Today’s supply chains have become more complex than ever. Global trends and shifting market dynamics, along with increasingly fragmented and volatile demand, are driving organisations to adapt and become more agile.

But, developing and delivering a robust, resilient, long-term supply chain strategy that’s fit for the future can be hard when change happens so fast.

Whether you’re looking to increase capacity or move your warehouse, change product portfolios, reduce inventory, or automate your supply chain and speed up fulfilment, we can provide end-to-end supply chain support to design, develop and deliver a resilient supply chain solution.

Developing and delivering your supply chain solution

To achieve this, we look at your current supply chain and logistics network alongside alternative options and conduct stress-testing to consider factors such as increasing volumes of ranges and seasonality.

We’ll carefully evaluate costs, benefits and the impact on broader operations and fine-tune options for your supply chain solution. We will share our modelling with you showing calculations for space, volume and expenses including all operations costs, stockholding costs, the one-off cost of change, and the cashflow impact.

Throughout, we’ll work across your organisation to engage with stakeholders to help you develop a robust, realistic business case and deliver the right supply chain to make your ambitions a reality.

Designing your supply chain strategy

We’ll work with you and your teams to understand your business strategy and values, growth plan and aspirations, customer proposition and competitive advantage and develop long-term strategic supply chain objectives that support and align with your business strategy.

We look for opportunities to improve your overall supply chain to enhance the customer experience and give you a competitive edge, while considering how external factors might impact your supply chain.

We will work with you and your teams to understand your future business plans and agree on a range of growth scenarios. Alongside other factors such as available property, labour and infrastructure, we’ll develop potential supply chain network options for your organisation.

Supply chain scenario planning

We’ll look at your current supply chain and logistics network alongside new options, putting forward alternatives and conducting stress-testing across a five-to-ten year timeframe to consider factors such as: 

• Logistics network size and shape – the number of sites, storage points, cross-dock locations
• Product flows and replenishment
• Order fulfilment frequency and lead time
• Design life of solution
• Rate of business growth and change
• Volume split across customer channels and geographies

Evaluating total lifecycle cost

We’ll carefully evaluate logistics costs, benefits and the impact on broader operations and fine-tune options. We will share our modelling with you showing calculations for space, volume and expenses including all operations costs, stockholding costs, and the one-off cost of change. 

Creating a supply chain business case

Finally, we’ll work across your organisation to seek feedback from stakeholders to inform decision making, develop a robust business case and deliver the right supply chain and logistics network to make your ambitions a reality.

The location of your warehousing and distribution centre (DC) operations, and whether to move, streamline or centralise them, is a big decision and one that’s difficult to make. In the context of fast-moving external events, it becomes even harder; make the wrong decision, and it’s not something that can be easily rectified. Many organisations find themselves paralysed by indecision with the impact of delays felt across the entire organisation.

We’ll help you to determine the ideal location and set-up for your warehouse and distribution centre (DC) facilities that minimise logistics and shipping costs while capitalising on the ability to service new and existing markets, making your logistics network design fit for the future.

Logistics location analysis

We adopt our tried-and-tested approach to centre of gravity analysis to identify the optimal location for warehousing and DC facilities. We consider the relevant factors that are likely to influence a business case for change. The weighting and the importance of these always vary from business to business:

• Stockholding strategy and objective
• Target and current stock availability
• Customer proposition
• Number of stores
• Geographic spread of store network
• Volume of in-store stock handling
• Supplier logistics costs
• Supplier lead times
• Frequency of store replenishment
• Ability to manage a logistics operation internally
• Labour availability and retention of existing colleagues

Project team coordination and management

We will we help you find the right location for your logistics and we will also help you design and deliver your plans. We’ll research and locate the best real estate, create a clear business case, engage and consult with stakeholders across your business, lead procurement activity, and manage tenders for all elements of the new warehouse facility from building contractors to automation. We will also project manage the build, fit-out and other details such as stock transfer and IT systems.

With markets and events changing so quickly, it’s hard to judge how your supply chain is performing, and how much headroom you have for growth.

We can help you review and benchmark your supply chain operations, ways of working, performance levels and costs and answer big questions such as: 

• Is my current supply chain cost-efficient?
• Is there any capacity for growth in my current operations?
• Am I paying more or less than competitors for things such as packaging, warehousing, taxes, shipping and returns?
• Are there any short, medium and long-term opportunities for cost savings? What are the trade-offs?
• How are we performing? Are we more or less efficient than similar companies in our industry?
• Should I be investing Capex to reduce costs? Or improve efficiency?
• How can our supply chain help to enhance our customers’ experience?

Future growth

We’ll look at your current supply chain and logistics network and put forward alternatives, conducting ‘what if’ scenario planning across a five-to-ten year timeframe to help you understand what current capacity you have to support volume growth.

On-site supply chain reviews

We’ll work both on-site (subject to access) to conduct one-on-one interviews in the business with stakeholders. We observe and verify utilisation, capacity and opportunities for improvement, as well as conduct a desktop review of supply chain data and plans.

Project team coordination and management

We will help you review the overall performance of your supply chain and logistics operation, and we can also help you design and deliver supply chain transformation, operational improvements and change. For example, creating a clear business case, engaging and consulting with stakeholders across your business, leading procurement activity and project managing any large-scale construction and fit-out work.

Whether you’re looking to run a tender for a third-party logistics provider (3PL) new equipment or automation, it is important that a robust procurement process is in place. This can help to acquire the right providers and services at the right commercial agreement and help you to build a partnership with your suppliers.

Scoping and creating tender specs

We will work with you to create the tender specification, and to create the RFI, RFP and RFQ documentation. Acting completely independently, we will advise on who to invite to tender according to your requirements.

Managing the tender process

The tender process will be closely managed, and all responses evaluated and scored fairly using a balanced scorecard approach. This will include modelling the commercial impact of each supplier. We will evaluate responses against pre-agreed parameters to identify and recommend the right supplier for you.

Contractual agreements

We can work with your team to draft and negotiate contractual agreements, and to implement the solution chosen. We’ve developed an innovative approach that narrows down the legal agreements and terms in parallel with the tender process. This means you only negotiate once and when you still have significant influence.

In growing organisations that are managing increasing market challenges and customer demands, it’s not unusual for different departments such as sales, manufacturing, marketing and finance to start operating in siloes. And it’s in this environment that small problems become harder to resolve and can quickly become more significant issues.

Bringing functions together

Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP) processes can be an effective way to bring together functions and get everyone on the same page, coordinating sales and operations planning across business functions: 

• The S&OP process brings the actions and/or steps taken to achieve an objective.
• The integration of critical functions within the business ensuring they are connected and aligned

S&OP helps companies to:

• Increase transparency between departments
• Better inform decision-making about a product’s supply and demand
• Improve inventory management and sales and budget forecasting
• Better understand a product’s lifecycle and its management
• Streamline processes that improve the overall customer experience

The key to S&OP success

We can help you improve your S&OP process to break down siloes between departments and realise cost savings, efficiencies, and enhance the customer experience. But it’s much more than a process; it’s a cultural shift which takes time to fully implement. There’s no ‘plug-and-play’, S&OP needs to be moulded for each company – often systems are looked at as the best way to ‘fix’ S&OP, but this is usually the final piece of the jigsaw – great people, processes and behaviours are often the key to success.

Gearing for change

In operational environments optimal performance and efficiency are critical. With this in mind, when introducing significant change, we must analyse the impacts early to ensure teams are ready to take on new ways of working. It’s this that enables the investment in your supply chain to realise its full potential.

We work closely to support your teams during each phase of your project, making sure your whole organisation is ready to adapt and realise the benefits you’re expecting.

Accelerate your ROI

In our fast-paced, complex world change is continuous. For example, Supply chain automation technology is rapidly evolving the warehousing landscape. Regardless of the type of supply chain and logistics solution we are developing for you, the deployment of it is simply the start of your journey to improved performance. Are you aware of the percentage of your benefits that will come from your team changing their ways of working and thinking? It’s often much higher than anticipated, and a common pitfall is not to listen to and act on what motivates teams to drive the performance in the new operation.

Be adaptable, be resilient

We help you reduce the risk of programme delays and harness the benefits sooner with our change toolkit and support. We adapt our baseline tools to fit your context, keeping it simple and focused and ensuring ownership of the approach remains with your teams. Change activities integrate seamlessly with the development of the technical solution and aim to limit the often-seen dip in performance at go live. In essence, the operation is ready for the change.

Change can be exhausting for individuals and teams. With our straight-forward approach we engage the whole operation, overcoming resistance, building resilience and engagement and giving with you a solid foundation for continuous improvement. 

We help you to:

• Optimise the benefits from your investment
• Build your change capability with the Hatmill Adaptable Toolkit
• Speed-up readiness for change with our integrated roadmap
• Establish trust and ownership through engagement
• Bring focus to what matters most to your people
• Manage risks to successful delivery
• Develop an agile approach to drive continuous improvement
• Continue to grow proficiency and improve performance

Optimising your supply chain with warehouse automation technology can help you create advantage over competitors, improve the customer experience and increase efficiency. We’ll help you consider whether warehouse automation is a viable solution for your operations.

Navigating automation technologies

Traditional automation solutions such as mini-loads and shuttle systems are now being challenged by agile, cost-effective alternatives such as Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs) and Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMRs). It’s a dynamic market and one where experience is in short supply.

End-to-end support

With so many options and so much at stake, how do you know what automation solution is right for your business? From smaller-scale operations to large, complex state-of-the-art warehouse facilities, we can design, develop and implement your warehouse automation solution. And we will help you to understand how your organisation and operations need to adjust to deliver the best return from your investment.

Well-designed warehouses processes that improve productivity and increase efficiency will help to drive profitability and enhance the customer experience. Working closely with your warehousing teams, we can identify, design and implement improvements to your warehouse operations processes.

Benchmarking performance

We’ll observe your current warehouse processes in action, and along with your warehouse data we’ll compare the performance of your warehouse operations against industry benchmarks so we can identify opportunities for improvements.

Improvements and implementation

We’ll make recommendations, including the expected costs and savings – we can also design and then manage the implementation of the process improvements. We’ll ensure that your staff are fully trained and that all new processes are embedded into your warehousing operations. We can also help to develop the methodology to measure performance and continued adherence to the new warehousing processes.

The layout and design of your warehouse can impact on the speed, cost and quality of service to customers. We can help you to redesign and reconfigure your current warehouse to create improvements that reduce warehousing operations costs and potentially avert or delay either expensive upgrades of your warehousing facilities, or the need to invest in new warehousing. 

Review and recommend

We will review the activities that take place in your current warehouse operations and against warehouse layout best practices we’ll review the impact of the existing layouts on productivity. We will identify opportunities for improvement and then model the outcomes of different options to show the potential increases in efficiency and ROI. We can also help you design and deliver the warehouse improvements and manage the change.

Is warehouse automation the way?

We’ll help you consider whether warehouse automation is a viable solution for your operations. We can compare the potential of automated warehouse solutions against optimising your existing warehouse technology, equipment and infrastructure. We can then manage the implementation of any changes, minimising disruption to ongoing operations.

By ensuring that the right products are stored in the right place, picking and put away activities can be optimised to improve productivity and reduce costs. Incorrect or inefficient warehouse slotting processes can lead to waste through unnecessary travel time, unproductive activities or waiting time. 

Heatmapping and warehouse slotting processes

By understanding the parameters of your warehouse operation, and modelling to generate heatmaps of the existing warehouse layout, we can visibly demonstrate where your existing slotting can be improved. We then create alternative slotting layouts and optimise these by overlaying reports and knowledge of the operational constraints.

We will analyse the potential productivity improvement of improved warehouse slotting options on your different operational activities. By optimising your warehouse slotting we can help to lower warehousing operations costs and increase efficiency.

An effective Warehouse Management System will optimise your warehouse, distribution, supply chain and fulfilment and is key to the efficient running of any distribution centre. Selecting the right WMS system, using the WMS effectively and utilising reporting to maintain efficiency and inform decision making will all affect the performance of your warehousing operations.

Improving your current warehouse management system

We can review your existing WMS software and processes and assess how effectively these are being used. As part of this, we can also determine the capabilities of existing systems against your operational requirements, and identify opportunities for improvements. We can also help you plan and deliver improvements to get more out of your existing WMS system.

Selecting a new warehouse management system

If you do not operate a warehouse management systems, or require an updated version, we can develop functional design specifications and identify the WMS providers most appropriate to your requirements. From running the tender to implementation and go-live, we can ensure that the WMS systems are implemented with support for your business throughout.

The supply chain and logistics demands of e-commerce fulfilment operations bring their own set of challenges, that are very different from warehousing and distribution operations for ‘traditional’ retail. The design, layout, workflows, process flows, resources and systems of your e-fulfilment operations need to be agile, scalable and adapt to changing consumer behaviours.

Purpose built e-fulfilment centres

We can design, develop and deliver a state-of-the-art warehousing solution to support your growing business. From working with property experts to find the right real estate, to project managing the build and fit-out phases, we will run tenders and transition planning to help you deliver your new e-fulfilment facility.

Growing your e-commerce capability

If you’re looking to accommodate or increase your e-commerce offering as part of your existing retail business model, we can help you to understand how your organisation and operations need to be able to adapt. We’ll help you to plan and implement e-fulfilment operations, manage change and respond to changing customer buying habits

A well designed and efficiently utilised warehouse is crucial in an effective supply chain. From redesigning or extending an existing warehouse operation, to a complete warehouse design and build, we can do the heavy lifting for you to create a warehousing solution that’s fit for the future.

A warehouse to deliver future volumes

We’ll work closely with you to understand your current operations and existing constraints, analyse the cost of space, equipment and labour and identify what warehouse operations will be required in future to support your business strategy.

Designing your new warehouse

We can then design, develop and model a number of scenarios and options, considering optimum location, size, storage options and automated warehouse solutions.

Project management

We work with property experts to identify suitable locations for your new warehouse and can work with you to project manage the build phase, including running tenders, operational fit out, and transition planning and support.

Forecasting & Inventory improvement

Inventory is one of the most significant values contained on the balance sheet and at the same time a major contributing factor to the customer experience. Too much inventory and you have precious working capital tied up in the business, along with the risk of increased obsolescence and increasing holding costs, not enough and you jeopardise your customer experience and brand.

Better demand forecasting, better business

We’ll help you to generate more accurate forecasts that align inventory to demand, so you can provide a better service to customers while unlocking working capital and injecting cash back into the business. Reliable forecasts will also inform capacity and resourcing requirements in your warehousing operations, creating efficiencies and savings.

Proven experience and methodology

Our team of inventory and forecasting consultants all have direct industry experience across a range of sectors including industrial manufacturing and retail distribution.

We’ve developed a proven methodology to generate reliable and unbiased demand forecasts to inform replenishment activity and drive inventory levels. We can provide a tailor-made reporting suite giving you valuable insight into KPI’s, a review process to assess how aligned the customer proposition is to the inventory profile, and techniques to improve product lifecycle performance.

Demand planning is a key lever in your supply chain planning process, so having the systems, skills and procedures in place to generate a reliable, statistical forecast will help to drive supply chain and financial efficiencies.

Understand demand drivers

We’ll work with you to review your historical data to identify trends and then work with stakeholders across your business to understand the factors driving past performance, i.e. new product launches, promotional campaigns or shortages in supply.

Identify and implement improvements

We can then work with you and your teams to: 

• Improve forecast accuracy and eliminating bias
• Leverage your existing system parameters
• Define KPI’s for demand planning
• Support in 3rd party system selection and implementation
• Stratify inventory tailored to your business objectives
• Implement an S&OP process
• Scenario plan to assess the feasibility of future initiatives or investment
• Create and deliver a statistical forecast (via Virtual Forecaster, our unique forecast outsouring service)

In the short term, a reliable demand plan should underpin your day day-to-day activities, ensuring purchasing, resource, and promotional activities are aligned to meet the needs of your customers.

Longer-term, your demand plan should provide insight into recruitment strategies, CapEx, ROI and operational capacity constraints that may impact your ability to service customers in the future.

Inventory is a crucial component of working capital management; while you must hold sufficient stock to meet the desired service levels of the customer, this cannot be to the detriment of paying your current liabilities.

We work with clients to drive improvements to inventory management without negatively impacting on customer service: 

• Delivering a better demand forecast allowing you to buy or produce stock in line with your customer demand
• Item stratification/segmentation to organise inventory with greater emphasis on areas the business needs more focus, for example, high demand, low cost, high margin, small space consuming SKU’s, or a combination of any/all the above
• Economic order quantities to balance the purchasing process and minimise the total costs associated with the purchase, delivery, receiving and storage of a product
• Improving safety stock management by reducing suboptimal system parameters or duplication caused by an inefficient supply chain process
• Identifying excess and obsolete stock, conducting root cause analysis and future management strategies and processes

We can help you better manage a crucial part of your working capital through optimising your inventory profile and purchasing processes.

The reliability of your demand forecast and the variability of supplier lead-times can affect the ability of purchasing and inventory management teams to function efficiently and effectively. As a consequence, stock-outs can occur, and customer dissatisfaction increases. By contrast, if demand is lower than expected, the financial impact of write-off and shrink on working capital can be significant.

Review and recommendations

We can review your inventory profile and design options to segment SKU’s by the characteristics that will help transform your supply chain and inventory performance. We capture measures such as hit frequency, cost of goods sold, customer segmentation and marketing importance. Each ABC classification can then have unique service level factors to enhance availability on fast-moving SKU’s, and minimise risk on the slower, more volatile items.

We also review whether harvesting minimum order quantities across business units can reduce working capital and we’ll assess the feasibility of economic order quantities where appropriate, to meet financial objectives and improve customer satisfaction levels.

Product Lifecycle Management should play a pivotal role in all manufacturing, distribution and retail businesses. As new products are introduced, having the right level of inventory, supplied at the right time, at the correct cost is imperative to gain a competitive advantage and market share.

We have experience in enhancing the lifecycle of products. Whether that’s creating an initial order model, optimising your replenishment practices, or segmenting your current inventory profile to reduce your excess inventory exposure, we’re here to help

Established products

Once a product has become established, we can help you to optimise the replenishment and manufacturing plan to ensure customers are delighted with your service, and the internal financial measures remain in check.

Aligning actions across the business

Identifying early stages of decline and obsolescence become the next priority and is crucial to a company’s profitability. By applying a segmented approach against old, slow-moving and obsolete stock and aligning actions with the relevant stakeholders, we can help to significantly improve performance across the business, from finance to operations.

We can provide a customisable reporting suite that helps you to engage with stakeholders across the business. Using the Tableau platform, we’ll breakdown and track complex issues, summarise data and create visualisations, representing data in an efficient, accessible format. We’ll then share with you a secure unique log in to review the reports so you can report to stakeholder support better decision making in the business.

Our reports include both a graphical representation and raw data to represent the following:

• Sales, margin, COGS, and units, capturing current period and YTD, including variance broken down by customer and product groups
• The latest forecast we’ve provided, and how that’s performing against actuals over time
• Historical forecasts versions to see how things have changed over time
• Our 8 Tests review, which captures outliers on historical demand data, forming the basis of discussions on what’s driving the volatility
• KPI’s, Error and Bias to assess forecast accuracy and where things can be improved

We can also build client-specific reporting tailored to your needs by leveraging our in-house development team.

Whether you’re faced with increasing per-pallet costs, or want to increase your customer service offering, we’ll help to develop different options to optimise your network. We can help you to position your warehouses or distribution points in the right geographic locations to both service your outbound network but also optimise your inbound flows.

Logistics options and cost analysis

Through a combination of centre of gravity modelling and routing software we’ll model different variations of transport fleet mix and distribution locations, to identify options that improve service your customers and keep overall operating costs down.

Total network logistics network costs

We can undertake a deep dive review and plug these transport options into your warehouse network to get an understanding of your total network logistics cost. We’ll ensure any designs and scenarios are aligned to your overall supply chain strategy and customer proposition, and help you strike the right balance to exceed SLAs and manage costs.

The world doesn’t stand still, and neither should the assumptions in your transport planning. We’ll help you create an agile transport plan to optimise your fleet, utilise each vehicle and realise every bit of value. 

Reducing end-to-end transport costs

We’ll review your fleet to assess and benchmark your performance and costs against best practice for vehicle fill, backhaul, empty running and driver hours. We’ll identify opportunities for cost savings and revenue generation.

Dynamic Route Modelling

We can bring a different perspective and help you build agility and flexibility into your route planning. We’ll work with you to develop a responsive fleet plan that can adjust for change, whether that’s new customers, routes, seasonal demands, periodic peak demand or even last-minute changes such as new orders or cancellations.

We’ll look at how you tactically deploy your transport fleet, from large articulated vehicles to smaller rigids and vans to tactical use of third parties and carrier networks. We’ll help you identify and implement ongoing, marginal, incremental gains that deliver tangible returns and savings.

Our analysis can crossover into warehousing, looking at things such as pallet fill, to inform tactical changes and achieve a balance across your business and avoid unintended consequences.

Making change happen

We will help to identify opportunities for improvements and roll up our sleeves to help put them in place. We’re experienced project managers who will plan and oversee change management, working across business departments and with external suppliers.

Stakeholder management and reporting

At the beginning we’ll work to understand how well your transport operations are performing and identify a baseline against which we can measure improvements. We’ll provide you with regular reports so that you’re able to share outcomes with stakeholders from across the business, including your finance department.

When drivers aren’t just drivers, but multi-skilled operatives with a broad working remit, it can bring an additional layer of complexity into your route modelling and network planning.

From food and drink to construction, and IT to Telecoms, we’ll help you design solutions that fit outside of the ‘normal’. From delivery of special loads, installing equipment, visiting difficult locations and transporting hazardous goods, we can plan your logistics and resourcing.

We offer cutting-edge, outsourced demand forecast solutions that improve accuracy of forecast data, so you can deliver products on time and create a seamless customer experience. Whether you have a small, medium or large-sized company the combined experience of our demand forecasting team, along with advanced algorithms and methodology, will take the pain out of demand planning and free up much needed working capital too.

Accurate demand planning that actually provides value

Customer demand forecasting is a fundamental step in the business-planning process. It helps sales and finance teams create essential sales forecasts, while also supporting inventory planning and purchasing. But traditional methods of demand forecasting such as spreadsheets are outdated, time-consuming, and often inaccurate. This means that many businesses are working with incorrect data, essentially pouring money down the drain through excess stock and failed ‘out of stock’ sales.

At Hatmill, we’ve developed sophisticated demand planning algorithms combined with proven forecasting techniques to ensure that your forecast gets better. Not only will our virtual demand planning team save you money, but they can get your business future-ready with a robust system as your operation scales up and grows.

Virtual demand forecaster - what you’ll get:

• Access to a wide range of skills that offer an impartial, unbiased view of demand/sales
• A statistical forecast that assesses trend, seasonality and level based on quantitative input from a client
• The ability to incorporate qualitative data where appropriate
• A rigorous review process to continuously improve forecast accuracy
• A reporting suite that allows clients greater visibility of performance in hierarchies of their choice