Thursday, May 22, 2014

Supply Chain Management of Proctor and Gamble

Thursday, May 22, 2014

Supply Chain Management of Proctor and Gamble

By: Ramandip Singh and Yihui Li
     
      Procter & Gamble is currently the biggest seller in the global household and personally product industry. It manufactured its products in forty countries and sells them all over the world among more than 180 countries in terms of earning a great amount of revenue. P&G’s sells over eighty different kinds of products from best in basics to the hottest trends through mass merchandisers, grocery stores, membership club stores, drug stores, department stores, salons, e-commerce and high-frequency stores, and the neighborhood stores. Currently P&G has five segments, which are beauty, grooming, health care, fabric and home care, and the baby and home care. Nearly 66% of P&G’s revenue is from outside of the U.S.
     
      P&G has over 90,000 suppliers and they do not only provide raw material to 150 manufacturing plants, but also produced finished goods to P&G. They use multimodal movement distribution strategy to move their goods to the distribution center. For instance, operations in four major continents require combination of trucking, airfreight and waterways. The unique aspect of P&G’s supply chain management is their supply network, which is voted number one in supply chain management in the past three years by Power Ranking Industry survey.  They call it supply network is because they believe information flows in the different direction, not a one way movement. P&G uses consumer-driven supply network as its centerpiece business strategy. It believes in two moments of truth, which are “when customer buys the product from the shelf” and “when they actually use it and like it”. To accomplish the first truth, P&G has to make sure there are stocks available on the shelf for customers when they need it. P&G linked their actual sales with their supply chain process and mainly focus on the customer demand. Therefore, what they are actually producing is not based on forecasting but on customer demand instead. To implement this strategy, P&G formed “web order management”, this enables retailers to connect to P&G and access its inventory, scheduling and replenishment level.  

      At P&G their core objective is to meet customers demand at any given level.  Their consumer and market knowledge is critical for the managers to efficiently supply the products to the consumers and not to create a surplus.  Company “core work is the integration of consumer, shopper, and market understanding to catalyze business growth all of the brands” (P&G)”.  Also P&G reduced its transportation cost by switching to environmental sustainability “We continue to implement logistical efficiencies of our supply chain in order to make measurable environmental footprint reductions. Our goal is to reduce truck transportation by 20% per unit of production by the year 2020. Plans are in place for each region, including optimizing transportation modes and routes as well as operational excellence” (P&G). We live in the world with technology surrounding us in every corner and it has become asset for humans and we are dependent on it. Technology accommodates businesses to communicate data across the world and to globally integrate information and create stronger bonds among countries as one. There is abundance of information  flowing through networks channels across globe and with that much information security threats increase which can disrupt the operations of the company “If the IT systems, networks or service providers we rely upon fail to function properly, or if we suffer a loss or disclosure of business or stakeholder information, due to any number of causes, ranging from catastrophic events to power outages to security breaches, and our business continuity plans do not effectively address these failures on a timely basis, we may suffer interruptions in our ability to manage operations and reputational, competitive and/or business harm, which may adversely impact our results of operations and/or financial condition” (P&G). Here below are some videos and links that can broaden your understanding of their supply chain.

Little background information of P&G supply chain


P&G environmental sustainability scorecard
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHYgJMWVkLk
Here you can find P&G purpose& people, heritage, core strengths etc.
http://www.pg.com/en_US/company/purpose_people/index.shtml










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