Strategic Supply Chain Management - Supply Chain Online

OWENS CORNING PROFILE: Reorganizing for “a Bright Future” 133
materials management. But where we still
lacked real integration was with our manufacturing
and our sales and operations planning
processes.”
It became apparent that a more customer-centric,
enterprise-level approach
using best practices and standards adopted
by top-performing companies was needed to
meet strategic goals. The biggest goal was
“to operate as one company.” This would
prove to be no small order. A supply chain
transformation initiative would become one of five top strategy principles
championed by OC’s new chief executive officer, Dave Brown. OC wanted
to make significant gains in customer service levels and a $250 million
improvement in income from operations (IFO) and working capital over a
three-year period. It wanted to create a brighter future for its employees
and stockholders.
Lifting supply chain transformation to the strategic level was just
the beginning of the three-year plan. As Hatfield explains, “What we
needed to do was to get better in each supply
chain process (plan, source, make,
deliver), change our mind-set from manufacturing
efficiency to supply chain flexibility,
and integrate our customers and
suppliers into our supply chain. We also
had to expand our thinking beyond the
functional level to the enterprise, integrated
supply chain level.”
ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGES
OC wanted to see a
$250 million
improvement in
income from
operations (IFO) over
three years.
“We needed to
change our mind-set
from manufacturing
efficiency to supply
chain flexibility,”
says Sue Hatfield.
A first step was to integrate the functions having an impact on the customer
experience—materials management, logistics and warehousing,
customer service/call centers, receivables management, customer and
product master data integrity—within a single group. Today, 350 employees
report to this department, headed by Vice President of Customer
Supply Chain Operations Meg Ressner.
“We intentionally put ‘customer’ in front of our organization’s name
to make sure that we were really driving the culture of the supply chain to
be end-to-end and externally focused,” she says. “The other thing we’re