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Case study - Supply Chain Optimization
at Reckitt Benckiser
Reckitt Benckiser, formerly Reckitt & Coleman,
is the world's largest cleaning products company. When they
decided to perform a complete review of their pan-European
operations, they turned to Cap Gemini Ernst & Young. One
of the main goals of this review was to create a new supply
chain infrastructure in order to better support present and
future demand. To model and optimize this infrastructure and
evaluate its performance against a variety of future demand
scenarios, Cap Gemini created a decision support tool using
Dash Optimization's Xpress-MP.
Solution Specifics
To create a model that most accurately represents Reckitt Benckiser's
current Supply Chain Infrastructure both the physical flows and
the operational data had to be taken into account. The Reckitt Benckiser's
pan-European Supply Chain consisted of:
- 15 factories
- 2,500 products
- 1,000 component suppliers
- 25,000 customers
- 14 distribution centers
- 7,500 components
- 150 contract pacers
The operational data collected
for the model included data from procurement, manufacturing,
warehousing, and distribution. After the model was complete
it was optimized using Xpress-MP and displayed in a GUI format.
Benefits
The optimization model created using Xpress-MP
allowed senior management at Reckitt Benckiser to assess the
impact of potential changes in a risk free modeling environment.
In this environment, management used this model containing
both supply chain resources and product demands in demonstrating
how costs could be minimized for a given supply chain configuration.
The model also gave Reckitt Benckiser a complete view of their
pan-European supply chain enabling Pareto analysis of stock
items, customers, and suppliers. By optimizing its supply
chain, Reckitt Benckiser has seen a savings of up to 10% annually.
This calculates to monetary annual savings of over USD 14M
(GBP 10M).
About Reckitt Benckiser
Reckitt Benckiser's products are sold in 180 countries and
are produced in 60 countries. They have 20,000 employees worldwide
and had sales of over USD 4.5 billion in 2000.
About Cap Gemini Ernst & Young
Cap Gemini Ernst & Young is one of the largest management and
IT consulting firms in the world. In 2000, Cap Gemini Ernst &
Young had revenues of over USD 6.5 billion.
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