For two decades supply chain management experts were the Ghostbusters of the consulting industry: clients know they had a problem without necessarily acknowledging such an entity as a ‘supply chain’ even existed. Modern executives are more savvy—but more burdened. Transportation, warehousing, sourcing, production, inventory control, and forecasting stories make page one of the business press, and the portraits painted are often far from flattering. How to boost both image and bottom line? Call in the consultants.

If the design of a ‘best in class’ supply chain is for supplier and customer to share risks and rewards, “It is the consultant who often provides the philosophies, tools, and operating systems to accomplish the shared goals” says Paul Zinszer, author of Supply Chain and Logistics Consultants Directory.

With lots of choices and different approaches, it’s a buyer’s market for companies seeking help to up-grade their supply chains.

As supply chains become more extensive and more complex, the worth of ‘outside’ expert advice becomes all the more valuable. No surprise, shippers are turning to consultants for supply chain upgrades. What ‘re-engineering’ the enterprise was to the 1990s, ‘global supply chain design’ has become in the new millennium—with an abundance of consultants available to guide companies through the process. Simply put, the job has become too big in most instances to do solely in-house anymore.

World Trade Contributing Editor Jeremy Smith surveys some of the leading consultancies in this area, major players with established experience in supply chain analysis and implementation. His conclusion? It’s a buyer’s market and shippers, whether manufacturers or retailers, have lots of choices.

Accenture

Brooks Bentz, Partner in Accenture's Supply Chain Management.

(www.accenture.com)

Accenture may have held history’s first supply chain management consulting contract: fifty-three years ago, GE asked then-parent company Arthur Anderson to study the possibility of automating manufacturing via the world’s first business computer. Today, though the independent global management consulting, technology services, and outsourcing firm divides 129,000 employees among 110 offices in 48 countries, “effective supply chains that enable [clients] to adapt innovatively to changing conditions, seize opportunities and achieve high performance” remain Accenture’s avowed commitment. Over 7,000 supply-chain consultants, each averaging more than 10,000 hours of client-service experience, daily serve some 700 client companies around the globe.

How does the firm do it? “At our Centers of Excellence, clients participate in tailored strategy workshops and technology demonstrations that reveal new opportunities to improve supply chain performance. Accenture’s Global Delivery Center Network includes strategically located facilities that support and enhance the development of client solutions, technology implementations and outsourcing relationships to increase supply chain performance.”

Located throughout North and South America, China, Europe, India, and the Philippines, full-time staff at each center specialize in procurement, product life cycle management, or supply chain planning. The result? “No-risk environments where clients can apply process and technology innovations to their own customized scenarios.”

McKinsey & Company

(www.mckinsey.com)

Eighty-years-old this year, longtime management consulting leader McKinsey & Company serves two-thirds of the Fortune 1000 from 84 offices in 45 countries. “The supply chain determines how 100 percent of the company’s value is delivered to its customers,” says a firm spokesperson. “The objective is to achieve superior customer service with minimal total supply chain cost.”

McKinsey helps clients meet that objective by examining their organization in its entirety. “The improvement levers we use cut across the whole client organization and could involve relocated production, new push/pull breakpoints, new planning processes, new organization, a new distribution set-up, changed IT systems, [or] better performance management,” explains one firm principal. “For example, we can help clients take very operational action to immediately improve supply chain performance indicators, such as delivery accuracy or flexibility. We can also help with more long-term changes such as defining a new supply chain strategy or determining optimal locations for plants and distribution centers.”

Does it work? More than $3.5 billion in contracts suggest so. “In all cases,” says this principal, “the client sees an opportunity for increased sales and/or lower cost through better supply chain performance.”

A.T. Kearney

Sean Monahan, Vice President, A.T. Kearney

(www.atkearney.com)

A.T. Kearney long ago spun off from McKinsey & Company, only to be acquired a decade ago by information technology services giant EDS. This year a management buy-out returned the firm to independent, partnership status. Headquartered in Chicago, but with 55 business centers in 35 countries, A.T. Kearney’s reputation rests on the hands-on achievements of its “working partner” consultants—nowhere more so than the realm of supply chain management. “Outside purchases represent the single largest expenses for many companies—typically between 30 and 80 percent of a company’s expenditures,” says a spokesperson. “A.T. Kearney consultants have the expertise to help clients realize a competitive advantage through strategic sourcing solutions.”

The firm divides such solutions into four distinct fields: “creating supply advantage,” “accelerated sourcing,” “mid-market sourcing,” and “e-sourcing enablement.” Example implementations include revamping the reverse supply chain to handle returns, tuning data management systems to predict demand, outsourcing decisions, and deploying Web-based software to scan worldwide bids online.

On a global basis, approximately 50 percent of A.T. Kearney’s work is in Supply Chain Management, with 25 percent growth; 20 percent transformation; and 5 percent IT.

As one company spokesperson notes, the firm has focused for more than a decade on researching “the evolving strategic role of the supply chain.” Why is this so fundamental? “Companies viewed as leaders in supply management are using these capabilities to outperform their competitors.”

Hitachi Consulting

Tim Vaio, vice president, supply chain services, Hitachi Consulting

(www.hitachiconsulting.com)

A relative newcomer to the field, Hitachi Consulting counts among its clients Abbott Laboratories, Mary Kay, Northrop Grumman and Toyota. With a staff of only 850 at 17 U.S. locations, the firm emphasizes focused performance and “strives to establish long-term relationships with high-quality client companies.” “Our culture,” says a spokesman, “ is built on three core values—harmony, sincerity, and pioneering spirit—passed on to us by our Japanese founders.”

Backing that rhetoric is deep technical expertise centered in the consumer packaged goods, manufacturing, software and high-tech, telecommunications, and utilities industries. “Hitachi has technical experience selecting, implementing, and integrating most enterprise applications across the entire value chain,” says a spokesperson. “The company has combined the methodologies and best practices from seven major consulting companies to create its own set of industry-specific methodologies, all with a heavy focus on driving value and ensuring application adoption.”

Correspondingly, supply chain work figures prominently in the firm’s offerings. Take the example of the firm’s approach to supply chain optimization assignments. Here Hitachi consultants identify and address performance gaps, realign plant and warehouse locations to make best use of raw materials, and reduce carried inventory from raw materials to finished goods 25 to 40 percent. The fundamental conclusion: “Procurement and sourcing improvements often have greater impact than any other profit lever under management’s control.” About 20 percent of the firm’s work is supply chain work.

Grant Thornton

Sam Datta, southeast procurement practice leader at Grant Thornton LLP

(www.grantthornton.com)

“Despite continuing advances in technology and globalization, the fundamental goals for supply chain management remain the same: delivering value and quality to customers while increasing profitability,” says Sam Datta, southeast procurement practice leader at Grant Thornton LLP, the Chicago-based U.S. member firm of $2.5 billion Grant Thornton International, one of six global accounting, tax, and business advisory organizations. “[Our] approach to these fundamental goals focuses on providing additional benefits to middle-market clients by going beyond the traditional consulting role and following an integrated business advisory methodology.”

Grant Thornton brands its method to identify and prioritize improvement opportunities “The Solution-Chain,” and offers procurement analysis as one example of ways companies can reap immediate benefits from their supply chain consultant. “We appraise all areas impacted throughout the value chain.” Results, he says, often mean additional unanticipated benefits—for instance, tax savings.

A recent J.D. Power and Associates audit rated Grant Thornton higher in client satisfaction than any of the top 50 U.S. business advisory firms, including the Big 4. That means specific action—sooner. “With all of the hype around outsourcing and technology, companies get bogged down in a perpetual state of chasing fads, or worse, they get a case of supply chain attention deficit disorder and can’t figure out where to start. So they do nothing,” says Steve Lyman, Atlanta office partner and one of the firm’s business advisory leaders. “It quite simply comes down to having a well devised plan and executing it.”

Booz Allen Hamilton

(www.boozallen.com)

Booz Allen Hamilton doesn’t like to boast, but two decades ago senior vice president Keith Oliver coined the phrase “supply chain management.” Today, the Mclean, Virginia-based firm’s 17,000 employees on six continents preach the gospel of including supply chain management in the highest-level of strategic planning.

“Success in SCM requires strong leadership from the top, perhaps more than ever before,” says a spokesperson. “Without guidance and oversight from the CEO and the company’s full leadership team, the supply chain’s performance often does not live up to expectations.” Bottom line: in companies where “supply chain management is an integrated component of the overall business strategy,” Booz Allen surveys show, annual savings are almost double that of companies where “responsibility for the supply chain resides below senior management.”

Making that shift, says Booz Allen, may mean breaking organizational boundaries. “Above all, our approach is grounded in the fact that no constraint is sacred. All aspects of the supply chain should be challenged in order to understand, unbundle, and unleash its full potential. All members of the extended enterprise—from suppliers to customers—work together to manage the conflicting objectives of all of the functions within a supply chain.”

PRTM

(www.prtm.com)

PRTM was specializing in supply chain consulting more than thirty years ago when supply chains weren’t cool. Indeed, the Supply-Chain Operations Reference (SCOR), the standard for process improvement, was invented by PRTM. When Consulting Magazine ranked PRTM one of “The Ten Best Firms to Work For,” the question arose: do happy consultants make happy clients? Three decades of success at PRTM, which employs 500 consultants in sixteen global offices from Boston to Bangalore, Silicon Valley to Shanghai, suggest so. And these days the supply chain management consultants may be happiest of all because, according to the firm, the field is “more important today than ever before.”

Globalization, outsourcing, and the Internet mean both ever-slimmer manufacturing revenue margins and ever-higher customer expectations of “instantaneous service” according to PRTM. “The same technologies and organizational innovations that have compressed revenue margins are also available to companies that wish to streamline and energize their supply chains,” PRTM concludes. “It is now possible for companies of all sizes and in nearly all industries to create these ‘quick response’ supply chains.”

The consultancy’s success stories illustrate its own rapid-response approach. When a make-to-stock audio products manufacturer client faced high inventories, long lead times, and large material acquisition costs, for example, PRTM consultants transformed operations to either make-to-order or make-to-replenish, tightened collaboration between manufacturing and marketing, and shifted more quality control responsibilities to suppliers. Result: “The manufacturer reduced finished goods inventories by up to $66 million without affecting service levels,” says a spokesperson.

IBM Global Business Services

Tig Gilliam, Global Supply Chain Management Leader, IBM Global Business Services.

(www-935.ibm.com/services/us/bcs/html/bcs_index.html)

Building and maintaining a responsive, globally integrated supply chain is a complex proposition that requires a broad range of consulting, technology and operational skills that IBM is well equipped to provide. This compelling portfolio has lead to several recent wins from recognized global brands including Colgate, Solectron, and Unilever, who have trusted critical parts of their supply chain to IBM to run and manage.

The portion of IBM Global Services revenues of $47.4B in 2005 attributable to supply chain work cannot be broken out. “From a capability standpoint,” Tig Gilliam, Partner, Global Supply Chain Management Leader, IBM Global Business Services points out, “Gartner, Inc. positioned IBM in the leader quadrant in its 2005 Magic Quadrant for North American Supply Chain Management Service Providers.”

Among the industrial sectors where the company has particular expertise are Aerospace & Defense, Chemicals & Petroleum, Electronics Distribution, Retail and Consumer Goods.

Deloitte Consulting

(www.deloitte.com)

Only PricewaterhouseCoopers exceeds $18.2 billion Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu in sheer size as a global professional services firm. A decade ago, the firm created Deloitte Consulting to maintain its century-old promise to “simplify work so that it can be done more rapidly and more effectively.” In the ever-expanding field of supply chain management, such work encompasses everything from new product design and introduction to customer service for and management of obsolete inventory.

Ask a Deloitte Consulting representative how a firm, regardless of size, can master all the diverse disciplines of the supply chain, and the answer starts with a single word: “Alliances.”

“The right product, at the right place, at the right time—that’s supply chain management in a nutshell,” explains a spokesperson. “We work with the world’s leading supply chain solution providers to help our clients get these three factors in sync.”

Take contracts with the 3M Company and its HighJump Software subsidiary, with whom Deloitte Consulting designs and implements radio frequency identification (RFID) and integrated packaging management solutions. “3M HighJump’s RFID-enabled product suite [helps] clients with complex, global supply chains.”

BearingPoint

Matt Costello, managing director, global supply chain management, BearingPoint

(www.bearingpoint.com)

Spun off February 2001 from global accountancy KPMG, BearingPoint was the first of the “Big Five” consulting companies to separate entirely from its audit-tax parent. Its almost 18,000 worldwide employees in 60 countries focus on the commercial manufacturing sectors of cars, chemicals and natural resources, communications, consumer packaged goods, electronics software, industrial markets, retail and wholesale operations, transportation, and utilities. In all sectors, says a spokesperson, “BearingPoint believes that Supply Chain R&D will be the key to driving success for our clients over the next several years.”

In contrast to the more common emphasis on cutting costs, the belief at BearingPoint is that supply chain throughput or revenue enhancement should be the focus of our solutions. “We simultaneously seek to minimize client investment and operating expense, but throughput should be protected and enhanced as the number one goal. The supply chain is really a network of trading partners that extends all the way from the shelf or point of sale back through to raw materials origin.”

Maximizing throughput and revenue, of course, means focusing internal and external supply chains to the ultimate data point, customer demand. A hard job—but a rewarding one, as BearingPoint’s pitch makes clear in a single sentence. “Cost reduction has a lower bound of zero but revenue is infinite.”

Capgemini

(www.capgemini.com)

“Does your company have an intelligent supply chain?” is one of the key marketing questions Capgemini asks. With 5,000 supply chain professionals in more than two-dozen countries, the firm is prepared to help its clients answer ‘yes.’ “Companies have spent a lot of time understanding how they move goods through the supply chain, but now they need to understand how to optimally organize the integrated supply chain by using the information sitting within it,” says a spokesperson. “The need to reduce costs remains, but there is a growing realization that unlocking value within the supply chain is crucial to delivering strategy—be that buying goods more intelligently, producing goods more efficiently or collaborating with suppliers more effectively.”

On-the-ground examples include work with Ford to improve its service parts network. “Traditionally for companies the ‘aftersale’ service and parts function has typically been a lower priority than mainstream manufacturing, yet it is often a critical component of the product cycle.” Warehouse efficiency increased and repair cycles shortened. Says Capgemini: “The result is improved visibility, better performance at lower cost, and a big boost to profits and customer satisfaction.”