National Cable Television Co. – Procurement, Warehouse & Facilities Consolidation

ENGAGED TO ASSIST NEWLY NAMED CORPORATE LEADERS of these teams with reorganizing, consolidating and standardizing procurement, warehouse and facilities operations to form corporate functions previously managed at division and regional levels.  We guided them to establish corporate-wide performance standards, assess current operations across the company and select or develop best practices, systems, equipment,  organization models and leaders to meet those standards,  then develop and launch implementation plans to put them in place

Project Focus

• Alliant formed and facilitated “documentation and design” teams in the areas of Procurement, Warehouse/ Distribution and Facilities.  These teams were lead by the new corporate leaders and brought together colleagues, mainly supervisors and managers, from across the company to share, measure, assess and design corporate operating models to replace their respective “status quo” operations to gain quality, consistency, responsiveness and economy of scale
• Through a series of structured meetings and assignments over the course of ~ 15 weeks, these teams built operating models from the ground up, identified key change requirements and built plans to implement those changes and address barriers to progress
• Team members were trained on effective meetings, work process design, implementation plan design and the new leaders were provided individual support and mentoring throughout the program
• Many “quick hit” improvements were implemented to gain early performance lift and demonstrate positive changes to internal customers and staff alike
• In addition to these teams, several highly focused process redesign work sessions were designed and lead, that addressed key processes related to forecasting, capital purchasing and inventory standardization.  Alliant designed the process and assisted subject matter experts in these efforts

Operating Benefits

Procurement:

• Improved price/quality  equation by moving vendor relations/contracts negotiation to procurement while maintaining user-driven specification/product choice
• Inventory review and subsequent clean up and vendor consolidation garnered $MM and eliminated hundreds of unnecessary SKU while identifying “best price” opportunities
• Reorganization allowed FTE reduction while establishing procurement expertise aligned with product groupings

Warehouse/Distribution design includes:

• Established CPE float levels and at all spoke locations (tech distribution centers) for tighter control and fewer deliveries
• Designed plan  to reduce main hubs from 6 to 2; with option of outsourcing
• “Push” replenishment approach will reduce time completing/approving orders freeing up technical resources to serve more customers
• Centralized CPE and line gear screen and clean allows better visibility and product quality monitoring
• All new lobbies and tech centers will be co-located to optimize distribution
• All tool issues across the state will be standardized

Facilities:

• Standardized policies and processes for facilities-related functions
• Eliminated positions and standardized job functions/position titles
• Standardized service vendors across properties (national and in-state) to optimize service/pricing

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