by value and supply risk
Not every finding is worth acting on. The specialist weighed each by size of saving, effort to implement and risk to supply, because a cheaper lane or supplier that endangers delivery to a plant costs more than it saves. Worth taking elsewhere: cost the chain as one system and rank by risk as well as saving.
Complete
Complete
Complete
Specialist support without a permanent hire
SmartBuyer matches organisations with experienced specialists across 250+ categories, giving budget owners access to focused supply chain and evaluation expertise exactly when the work demands it.
500+
specialists
Experienced specialists who have evaluated global supply chains and turned the findings into delivered savings inside large manufacturers and operations.
250+
categories
Focused coverage across supply chain, logistics and the wider operational spend base, matched to the operation in hand.
Flexible
engagement
Specialist cover for a single evaluation or a wider programme, scoped and costed before any work begins, with no permanent hire.