Understanding the Supply-Chain 

A change in consumer shopping patterns was impacting this rapidly expanding packaging company, putting significant pressure on its ability to respond.

• This packaging-specialist was under strong pressure from clients to deliver innovative new packaging solutions for delivery of their products.
• Moot’s workshop-led method, guided the management team through a mapping exercise, to understand the supply-chain of each of their key customers, bringing greater clarity and identifying their key areas of need.
• This resulted in much greater clarity of understanding and led to the development of a targeted innovation programme which delivered value to our packaging specialist and outstanding service to their clients.

When a  customer needs many different products transporting to multiple consumers, mapping and understanding the supply-chain may be one of the most insightful things you ever do.

What was the problem?
Increased consumer demand from on-line purchasing is transforming the freight and packaging sector. A rapidly growing industrial transit-packaging company had achieved significant sales success but was struggling to develop innovative solutions for its new clients. Management was under pressure, with constrained resources, to prioritise developments and articulate a clear target for developing the types of innovative packaging solutions demanded by customers.

What did Moot do?

Moot adopted a coached-workshop approach to facilitate a better understanding of the supply chain of this suppliers key customers.  In the first instance the management team were guided through the development of the increasingly more complex supply-chains within their industry. The team was subsequently challenged to define the specific supply chains of their key customers. This enabled the customer needs (e.g. durability, weight, impact resistance etc) to be assigned to different supply chain stages as typically, loads are progressively broken down with storage and transit needs changing throughout the product journey.

What were the results?
There were a number of immediate benefits. The approach quickly identified previously unknown gaps in knowledge and helped create a prompt for urgent follow-up work. Identifying customer needs along the supply chain helped the company to prioritise its effort,  driving a more sophisticated needs-based segmentation strategy and helping to place innovative new product in the market, where it was most needed.