with clear leadership and matrix teams. The focus was to introduce produce-to-demand as an
operating strategy and implement demand-driven concepts. The Company simplified the Supply
Chain strategy and communicated in a straightforward, one-page document that laid out primary goal
areas. The intention was to maintain constancy of purpose and continuity.
Through the common platform/postponement initiative, the Company simplified product designs by
eliminating non-value-added flavors or ingredient dice sizes. In this effort, they improved the
consistency of our product quality, reduced costs and inventory, and enabled improved reliability
through the resulting simplified process. This is challenging work because it is highly dependent on
cross-functional collaboration. The work was successful due to a team effort across R&D, the
business leaders, and the Supply Chain disciplines of engineering, procurement, and manufacturing.
This dedicated team of twenty, a majority being R&D resources, was self-funded through cost
savings. A principle for the work was that quality was more important to the Company than cost. This
meant that every change made had to result in equal or better quality at equal or lower cost.
The Soup Common Platform used these steps:
• Start with Formula (Recipe) Simplification . The team removed unnecessary processes,
which not only made it easier and more cost effective to make the product, but also improved
quality by minimizing the impact on ingredients through the process.
• Equipment and Plant Design. The focus was on the plant of the future. We reduced 40
percent of assets and still make the same amount of product with greater flexibility.
• Focus. We started these improvement efforts in the center of the supply chain with an emphasis
on building manufacturing capability, reliability and flexibility. The Company now has the ability
to focus more on materials management and suppliers upstream, and distribution and customer
solutions downstream, to drive optimization.
Seven consecutive years of constant improvement in our supply chain at Campbell, across virtually
every result area drove improvement, while the material rationalization effort drove agility.
Redefining Material Planning Shell’s leadership team strongly believes that it is insufficient to drive supply chain improvement
through incrementalism. The meaning? It is just not enough to do a software upgrade or slowly push
continuous improvement projects. The Company struggled with incrementality.
The Company first implemented demand sensing and then Demand-Driven Materials Requirements
Planning (DDMRP) in 2017. Shell’s demand-driven journey was a combination of demand sensing,
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