Manufacturers are often in the business of balancing trade-offs: revenue enhancement and cost containment; customization and standardization; and competition and collaboration. What's new? The ever increasing complexity in which strategies are decided, plans implemented, and decisions made.
As technology advances and the demand for cutting-edge, connected products increases, the traditional boundaries between consumer products and manufacturing are blurring. While this convergence presents security and transformation challenges for long-standing industries, it also creates new opportunities: connected products offer new revenue streams.
At AaronRichards we pair cross-industry perspective with deep functional expertise to help you realize market opportunity and mitigate business risk. We re-imagine your market landscape and anticipate the technological relationships of the future, giving you the guidance to act decisively and reap the benefits of forward thinking. With our innovative approach to consulting, we help you solve your most complex problems by combining technology and human expertise.
The next big shift in the Industrial Manufacturing industry is here. It is not just about quality and numbers, but also about adapting to the digital age of technology and information.
It is now necessary to be in sync with your customers’ requirements, as you can no longer expect them to just consume what you manufacture. At AaronRichards, we use cross-platform compatibility and collaboration to reach out to a wider client base and connect better with customers. Digital technology has helped us make the best use of analytics to improve our engagements.
Reducing costs and improving productivity are ongoing challenges in this industry, and are the focus areas of our strategies for renewal and improvement. Modernization of legacy systems, reducing time to market through the use of agile practices, and automation in our engagements are also key opportunities.
Through the continuous use of digital technology, we ensure that business benefits are aplenty. These include a significant improvement in the Quality of Service (QoS) due to the efficiency of analytics, as well as a lower TCO and maintenance cost. A lower time to market also means an early realization of business value.
With the advent of digital technologies coupled with our new business models, our industrial manufacturing consultants can help clients grow and prosper in today’s highly competitive marketplace.
No matter how great the business strategy, if the operations function can’t meet the mark, it’s game over. Our consultants are leaders in helping companies integrate business strategy with supply chain initiatives to drive operational excellence. Our deep industry experience encompasses new product development, inventory strategy and integrated demand planning, sourcing and commodity management, manufacturing footprint strategy and operations, distribution network and logistics optimization, and sustainability. We employ programmatic approaches, leverage analytics capabilities, and offer managed services that can help improve top-line growth, lower costs, reduce response times and increase productivity.
Our Manufacturing Strategy and Operations services include:
- Manufacturing strategy development
- Facility rationalization and manufacturing expansion
- Production systems and lean operations improvement
- Direct material cost reduction and supplier development
- M&A-related operational synergy realization
Our Logistics & Distribution services include:
- Global transportation optimization—We devise operating strategies to create global transportation networks with effective modes, services levels, and cost structures.
- Logistics strategy execution—We design operating models that align with organizational design, network strategy and customer demand for effective management of global fulfillment and transportation operations.
- Omni-channel enablement—We assist retailers to enable their supply chain to support cross-channel order demand.
- Merger and acquisition integration—We help companies identify and realize logistics synergy opportunities like network rationalization and process standardization.
- Analytics—We help integrate relevant data and provide important metrics on transportation spend, analysis, capacity utilization, and carrier performance using a Software as a Service (SaaS) delivery model to reduce the burden on Information Technology.
- Technology—Our depth of experience with transportation management systems, information management, and business intelligence as well as technical integration efforts allows us to help companies improve and automate global logistics processes.
- Strategic freight sourcing—We help companies develop and execute sourcing strategies to maximize their buying power in the marketplace. We use our standard methodology to execute an efficient sourcing process and perform analytically driven scenario analysis to optimize savings. And we help ensure savings and benefits are realized with implementation support and benefit tracking tools.
Our Supply Chain Planning services include:
- Assessment – Thorough assessment of end-to-end supply chain/working capital capabilities to define improvement opportunities.
- Strategy and vision alignment – Development of the comprehensive vision to align stakeholders on leading capabilities to be developed.
- Integrated business planning – Development of “one” plan across sales, marketing, finance, and supply chain.
- Demand planning – Creation of an enterprise forecast that senses market trends.
- Supply planning – Creation of plans to effectively respond to latest demand signals.
- Inventory management – Advanced analytic visualization capabilities to assess inventory performance and define statistical targets.
- Supply chain flexibility – Identification of supply chain capabilities to improve response time optimizing working capital requirements vs. supply chain costs.
- Performance metrics analytics – Balanced scorecard to assess performance across demand, supply chain costs, assets, and market expectations and conduct root cause analysis to drive performance improvement.
Our Supply Chain Strategy services include:
- Vision alignment – Quickly assessing, evaluating, quantifying, and executing on critical operating model and structural changes needed to enable the broader business strategy.
- Segmentation and market offering alignment – Using segmentation, supported by activity-based cost-to-serve analytics, to align supply chain offerings with customer values and increase both margin and customer service levels.
- Risk and resiliency – Identifying where important supply chain vulnerabilities lie and identifying strategies to address risk exposure.
- Mergers and acquisitions – Defining a common operating model so companies can leverage synergies and reduce costs.
- Operating model redesign – Aligning a company’s broader operating model and its supply chain strategy for improved efficiency across the value chain.
- Analytics and performance management – Using real-time data analytics, visualization software, and other resources to help understand cost to serve and facilitate informed supply chain decision-making.
- Global footprint strategy and network design – Aligning supply chain, supplier base, and customer footprints to meet current requirements and position for growth.
Our consultants are a specialized resource to optimize system efficiency, throughput, reliability and minimize waste. In our collaboration with clients, we bring deep resources — manufacturing, packaging and business — to bear. Whether measuring and assessing specific equipment needs or line effectiveness, our ultimate goal is to ensure strategy and tactical implementation, together, deliver success.