Supply Chain Strategy Expertise

Through REL, The Hackett Group's working capital division, we help companies implement the most appropriate supply chain strategy and optimize the performance of their supply chain process, so improving cash flow management by reducing inventory and operating costs, increasing profitability and service. For 32 years REL has maintained its focus on the business processes that manage and impact all components of working capital, including inventory.

We review the existing supply chain strategy and identify current performance across the supply chain, through both analysis of operational strategy and processes and comparison against proven best practices. Using the REL3000, a global working capital and cash conversion efficiency (CCE) ranking of the top 3,000 companies around the world, REL can compare supply chain processes performance against a company's global and regional peers.

Working closely with key stakeholders from across the business, we look across the whole supply chain process from forecasting customer orders through to order fulfillment to determine if there are opportunities to create greater flexibility in the process utilized to hold inventory at different stages in the process, thus attaining greatest flexibility to meet demand of customer needs, while minimizing inventory investment. REL looks across the extended enterprise to review the supply chain strategy, the collaboration with both customers and suppliers to ensure consistency of supply chain processes and minimize variability for all parties.

Using REL's unique tools and methodologies we determine how the relative contribution of each SKU in the product range is currently understood and managed, and define policies to reflect the categorization and future management of inventory items. Our consultants utilize their wealth of experience and proven supply chain best practices to help design a sound supply-chain strategy and create client-specific processes across the whole forecast to fulfill process. Our rigorous process and pragmatic approach to implementation enables REL and its clients to model the improvement opportunities to prioritize their implementation.