Future Readiness: Organizational Realignment for Proactive Supply Chain Management

A supply chain management organization within a major defense agency sought to transform itself from a siloed, reactive organization into an integrated, proactive organization. With a massive technological transformation already underway, the organization brought in Censeo to provide a holistic assessment of its current state and develop a series of recommendations to improve business operations and outcomes.

Situation

The client organization is responsible for managing an inventory of 65,000 parts, totaling $767 million in value. The management of the client organization’s inventory occurs collaboratively across two distinct divisions. While the intent of the two-division structure was greater responsiveness to customer needs, the unintended consequence is a breakdown in communication and a patchwork of IT systems working to support day-to-day operations. Faced with deficient key success metrics, the client initiated several separate efforts to overhaul parts of their processes, workforce, and IT systems. Looking to improve long-term organizational readiness, the client hired Censeo to conduct a holistic organizational diagnostic and provide recommendations on how to more efficiently provide customers the items they require.

Following the work done in an earlier inventory study, this organizational diagnostic was focused on:

• Evaluating progress on the implementation of the earlier study’s recommendations
• Assessing the client’s preparedness for their future operating environment

Approach

To develop its recommendations, Censeo performed a series of both quantitative and qualitative analyses to understand the organization’s strengths and areas of development. By interviewing key stakeholders, reviewing existing documentation, and performing analyses of the client’s order data, Censeo was able to construct an “As-Is” state evaluation of the organization. The evaluation allowed the team to identify and prioritize fixing the most significant issues hindering organizational performance.

Taking the findings from the “As-Is” state evaluation, Censeo worked closely with the client team to design an improved “To-Be” state. Censeo leveraged subject matter experts, peer agency benchmarks, and its own institutional knowledge to produce a set of strategic recommendations and best practices. Working iteratively with client stakeholders, Censeo was able to tailor the recommendations to meet the client’s unique needs and operating environment. As a result of Censeo’s robust analyses and deep client engagement, the organizational diagnostic was considered a success.

Results

The result of the project was a holistic diagnostic that highlighted organizational strengths, underscored the need to address deficiencies, and provided various methods to improve these deficiencies through the reconsideration of certain business processes, workforce development strategies, and organizational structuring. The client acknowledged that Censeo’s work will play an essential role in supporting its mission and strategic objectives. Recently, the client expressed their intention to contract Censeo to facilitate the implementation of these diagnostic recommendations.

1. Business Process Review – Censeo provided several process maps that highlight the ways in which the client can alter their current processes to facilitate more successful business operations. Additionally, the team provided a series of checklists that will help guide staff through their day-to-day routines in a more methodological and effective way.
2. Workforce Development – Censeo provided a complete competency framework and evaluation of the skills required for an effective inventory management workforce. In identifying skills gaps among the workforce, Censeo also developed a list of priority trainings on critical competencies and made recommendations on how to resource those trainings. Additionally, Censeo established a hiring framework, allowing for vacancies to be filled more intentionally with qualified candidates.
3. Organizational Structure – Censeo provided a series of organizational charts that track the number of staff and leadership required for each division or branch in both the short- and long-term. The result of these charts is a roadmap for the transformation of the client-organization as it seeks to meet its current operating needs.

The recommendations in each of these pillars were informed by best practices from peer benchmarking and with consideration towards effective change management. Additionally, Censeo provided the client with a robust set of metrics that they can track to measure the impact of these business improvements. These include both:

• Lagging metrics, for which changes may take months to be reflected
• Leading metrics, that will indicate progress in the nearer term

With our recommendations, the organization is in a strong position enhance their operations and realize their vision of where they want to be in the next 2-3 years.