Transcript
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Revelations and Recommendations from the 2003 ESCA-ChainLink Research Study on VMI in the High Tech Supply Chain

By Bill McBeath

May 2003

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ESCA and ChainLink Research, May 2003 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

This document was developed in partnership with the Electronic Supply Chain Asso-ciation and ChainLink Research, and sponsored by the following companies:

About Electronic Supply Chain Association (ESCA)

The Electronics Supply Chain Association (ESCA) is dedicated to promoting dialogue throughout the Electronics Supply Chain with specific emphasis on facilitating a robust supply chain infrastructure in its member companies. Through its function as a sig-nificant link and resource to the electronics industry, ESCA provides opportunities for companies, organizations, and supply chain professionals to access up-to-date infor-mation and resources regarding electronics manufacturing idiosyncrasies, best-in-class business practices, benchmarking, market intelligence, current news and new technologies that are so rapidly changing the market we work in. ESCA plays a key role in facilitating information exchange and collaboration efforts within the Electronics Supply Chain through its many educational forums, symposi-ums, benchmarking, progressive research, industry news, and market intelligence. For more information, contact ESCA 30322 Esperanza Avenue, Suite 200, Rancho Santa Margarita, CA 92688 Tel: (949) 709-1749 Email:[email protected] Website: www.ElectronicsSupplyChain.org

About ChainLink Research

ChainLink Research is a supply chain research organization dedicated to helping executives improve business performance and competitiveness through an under-standing of real-world implications, obstacles and results for supply-chain practices, processes, and technologies. The ChainLink Inter-Enterprise Model is the basis for our research; a unique, real-world framework that describes the multi-dimensional aspect of links between supply chain partners. For more information, contact ChainLink Research Harvard Square Center, 124 Mount Auburn St., Suite 200 N., Cambridge, MA 02138 Tel: (617) 762-4040 Email: [email protected] Website: www.clresearch.com

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Table of Contents

Executive Summary........................................................................................ii Summary of Findings ................................................................................ iii Summary of Recommendations .............................................................. iv

VMI Adoption in the Electronics Supply Chain .......................................1 VMI Definition .............................................................................................. 1 Motivation and Drivers ............................................................................... 3

"The Domino Effect" and VMI Adoption Rates................................... 6 Criteria and Location .................................................................................. 6

VMI Partner Selection Criteria .............................................................. 7 VMI Part Selection Criteria .................................................................... 8 VMI Inventory Location ........................................................................ 10 Title Transfer ......................................................................................... 12

Impact of VMI ............................................................................................ 13 Total Cost Impact ................................................................................. 13 Inventory Levels/Carrying Costs ........................................................ 15 Average Service Levels, Average Lead Times ................................ 15 Flexibility ................................................................................................ 15 Liability ................................................................................................... 15 Operational Costs................................................................................. 16 Net Impact ............................................................................................. 16 Supplier Impacts ................................................................................... 16 Other Supplier Benefits ....................................................................... 17

VMI Relationships .........................................................................................19 Measuring Supplier Performance........................................................... 19 Contracts.................................................................................................... 20

Clauses .................................................................................................. 20 Contracts Standardization ................................................................... 21

Areas of Contention ................................................................................. 22 Forecast Accuracy................................................................................ 23 Cancellation and Liability..................................................................... 23 Other Areas of Contention .................................................................. 24

Role of 3PLs and Distributors ................................................................. 26 The N-way Relationship .......................................................................... 27 Matching Supply and Demand ............................................................... 28 Obstacles and Success Factors............................................................. 35

Lack of Infrastructure ........................................................................... 35 Reaching Agreement on Liability ....................................................... 36 Other Obstacles .................................................................................... 36 Locations Shifting without Adequate Warning.................................. 37

VMI in Emerging Countries ..................................................................... 38 Looking Forward: VMI in an Up Market................................................. 39

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Recommendations for the Industry..........................................................41 Metrics........................................................................................................ 41

Overarching Dashboard ...................................................................... 42 Stakeholder Dashboards..................................................................... 42 Metrics Role .......................................................................................... 42

Processes .................................................................................................. 43 Forecasting and Demand Management............................................ 43 Supply Chain Responsiveness........................................................... 46

Infrastructure ............................................................................................. 47 Standards .................................................................................................. 49 General Recommendations .................................................................... 50

Elevate Skillset and Role of VMI Personnel ..................................... 50 Continued Innovation—One-size Does Not Fit All........................... 50 Make Trading Partner Relationships More Strategic ...................... 50 3PL/Hub Provider Relationship .......................................................... 52

Conclusion ......................................................................................................53

Glossary and Acronyms ..............................................................................55

Appendix A. - Research Background and Methodology.....................57 Origins and Objectives............................................................................. 57

VMI Working Group.............................................................................. 57 Research Scope and Approach ............................................................. 58

Scope ..................................................................................................... 58 Demographics ....................................................................................... 59 Interviews............................................................................................... 60

Appendix B. - VMI Data Exchange Methods ...........................................62

Appendix C. - Metrics ...................................................................................63 Overarching Metrics Dashboard............................................................. 63 Supplier Stakeholder Metrics.................................................................. 64 OEM and EMS Stakeholder Metrics ...................................................... 65 3PL Stakeholder Metrics ......................................................................... 65

Appendix D. - Resources.............................................................................67

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The high tech industry has experienced a striking shift from traditional replenishment processes to Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI) replen-ishment for various products during the last decade. This has been a wrenching transition for many suppliers. VMI was the top issue brought up by Electronics Supply Chain Association (ESCA) members in 2002. In October 2002 ESCA, in association with ChainLink Research and several other partners, launched an ambitious research project—a sur-vey of supply chain practitioners at 60 firms, interviews of 14 firms, and the formation of the VMI working group (see sidebar list of working group members), which met in a series of intensive interactive ses-sions1.

There was a passionate level of commitment and participation in the VMI working group by senior supply chain managers from the top companies in the industry as well as a number of small to mid-sized firms. This group of seasoned supply chain veterans provided an inval-uable, industry-wide perspective and set of insights to guide the project and validate the findings and recommendations.

This report provides critical insights into the inner workings of VMI: the impact it is having, major areas of contention, how contracts are being structured, the obstacles faced, critical success factors, and recom-mendations for improvements across the industry.

1 See Appendix A for a more complete description of the research scope and meth-odology.

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Is VMI a good thing or a bad thing? Partially, it depends on which side of the VMI relationship you are sitting on. The customers' primary mo-tivation for VMI is to reduce inventory levels. VMI is a rapid way for customers2 to dramatically increase turns and improve ROA. It also gives them added flexibility and agility, and improves service levels.

Why are suppliers doing VMI? Plain and simple: Customers demand it. Otherwise very few suppliers would choose to do VMI. VMI entails the transfer of sizeable inventory burdens from the customer to the supplier and creates significant additional operating expenses for the supplier.

So it's tempting to say that VMI is good for the customer and bad for the supplier. But it's not that simple. VMI adoption rates vary widely across the industry. Suppliers with unique, critical technology or very strong brands may be able to negotiate reasonable terms and condi-tions (or avoid doing VMI altogether). For example, they may negotiate "cash-cycle-neutral" payment terms3. In contrast commodity suppliers generally have no choice and are usually uncompensated for their added burden.

The "good for customers, bad for suppliers" assumption also misses the much more important question: Does VMI create a net gain or loss for the supply chain as a whole? For example, does the net level of inventory across the supply chain decrease? Does the responsiveness of the whole chain to volatile demand improve? These are hard to an-swer because currently most firms lack the interenterprise performance measurements needed to answer these questions. But in our survey, both customers and suppliers said that VMI has a significant positive effect on service levels and lead times.

Whenever there is a major shift of costs from one trading partner to another and fundamental changes in roles, responsibilities, and proc-esses, there is bound to be some conflict and contention between trad-ing partners. That is one reason customers and suppliers prefer to do

2 Figure 1 in the sidebar defines the terms "customer" and "supplier", as used in this paper. 3 An example of cash-cycle-neutral terms; if the transfer of title is delayed by two weeks with VMI, then the terms of payment are shortened by two weeks.

Figure 1

In the context of this paper, "Supplier" is the company on the supply side of a VMI relationship and "Customer" is the company on the buying side. Some companies may be both a VMI supplier (to their customers) and a VMI customer (with their suppliers).

Supplier CustomerVMIRelationship

Typically, Distributor or Component Manufacturer

Typically, an OEM or EMS, but also

may be a Component

Manufacturer

Supplier CustomerVMIRelationship

Typically, Distributor or Component Manufacturer

Typically, an OEM or EMS, but also

may be a Component

Manufacturer

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these programs with strategic partners, where high volumes, combined with the stability of a longer-term relationship, help both parties work through the issues. According to our survey, the major areas of conten-tion are forecast accuracy/volatility, cancellation and liability, payment terms, freshness clauses, operational costs, data exchange proce-dures, and inventory location.

Often the customer wants the inventory at their own site or a nearby local hub. But having the inventory spread out into many locations adds significant operational costs for the supplier and reduces their ability to pool demand across customers. So, suppliers often prefer to hold the inventory in regional hubs or at their own site. In most cases, the customer makes the decision regarding location.

When inventory is held at a hub, it is frequently run by a third-party lo-gistics provider (3PL) or distributor. These third parties play a key role in the execution of VMI and their performance must be closely moni-tored.

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When there is execution excellence by all parties involved, VMI holds the promise to slim down total inventory levels while increasing overall velocity across the supply chain. Too often though, in VMI relationships there is finger pointing about what needs to be improved. The supplier says the customer must improve their forecast accuracy. The customer says if the supplier would just improve their supply chain monitoring and responsiveness, there wouldn't be so much inventory in the sys-tem. The truth is both of these areas are key to the overall perform-ance of VMI processes and relationships.

Forecasting in the fast-paced and highly volatile electronics market-place is challenging, but we do have recommendations for improve-ments:

Rationalize product lines in order to lower demand volatility (using modular designs and common parts to support mass customization)

Sales and operations planning to balance supply and de-mand for critical items

Suppliers discussing with customers any significant mis-matches between forecast vs. actual consumption

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Timely sharing with suppliers when there are changes in market conditions and assumptions by customers

Measure forecast accuracy

The success of VMI depends on suppliers not shipping blindly into the hub, but instead closely monitoring inventory levels and the actual pulls into the customer's production line. Whenever there is divergence be-tween actual consumption vs. the forecast, the supplier must initiate a dialog with the customer and adjust production accordingly. This level of monitoring requires an exception-based, alert-driven infrastructure, on a foundation of good system-to-system integration between the sup-plier and customer. Other recommendations for increasing supply chain agility and responsiveness include:

Suppliers relentlessly reducing manufacturing cycle times and implementing aggressive postponement strategies

Global visibility—networked, real-time information sharing across multiple-tiers of trading partners

Standards, such as EDI or RosettaNet, are a critical enabler of the re-quired system-to-system infrastructure and other process improve-ments. The industry should develop, support, and adopt VMI standards for data exchange, operational processes, planning processes, metrics, contracts, and terminology. A set of common metrics helps to drive continual improvement of VMI processes and incentivize each stake-holder to maximize total supply chain performance.

Because VMI, done properly, automates much of the routine order plac-ing and taking, the responsibilities of buyers and salespeople can shift from transaction processing to managing the relationship and driving improvements to VMI processes. Their skill set in turn needs to be ele-vated to supply chain management expertise.

VMI is here to stay. It will continue to be contentious until business practices mature, inequities are addressed, and suppliers learn how to participate profitably in VMI relationships. It works best when custom-ers work diligently to improve forecast accuracy, suppliers shorten manufacturing cycle times and monitor actual consumption, and third parties continually improve hub performance.

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Sample Pages from VMI Report

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Much of the credit for the spread of VMI in the electronics supply chain can be attributed to the success of Dell. Through crisp execution of VMI and other practices, Dell has achieved record-low inventory levels of three days. This was an approach other OEMs and EMSs strove to emulate. For customers, the idea of using VMI to quickly take two to three weeks of inventory off their books is irresistible. The impact of inventory reductions on cash-to-cash cycle times, and ultimately there-fore on share prices, makes VMI very appealing.

When asked, "What is your company's primary motivation for doing VMI?" almost 60% of Customers indicated either "Increase Inventory Turnover" or ”Increase Return on Assets" – really just two different ways of saying the same thing; "We're doing VMI to reduce our inven-tory levels" (see Figure 3). This same motivation came up repeatedly in interviews. Another 21% in the survey cited improved service levels as the primary driver.

7

Increase Inventory Turnover

31%

Improve Service Levels/Product

Availability21%

Decrease Liability/Exposu

re14%

Decrease Lead Times

3%Other3%

Increase Return on Assets

28%

Figure 3 – Customer's Primary Motivation for Doing VMI

Most customers (OEMs and EMSs) told us they realize that they must do more than just transfer inventory ownership back to their suppliers. They know total inventory and cycle times across the supply chain need to be reduced. OEM's argue that VMI helps accomplish this through a two-pronged approach:

Visibility – With VMI, suppliers can see the rate of actual pulls into production. VMI only works well if A) these pull

7 The exact wording of each question in the survey is shown in a box like this above each survey results figure.

Table 2

What is your company's primary motivation for doing VMI?7

Comparison Table of VMI in Auto vs. High Tech

High Tech

Auto

VMI started 90's 80's

Maturity Early Stages

Mature

Forecast Accuracy

50% or less

Above 50%

Min/Max Levels Relative To Demand Variability

Low to Medium

High

Who pays for VMI

Sup-plier*

OEM

*The costs of VMI programs will ulti-mately be passed on to customers via higher material prices.

re

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The proliferation of VMI in high tech started during the boom of the 90's and continued into the recent downturn. Independently from VMI pro-grams, there was an enormous amount of excess inventory in the in-dustry during that period, which was absorbed by suppliers, EMSs, and OEMs. We did not make any attempt in this project to measure who had to absorb how much and whether it was equitable. Inventory levels across the supply chain need to be proactively measured to determine if VMI is able to deliver on the promise of a more efficient supply chain.

In addition to the total impact question above, we asked a more de-tailed question shown in Figure 10 below: "What has been the impact of VMI relationships on the following areas?" In this chart, the yellow line at level 3 represents a "neutral" impact. Below the line is a negative impact and above the line is a positive impact.

*These 3 responses wereonly asked of suppliers

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Figure 10 – Impact of VMI

1=Large Negative Impact, 2=Negative Impact, 3=Neutral, 4=Positive, 5=Strong Positive Impact

What has been the impact of VMI relationships on the following areas?

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eral) to work better. One respondent said demand forecasting is the "big nut to crack" in order to drive down total cost in the industry. They suggested that when the supplier incurs all the risk in inventory there is less incentive on the customer side to improve accuracy of forecast21. Another supplier said if the forecast is good, they have more confidence that what is in the hub will get used in reasonable time frame and they don't mind keeping say four weeks of inventory, but if the forecast is poor, they would rather keep just two weeks because the risk of getting stuck with excess is higher.

The other view is that we should accept the fact that forecasts are noto-riously difficult in high tech due to the extremely short product lifecycles and constantly changing technology. Hence, improvements to forecast accuracy will come very slowly. So until suppliers dramatically reduce manufacturing cycle times and implement aggressive postponement strategies, they will continue to be negatively impacted by the incorrect forecasts (see sidebar How Suppliers Can Reduce the Impact of Inac-curate Forecasts).

Because there is widespread, chronic forecast inaccuracy, suppliers must monitor pulls vs. forecast closely and continuously. If the cus-tomer's consumption is below forecast and the supplier continues to ship blindly into the hub based on the forecast, excess inventory accu-mulates, causing big problems for everyone. Suppliers still need the forecast for long lead-time materials and capacity allocation, but final assembly and shipping should be in response to actual demand. When there is divergence between forecast and actual pulls, a discussion should be held immediately with all parties. We wanted to find out how many suppliers closely monitor the VMI pulls into production and use it to adjust their production.

In the next survey question, we gave respondents the choice of picking one of six different ranges (0-5%, 5-15%, 15-35%, etc.), shown on the X-axis in Figure 15 below. The Y-axis shows what % of respondents selected each of these ranges.

20 Except when there are allocation issues for critical parts. Then OEMs may get involved to bring their influence to bear. 21Of course customers incur many other risks from poor forecasts (idle capacity or missed sales) and so they are still motivated to create accurate forecasts.

How Suppliers Can Reduce the Impact of Inaccurate

Forecasts One way to mitigate the effectsof forecast inaccuracy is reduc-ing manufacturing lead times.VMI by itself only reduces pull-to-receipt lead times, but doesnothing to reduce manufactur-ing lead times. Many semi-conductor parts have longmanufacturing lead times, typi-cally 12 weeks. By shorteningmanufacturing cycle timessuppliers reduce the totalamount of inventory in thepipeline and manufacturingstarts are based on a shorterterm (and therefore more accu-rate) forecast. Aggressivepostponement strategies allowsuppliers more flexibility in di-recting supply according toactual consumption. (See rec-ommendations in Supply ChainResponsiveness section onpage 46)

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modity parts are seldom reshipped to a different location because han-dling and freight costs are too high compared with the value of goods. Usually suppliers just stop shipping into the hub and hope whatever materials are in the hub will get consumed eventually.

Customers POS (Point-of-Sale) data provides a more leading indicator of actual demand compared to pulls into production. We asked how often POS data is shared and how important it is to the success of VMI.

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

0-5% 5-15% 15-35% 35-50% 50-75% Morethan75%

CustomersSuppliers

Figure 18 - % Partners Sharing POS Data

Sharing of POS data is not common – the majority of customers and suppliers report less than 5% of trading partners share this data. Cus-tomers said they share more POS data than suppliers indicated. One supplier said – "OEM's POS data helps supplier manage demand. But it won't happen quickly. It is a matter of building trust. That will proba-bly take a 10-year transition. It might happen faster in emerging mar-kets where they don't have big investment in existing processes, and technology like ERP and EDI." Other suppliers said that even if they had the POS data, they aren’t sure they would be able to interpret and act on it meaningfully. We wanted to see if suppliers and customers thought that supplier access to the customer's POS data was important to the success of VMI.

With what % of your suppli-ers do you frequently (i.e.once/week or more) shareyour actual sales data?

What % of your customersfrequently (i.e. once/weekor more) share their actualsales data with you?

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We are witnessing a widespread migration of manufacturing locations to emerging countries—in particular to China, but also to Brazil, South Korea, Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia, and other locations. When suppliers start doing VMI, they often are forced to deal with operations in these emerging countries where they may not have previously had a significant presence. Among the challenges faced when operating in emerging countries:

Lack of advanced IT infrastructure

Shrinkage

Suppliers' product insurance rates are higher, sometimes significantly higher, because of the higher risk profile of these countries. Pre-VMI, suppliers may not have held sig-nificant amounts of inventory in those emerging countries. Now that they do, insurance costs go up

Homeland Security has made customs and international lo-gistics more challenging, expensive, and time-consuming

It is expensive and time-consuming if you need to bring parts back out of many these countries:

o Many of these countries (e.g. China, Brazil, and South Korea), charge a very high tax for bringing parts back out

o It can take a fair amount of extra time (5-10 days) to get through customs and bring parts back out of emerging countries, making it harder to meet real-time demand

Once you sell parts to someone in China, you cannot take that money back out of the country. You have to setup a fi-nancial entity to keep that money there

In some countries (e.g. Thailand) regulations push the cus-tomer to take title of parts before bringing them into the country. In these cases, VMI inventory may have to be held outside of the destination country

In Europe, if you keep inventory in a hub or customers plant for more than 30 days, you are considered to have a "per-manent establishment" in that country and then have to charge VAT (Value-Add Tax). This highly motivates suppli-

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o Understanding overall-market size and direction helps identify outlying, potentially errant forecasts over the long run

o Smaller players lacking an in-house research group may need to leverage industry organizations and publi-cations

Sanity check forecasts against actual end market demand

o Only to spot overall trends over time, not to try to peg POS consumption against the forecast

Supply Chain Responsiveness Improving forecasts is important, but there is at least as much to be gained by improving the responsiveness and velocity of the supply chain. When suppliers increase turns and reduce lead times, the ef-fects of bad forecasts are reduced.

Relentlessly reducing supplier's manufacturing cycle times/lead times—especially those with longer lead times, such as semiconductor products

Implement aggressive postponement strategies by the sup-plier

o Design products, processes, and relationships to defer differentiation until the last possible moment

Real-time, exception-based systems – Automate routine processes. Transactions should be automatic, untouched by human hands. Generate alerts when exceptions hap-pen, such as:

o Freshness exceeded

o Actual vs. Forecast variance beyond threshold

o Inventory below min level or above max

Monitoring both current and projected inventory levels. Projected inventory = current inventory + ASNs – forecasted demand

Global real-time visibility

o Efficient and automated collection of data throughout VMI processes – e.g. Bar-coding/RFID for instant up-dates of inventory movements

WWhhyy SShhoorrtteerr CCyyccllee TTiimmeess RReedduuccee IImmppaacctt ooff FFoorree--ccaasstt IInnaaccccuurraaccyy Shorter manufacturing cycletimes effectively mean a moreshort-term forecast is used(e.g. 6 weeks vs. 12 weeks).A shorter-term forecast is in-herently more accurate than alonger-term one. Shorter leadtimes also mean smaller buff-ers (and therefore less ex-cess) when the forecast is toohigh, and quicker ramps tomeet demand when the fore-cast is too low.

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