A New Design for Evolving Conditions

At Supply Today, we develop customized blueprints that align with your business objectives and address specific needs. Our designs consider every aspect of your supply chain, from production to delivery, ensuring that your operations are prepared to adapt and thrive in the face of change. By focusing on flexibility and resilience, we help future-proof your organization, giving you the confidence to navigate new conditions and seize emerging opportunities.

Facilitating the Business Strategy

The starting point is the company's strategy—its vision for the future. How should the supply chain strategy support and drive these goals?

At Supply Today, we work closely with management to uncover the core questions involved in developing a new supply chain strategy. What scenarios should we consider? How will growth, increased availability, or a stronger position in the supply chain impact operations? Simply put, what are the key assumptions, and what elements are open for discussion? Through workshops and data-driven analysis, we define the impact and scope, giving our clients a clear understanding of what they can expect.

The blueprint lays out the foundational assumptions, defines different growth scenarios, and develops various options. These options are then compared with each other and with the current state, evaluating factors like investment size, payback period, short- and long-term impact, risks, and strategies for mitigating those risks.

Depending on the specific challenges, different analyses can be conducted: network and location analysis, time and motion studies, infrastructure and warehouse layout planning, and developing mechanization options.

The key is always to substantiate the available choices as clearly as possible. Clients must feel confident in the presented results, able to visualize the benefits, understand the risks, and see the measures in place to mitigate those risks. Without transparency and clarity in the conclusions, taking the next step would be irresponsible.

Examples of challenges

Growth as a Driver for a New Supply Chain Design

Growth can present itself in different ways. For example, we developed a blueprint for a rapidly expanding company to roll out their distribution centers across Europe to serve newly opened local stores. Using data on volume, service levels, store numbers within a service area, and proximity to other distribution centers, we created a strategic plan that precisely predicts when and where a new DC needs to be established. This blueprint continues to be successfully used, expanding the company from a single distribution center in the Netherlands to more than ten centers across the Netherlands, Germany, France, Italy, and Poland, with new centers still being added.

Growth also often means building new distribution centers or production facilities or expanding existing ones. We have extensive experience helping management teams make site selection decisions and design production and DC locations, covering both building construction and layout.

Improving Service Levels and Inventory Reliability: Redesigning Supply Chain Management

If a company aims to increase inventory availability, it often requires a complete redesign of supply chain management. In all our projects, we ensure better alignment between forecasts and supply. This realignment can deeply impact the organization, necessitating changes in organizational and meeting structures, attracting new skill sets, and selecting decision-support tools. It may also require redesigning processes with a more effective escalation model or adjusting packaging. Our clients include both retailers and manufacturers. We help reduce stockouts in general, and specifically improve delivery reliability during supplier promotions for supermarkets, or reduce empty shelves during seasonal peaks for home improvement stores.

Consolidation Remains a Key Topic

When consolidating the supply chain footprint, integrating flows is at the core of the design, balancing cost and service levels. Our professionals bring decades of extensive experience in this area, going back to the 1990s. Who could forget those days when many American and Japanese companies chose to establish central hubs in the Netherlands or Belgium? More recently, we have worked on integrations where we determine the optimal number of distribution centers and their specific roles. We also design new DC layouts and supply chain management structures.

Strengthening Supply Chain Position

A company’s strategy to strengthen its value chain position has significant implications for the supply chain strategy. For example, some of our clients are purchasing alliances that want more control over the ordering and delivery flows to their branches, often requiring new logistical infrastructure. Retailers also turn to us for help in managing more flows through their own logistics network. They may wish to source more directly or halt direct deliveries to branches. We create a footprint and organization that meets all service requirements—even overseas if needed—at competitive costs. We also provide insights into potential downsides, such as pushback from major suppliers or customers.

Mechanization

There is currently strong demand for developing mechanization options, whether within the existing infrastructure or as part of an expansion. Often, cost-efficiency is the driver: there are significant opportunities to replace low-value labor with mechanized processes. Mechanical solutions are seeing faster returns on investment, especially as labor becomes increasingly difficult to source and retain. Labor-intensive e-commerce fulfillment is also a major reason companies are turning to mechanization.