Program/Project Management Office
Custom Supply Chain Optimizer
About The Client
A world leader in industrial gases servicing industry and healthcare.
Project Overview
- Manage the development of a complex supply chain that optimizes manufacturing of products at about hundred locations in the US, and delivers them to 6,000 sites, using pipelines, railcars, and 400 trucks
Challenges
- Deregulated power markets in some regions (the price of electricity changes every 15 minutes in parts of Texas)
- Two business units with opposing performance metrics
- Lacks technology to support the business process
- Implementation of leading edge Swarm Intelligence Framework
- No standards for defining requirements resulting in missed deadlines and budget overruns
Solution
- Facilitated requirements workshops to develop a holistic solution develop with input from both business units
- Developed a computer model based on emerging algorithms inspired by ant-based strategy to manage the truck routes for delivering industrial and medial gases
- Utilized agile development method with 2 week sprints
- Restructured performance metrics to focus on US production optimization and track cost savings
- Implemented change management strategy to accelerate the ROI of the change routing and product optimizer
- Employees accepted model results after six months of parallel runs against manual process
Business Impact
- New system forced truck drivers to work against intuitive behavior patterns
- Required two opposing business units to work for a common goal
- Centralized decision making from Operations Control Center
- Real time Executive decision making dashboards
- Projects deadlines were being met
- OPEX budgets showed 5 percent increase in profit margins within first 100 days.
- Employees accepted to model results after six month of parallel runs against manual process
