Films/adhesives manufacturer develops new pandemic-era order-scheduling playbook
Covid-induced demand spikes and customer plant shutdowns threw Flexcon’s scheduling operations into disarray. Consulting company LeanCor helped it create order from the chaos.
Diane Rand is Associate Editor and has several years of magazine editing and production experience. She previously worked as a production editor for Logistics Management and Supply Chain Management Review. She joined the editorial staff in 2015. She is responsible for managing digital, editorial, and production projects for DC Velocity and its sister magazine, Supply Chain Quarterly.
When the Covid-19 pandemic hit the U.S. earlier this year, Flexcon quickly discovered that one of its biggest challenges would arise from an unexpected source: work scheduling. The Spencer, Massachusetts-based company, which makes coated and laminated films and adhesives, had experienced a 25% bump in sales as businesses began responding to the health crisis this spring. In particular, it was seeing spikes in demand for products used in pharmaceutical and medical-device labeling, food and beverage packaging and labeling, and the floor graphics used to promote social distancing.
To cope with the surge, Flexcon would need to find a way to prioritize orders. But that wouldn’t be easy in pandemic times. Any strategy it devised would have to take into account the needs of all of Flexcon’s customers: “essential” businesses with urgent orders, customers with nonessential but nonetheless important orders, and businesses that had been temporarily shut down and whose orders would have to be held until they reopened.
Complicating matters, Flexcon had no reliable way of knowing which customers were deemed “essential,” which caused shipment scheduling chaos for prepaid customer orders. Adding to the confusion, the “essential” designation turned out to be open to interpretation. When the official determinations were finally handed down by local governments, some customers who had considered themselves to be essential had to close temporarily while others who had deemed themselves nonessential were told they could come back online.
PROBLEMS SOLVED
To help its supply chain deal with the unexpected closures amid a surge in sales volume, Flexcon tapped Florence, Kentucky-based warehouse management consulting firm LeanCor, A Transplace Company. For Flexcon, LeanCor was an obvious choice. The two are strategic partners, and their operations are so intertwined that a LeanCor associate literally works on site at a Flexcon facility and functions as a member of the Flexcon team.
One of the top items on LeanCor’s agenda was to help Flexcon track customer closures so it wouldn’t ship orders that could not be received—and would therefore need to be returned. To do this, customer service manually tracked which customers were open or closed through one-on-one conversations. Team members updated the list as they learned of each customer’s status and as that status changed. That information was then shared with the shipping department to put existing orders on hold if necessary. Status updates were also shared with the manufacturing department in order to get customers back onto the production schedule as they came back online.
As for the other urgent order of business—developing an order-prioritization strategy for scheduling—that solution came together quickly as well. According to the two companies, this was handled as a team effort and was completed in about a week’s time. To develop the strategy, team members used lean methodologies to develop a weighted score for all work orders to help the master schedulers prioritize the workload.
As a result of the collaboration, Flexcon now has an automated order-prioritization process it can use to make data-driven decisions going forward. Among other benefits, the new process enables better communication with customers to facilitate scheduling based on priorities and product availability. And importantly, the manufacturer now has a playbook on hand should a similar crisis occur in the future.
Supply chain planning (SCP) leaders working on transformation efforts are focused on two major high-impact technology trends, including composite AI and supply chain data governance, according to a study from Gartner, Inc.
"SCP leaders are in the process of developing transformation roadmaps that will prioritize delivering on advanced decision intelligence and automated decision making," Eva Dawkins, Director Analyst in Gartner’s Supply Chain practice, said in a release. "Composite AI, which is the combined application of different AI techniques to improve learning efficiency, will drive the optimization and automation of many planning activities at scale, while supply chain data governance is the foundational key for digital transformation.”
Their pursuit of those roadmaps is often complicated by frequent disruptions and the rapid pace of technological innovation. But Gartner says those leaders can accelerate the realized value of technology investments by facilitating a shift from IT-led to business-led digital leadership, with SCP leaders taking ownership of multidisciplinary teams to advance business operations, channels and products.
“A sound data governance strategy supports advanced technologies, such as composite AI, while also facilitating collaboration throughout the supply chain technology ecosystem,” said Dawkins. “Without attention to data governance, SCP leaders will likely struggle to achieve their expected ROI on key technology investments.”
The British logistics robot vendor Dexory this week said it has raised $80 million in venture funding to support an expansion of its artificial intelligence (AI) powered features, grow its global team, and accelerate the deployment of its autonomous robots.
A “significant focus” continues to be on expanding across the U.S. market, where Dexory is live with customers in seven states and last month opened a U.S. headquarters in Nashville. The Series B will also enhance development and production facilities at its UK headquarters, the firm said.
The “series B” funding round was led by DTCP, with participation from Latitude Ventures, Wave-X and Bootstrap Europe, along with existing investors Atomico, Lakestar, Capnamic, and several angels from the logistics industry. With the close of the round, Dexory has now raised $120 million over the past three years.
Dexory says its product, DexoryView, provides real-time visibility across warehouses of any size through its autonomous mobile robots and AI. The rolling bots use sensor and image data and continuous data collection to perform rapid warehouse scans and create digital twins of warehouse spaces, allowing for optimized performance and future scenario simulations.
Originally announced in September, the move will allow Deutsche Bahn to “fully focus on restructuring the rail infrastructure in Germany and providing climate-friendly passenger and freight transport operations in Germany and Europe,” Werner Gatzer, Chairman of the DB Supervisory Board, said in a release.
For its purchase price, DSV gains an organization with around 72,700 employees at over 1,850 locations. The new owner says it plans to investment around one billion euros in coming years to promote additional growth in German operations. Together, DSV and Schenker will have a combined workforce of approximately 147,000 employees in more than 90 countries, earning pro forma revenue of approximately $43.3 billion (based on 2023 numbers), DSV said.
After removing that unit, Deutsche Bahn retains its core business called the “Systemverbund Bahn,” which includes passenger transport activities in Germany, rail freight activities, operational service units, and railroad infrastructure companies. The DB Group, headquartered in Berlin, employs around 340,000 people.
“We have set clear goals to structurally modernize Deutsche Bahn in the areas of infrastructure, operations and profitability and focus on the core business. The proceeds from the sale will significantly reduce DB’s debt and thus make an important contribution to the financial stability of the DB Group. At the same time, DB Schenker will gain a strong strategic owner in DSV,” Deutsche Bahn CEO Richard Lutz said in a release.
Transportation industry veteran Anne Reinke will become president & CEO of trade group the Intermodal Association of North America (IANA) at the end of the year, stepping into the position from her previous post leading third party logistics (3PL) trade group the Transportation Intermediaries Association (TIA), both organizations said today.
Meanwhile, TIA today announced that insider Christopher Burroughs would fill Reinke’s shoes as president & CEO. Burroughs has been with TIA for 13 years, most recently as its vice president of Government Affairs for the past six years, during which time he oversaw all legislative and regulatory efforts before Congress and the federal agencies.
Before her four years leading TIA, Reinke spent two years as Deputy Assistant Secretary with the U.S. Department of Transportation and 16 years with CSX Corporation.
Serious inland flooding and widespread power outages are likely to sweep across Florida and other Southeast states in coming days with the arrival of Hurricane Helene, which is now predicted to make landfall Thursday evening along Florida’s northwest coast as a major hurricane, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
While the most catastrophic landfall impact is expected in the sparsely-population Big Bend area of Florida, it’s not only sea-front cities that are at risk. Since Helene is an “unusually large storm,” its flooding, rainfall, and high winds won’t be limited only to the Gulf Coast, but are expected to travel hundreds of miles inland, the weather service said. Heavy rainfall is expected to begin in the region even before the storm comes ashore, and the wet conditions will continue to move northward into the southern Appalachians region through Friday, dumping storm total rainfall amounts of up to 18 inches. Specifically, the major flood risk includes the urban areas around Tallahassee, metro Atlanta, and western North Carolina.
In addition to its human toll, the storm could exert serious business impacts, according to the supply chain mapping and monitoring firm Resilinc. Those will be largely triggered by significant flooding, which could halt oil operations, force mandatory evacuations, restrict ports, and disrupt air traffic.
While the storm’s track is currently forecast to miss the critical ports of Miami and New Orleans, it could still hurt operations throughout the Southeast agricultural belt, which produces products like soybeans, cotton, peanuts, corn, and tobacco, according to Everstream Analytics.
That widespread footprint could also hinder supply chain and logistics flows along stretches of interstate highways I-10 and I-75 and on regional rail lines operated by Norfolk Southern and CSX. And Hurricane Helene could also likely impact business operations by unleashing power outages, deep flooding, and wind damage in northern Florida portions of Georgia, Everstream Analytics said.
Before the storm had even touched Florida soil, recovery efforts were already being launched by humanitarian aid group the American Logistics Aid Network (ALAN). In a statement on Wednesday, the group said it is urging residents in the storm's path across the Southeast to heed evacuation notices and safety advisories, and reminding members of the logistics community that their post-storm help could be needed soon. The group will continue to update its Disaster Micro-Site with Hurricane Helene resources and with requests for donated logistics assistance, most of which will start arriving within 24 to 72 hours after the storm’s initial landfall, ALAN said.