Whirlpool

Problem: Unreliable delivery performance

The supply chain management of Whirlpool was failing to meet the customers’ expectations. For example, inventory quantities were either too low or too high, Whirlpool had the wrong items in inventory or had the right inventory delivered to the wrong place. The poor delivery performance makes customers feel frustrated and lose the confidence to Whirlpool. In order to have an improvement on this problem, we need to find out the root cause of this problem first.

Root Cause: Over expansion

The problem of unreliable delivery performance due to Whrilpool’s geographic expansion and business acquisitions. Whirlpool merger Maytag in 2005 and acquire Indesit in 2014 makes it more complicate to manage the supply chain. It is because different company have different systems and procedures, if Whirlpool combines its systems with Maytag and Indesit’s systems, the supply chain management team may found the system too complicate and this complex system may make Whirlpool exceedingly difficult to track and control all of Whirlpool’s production and distribution processes.

Objective: Improve the delivery performance

Whirlpool need to improve their delivery performance, which means that they need to deliver products to customers in the right place at the right time in order to enhance their reliability and gain the trust from customers.

Practice to achieve objective: Standardize Whirlpool system

Whirlpool need to standardize their systems in order to attain the objective, which is to improve the delivery performance. The supply chain management team need to work closely with I.T. department in Whirlpool to develop a streamlined, standardized production and distribution system so that the complicated system can be replaced. The new system should have a central platform for master scheduling, inventory planning and deployment planning, plus collaborative tools for forecasting and replenishment.

This foundation allowed for great strides...