Congratulations to the following companies that were successful in the following specialist categories for the Supply Chain Distinction Awards 2009

Operational Excellence Sourcing Excellence Best Collaborative Practice Supply Chain Innovation Special Mentions

Best Value Chain / Supply Chain Solutions Provider Supply Chain Skills Green Supply Chain Supply Chain of the Year

Operational Excellence

This award was judged by Paul Stuart of Pfizer, Giampiero Ruffatto of Honeywell, Debra Hofman of AMR Research

With Cisco, Arcelor Mittal, Procter & Gamble and Electrocomponents PLC contesting the Operational Excellence category, the judging panel were looking for achievements in enhancing the bottom-line, maximising customer satisfaction, reducing cost and gaining leadership position through strategic supply chain implementation. For implementing Terra Technology’s Demand Sensing to improve supply chain performance as Procter & Gamble picked up the prize this enterprise wide implantation has reduced forecast error up to 45%, ensuring that P & G can fulfill value to consumer at the right time and the right place.

Niels Mueller, Supply Network Solutions Planning Head for Procter & Gamble on receiving the award commented he was “really proud” to receive the Operational Excellence Award on behalf of his team. “Needless to say we are extremely honoured as well because it’s a very prestigious award and we are very happy that the jury picked us for this”

View more information on all short listed companies

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Sourcing Excellence

This award was judged by Maurice Lee of Procter & Gamble, Aidan Murphy of C & C Group, Patrick Scholler of Hewlett Packard

This award recognised sourcing and procurement as a vital strategic lever in the 21st century enterprise, driving business forwarding the current global climate. Candidates had to demonstrate best-in-class strategic sourcing that realised substantial cost savings and generate value for the enterprise through innovative and effective supplier relationship management. Arcelor Mittal were also short listed for this category along with Supply Dynamics, Alltel and Bunge. But for their sustainable sourcing project bringing value to company performance through a four step awareness, support, awarding and enforcement approach, Bunge were the worthy winners as their stakeholder engagement and sustainability management have promoted partnerships that enhance the supply chain, allowing one of the world’s largest food and agribusiness companies to provide a better product.

Corporate Communications Supervisor Caroline Marcovitch collected the Sourcing Excellence Award on behalf of Bunge, commenting that they had “really appreciated … that their efforts and values were recognised”.

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Best Collaborative Practice

This award was judged by Paul Stuart of Pfizer

With Electrolux, SKF and Metso, HSBC, Infosys short listed for this category, the award recognised a company or partnership for its achievement in driving supply chain excellence, resulting in improved business performance. Key measurement criteria was moving beyond the relationship-trust level in helping and supporting each other, sharing risk and reward. For establishing a network of colleagues who are focused on providing a level of supply chain excellence that is commensurate with the quality of products and service their customers expect, Electrolux were the victors this year through their VMI project which strengthened operations capabilities and improved efficiency in the end-to-end supply chain. The project also addressed three key issues with their partner: poor forecasting, high inventory and slow reaction to change. By involving all parties, including demand planning, warehouse, logistics, and applying best practice management techniques, it meant the project was successfully delivered on time, within budget and without disruption to retail stores and end users.

Cloe Zeng, Demand Flow Director from Electrolux on picking up the Best Collaborative Practice Award entered the category to benchmark their performance in their industry and said it was “very exciting” and “couldn’t thank her project partner and team enough for their efforts along with senior management support”.

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Supply Chain Innovation

This award was judged by Paul Stuart of Pfizer, Aidan Murphy of C & C Group, Patrick Scholler of Hewlett Packard, Giampiero Ruffatto of Honeywell, Debra Hofman of AMR Research

The award was designed to promote greater creativity and expansive thinking in supply chain management and rewarded the company that thought “out of the box” when solving supply chain challenges or optimising supply chain efficiency. For its work in integrating the logistics operations of P&G and Gillette, which meant a huge business transformation journey within Demand & Supply Planning, Trade Terms, Customer Order Management, Revenue Management, Customisation and finished product distribution Procter & Gamble gained the most points.

The integration itself was delivered in only 15 months, 4 times faster than any integration before in P&G’s history and delivered substantial ongoing annual savings and meant increased delivery frequency, lowered customer inventories levels and improved service through “Physical Distribution Reinvention” and “Customisation Reinvention”.

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Best Value Chain / Supply Chain Solutions Provider

This award was judged by Tonet Rivera of Mead Johnson Nutritionals and Maurice Lee of Procter & Gamble

With Integration Point, One Network, Aidmatrix and Next Level Purchasing impressing the most, the judging panel were looking for examples of situations where solution providers demonstrated excellence and innovation in addressing a significant supply chain challenge wherein the results could be quantified and proved to be sustainable in terms of cost savings, revenue and customer satisfaction.

For their work in the humanitarian sector, Aidmatrix took the honours this year with their focus on improving and saving the lives of individuals through the Aidmatrix Network solutions being applied globally for hunger relief, medical relief and disaster relief. This has meant rapid improvement in their supply chain management.

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Supply Chain Skills

This award was judged by Tonet Rivera of Mead Johnson Nutritionals and Maurice Lee of Procter & Gamble

With the supply chain workforce ultimately driving the success of the 21st century value chain, the judges were looking for evidence of maximised value and efficiency levels through proactive recruitment techniques, innovative and training and cultivation of the workforce for which Pepsico International, The MPower Group, Herbalife and Alltel scored highly this year. But for their “breathing factory” project worked to change the behaviour of employees to incorporate ultimate flexibility into the supply process, Herbalife were the winners. The results of this project meant the team were able to improve output levels by almost 50% whilst reducing complaint levels and improving SLA levels by more than 20%

Martin Bartlett Vice President Finance and Distributor Operations at Herbalife collected the prize, commenting “Herbalife is a sales and marketing driven company and quite often the supply chain gets ignored and I think over the last three years we have evolved and developed the supply chain in Europe to give the company a competitive edge which helps the sales and marketing team here to grow sales and top line and I think we’ll continue to do that in the future and see our business grow”.

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Green Supply Chain

This award was judged by Patrick Scholler of Hewlett Packard and Giampiero Ruffatto of Honeywell.

In this category, companies had to demonstrate unparalleled performance in environmental supply chain planning and execution, including compliance with environmental regulations, minimising waste from the supply chain process and the overall adoption of “green” practices across the chain. This coveted prize was saw intense competition between Tetra Pak, Home Retail Group, Ford and British Telecom. But for their strategic objective of improving its C02 footprint by increasing the share of vehicle transportation using short sea and river transportation for finished vehicles with their “Motorways of the Sea” concept, Ford gained the highest marks. Their credentials were further reinforced by implementing a sustainability process which constantly delivers logistics improvements, reduces environmental impact and traffic congestion and meets final customer expectations at affordable costs.

Bert Bong, Manager for Vehicle Planning & Logistics Europe at Ford was presented with the Green Supply Chain Award and commented “I feel great because it is a recognition of our effort and I want to thank everybody who was judging on this”.

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Supply Chain of the Year

The criteria for this award was judged on which company scored the most points in the previous seven categories

Recognising a “winner of winners” this award represented the pinnacle in supply chain excellence today, acknowledging the outstanding achievements of a single enterprise that has successfully realised corporate growth, taking their business to the next level as a result of optimum value chain management. With all the short listed companies from the evenings categories up for nomination, Herbalife came out on top for scoring the most points at the ceremony

Martin Bartlett Vice President Finance and Distributor Operations at Herbalife took the stage for a second time: “Its just quite mindblowing. When we came here we were hoping we might win one award but to have won two, especially the major award of Supply Chain of the Year is just beyond our wildest dreams I think” 

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Special Mentions

John Bamber of BT and Steve Jones of PepsiCo collect their champagne from Ed Holden, Editor-in-Chief, Manufacturing Logistics IT

Although they did not quite win in their categories, Pepsico and British Telecom (BT) were commended for their respective entries in the Supply Chain Skills and Supply Chain Innovation category. View more information on all short listed companies

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