volume. “We looked at that and realized that if we wanted to con-
trol more of that freight, we needed a technology system that could
handle it,” he says. “Our legacy system was capable enough on the
transaction side, but it could not provide us with automation or with
business smarts to support decision making.”
Topco decided on Lean Logistics for a number of reasons,
says Brown. “One deciding factor was that Lean’s software-as-
a-service (SaaS) model allows us to very quickly provide access
to any user within our organization and to any partner outside
our four walls via the internet. Another key element was time
to market,” says Brown. “The implementation time for Lean
Logistics was remarkably quick and didn’t require a lot of IT
resources.” Finally, there was the cost, “which is always a fac-
tor,” he says. “Lean’s solution was very competitively priced
and robustness of the tool was far greater than other providers
we considered.”
Today, transactions from Topco’s legacy system flow into the
Lean Logistics application, giving load coordinators full visibility
to all orders that need to be coordinated into shipments and ten-
dered out to carriers. Constructing and tendering loads, a task
that previously took four to five hours a day, now requires just 30
minutes to an hour, Brown says.
Going Green With Sales Carbon
Operations Planning
“Sales Carbon Operations Planning” (SCOP) offers a new
take on supply-chain management, bringing together
traditional sales and operations planning (S&OP) techniques and the need for companies to track and reduce
their carbon emissions. “It’s my way of making it easy to
transfer into sustainability with your existing processes,”
says Silvia Leahu-Aluas, owner of Sustainable Manufacturing Consulting. The new term covers everything from
basic carbon dioxide management to a full understanding of the economic and environmental impact of greenhouse gas emissions.
As an established, systematic means of managing across corporate functions, S&OP offers “an easy conduit for bringing in
sustainability,” says Leahu-Aluas. The introduction of carbon
management, however,
forces companies to
broaden their view of
the systems and
processes that impact
the ecosystem.
A good place to
start, according to
Cost and sustainability don’t always mesh; a decision to pursue the latter can be more expensive up front. In such cases,
Leahu-Aluas says, companies need to take the long view. “The
majority is talking about sustainability as the next major wave of
development, and a way of exiting this crisis,” she notes. “I don’t
think we’ll fall back to producing under the economic model of
the last 30 years.” On the contrary, SCOP could create a new
model for sustainable manufacturing in the U.S.
SCOP also touches on the critical issue of managing supply-chain risk. In fact, says Leahu-Aluas, “I see it as a perfect
link.” Companies with a good SCOP process, especially on
the environmental side, are already engaging in good risk
management.
