For Intel, Small Is
Beautiful, Both in
Product Size and
Supply Chain Cost
For its line of Atom processors aimed at small devices, Intel called on a newly created team of process
“masters” to recommend ways to slash expenses throughout the chain.
he name of Intel Corp.’s Atom
microprocessor is appropriate in
more ways than one. The product line was designed to support
a range of small, mobile devices,
Never content to react to unanticipated
events, Intel went searching for a problem
to solve. It needed to tap into the power of a
brain trust that had been developed
through its Supply Chain Master program.
In 2007, Intel set forth to recognize those
employees who had made a “deep and
influential” impact on supply-chain
processes. The competition uncovered a
number of valuable individuals across organizational lines, including experts from
Materials, Technology Manufacturing Engineering, Customer Service, Information
T
Technology and the Customer Fulfillment
Planning and Logistics Group.
What, then, to do with these newly
crowned “masters”? Intel’s first thought
was to further boost their value through
cross-training. In the end, though, it made
little sense to shift the master of a given
process into an area where he or she had
no expertise. Instead, the company
decided to use the entire team to solve
cross-organizational problems.
The so-called Low Cost Supply Chain
project, designed around the Atom family
of processors, was the result. Intel had created the Atom to target the low-cost end of
the computing market, including mobile
internet devices, and its supply-chain
costs had to reflect that.
In 2008, the company assembled a small
team of supply-chain masters and other
individuals, to come up with a set of bench-
marks and best practices for driving down
costs. They were charged with examining
all expenses related to operations, trans-
portation and inventory—the kind of areas
that are often overlooked by management,
in favor of more quantifiable production
costs. Among those pioneering the effort
were supply-chain masters James Kellso
and Cindie Blackmer.
