Large Global Consumer Packaged Goods

Driving for Speed, Agility, and Collaboration by Gaining an End-to-End Supply Chain Mindset with Leadership Academy

The world’s largest food and beverage company. Whether you want delicious, plant-based foods, coffee products, chocolates, or breakthrough nutritional concepts, they are committed to their purpose of unlocking the power of food to enhance the quality of life for everyone. They are successful due to their innovative culture that continuously works to improve their products and streamline efficiencies internally. Starting in 2019, the company focused their efforts to improve their overall speed, agility, and collaboration. This corporate wide initiative was driven by the CEO and cascaded to all levels of the organization. The key question that needed to be answered was, “what do we need to do to elevate our organization.” The chief supply chain officer challenged his division to find ways to create a consistent mindset of supply chain and to seek opportunities to collaborate and breakdown silos.

Business Challenge

Historically, the company offered an Introduction to Supply Chain course which was beautifully packaged in an old school binder. This program was four-to six-hours long and hosted live by an instructor. The challenge was that the supply chain division had grown considerably to include 26 distribution centers, two main headquarters and 1,100 employees. For the new program, they wanted to:

• Scale the program to all employees interested in learning about supply chain – not just the corporate teams.

• Integrate the company’s way of working, processes and tools into the program.

• Create a learning process rather than a one-time event.

• Although the program started pre pandemic, it provided for an avenue to keep employees safe during the global pandemic due to the virtual nature of the program.

Solution

The company researched various options and learned about Leadership Academy from a learning award ceremony. They were impressed by the Penn State Supply Chain Content, the cohort-based delivery, and the ability to integrate this initiative with other company initiatives. Together, the company and Leadership Academy settled on leveraging Penn State’s five-week Achieving Supply Chain Excellence bundle.

Business Outcomes

• Brokedown silos within the supply chain

• Reduced packaging and transportation costs

• Led to the standardization of technologies

• Helped align KPIs across the complete supply chain

• Identified more opportunities for automation to reduce costs