A talk with Jim Bunch, Rob Glockner, and Craig Hyslip

Q. In January, BFG Co., Griffin Greenhouse & Nursery Supplies and BWI Co. formed a horticulture distribution group called the Integrated Horticulture Alliance. The mission of the alliance was to remove redundancies and inefficiencies. What progress have you made in resolving these issues?

A. With little standardization in the supply chain, at least between manufactures and distributors, we spend a lot of time trying to accomplish the same thing but in different ways for our different partners. By reaching agreement with our key partners on the one best way to interact with one another, we can reduce a significant amount of labor, time and inaccuracies. Also, we haven’t fully used the technology that is available to streamline communication throughout the supply chain which will have a similar impact.

By looking at the supply chain as a whole instead of individual parts and working together with our partners upstream and downstream, we feel that we can help drive solutions that benefit organizations at every level. To be successful, we have to understand the challenges and opportunities of our manufacturers and customers, evaluate those together and then collaborate with them to find the optimal solutions.

We’ve begun by sharing information on common processes within our three companies, learning from one another in order to improve our own operations. We’ve opened up the lines of communication between our companies and have our respective departments working with their counterparts in the other organizations.

The four areas that have had the most activity are:

Information technology: how we can leverage technology to improve the accuracy and speed of information throughout the supply chain.

Purchasing: how to provide better forecasts and partner with our manufacturers to make sure we that we can get the right product to the growers when they need it.

Finance: how to measure our performance so we have the feedback in order to determine if we are meeting our objectives.

Marketing: how we can more effectively communicate with our growers on issues that will benefit their businesses.

We recently met with some of our key manufacturing partners to understand their perspective, frustrations and opportunities. We’ve incorporated their input and are in the process of addressing the potential improvements that exist between us. Once we knock out the basics and the busy season is over, we will engage the most important aspect of the supply chain -- our growers -- and put together a comprehensive plan. This will be a continual process of improvement based on what the needs of our partners are today and the challenges that we all may be facing in the future.

Q. How will the removal of these redundancies and inefficiencies benefit the three companies' suppliers and their grower customers?

A. A few of the areas we are currently focusing on include:

Working with our manufacturers to come up with standard formats for item updates and other key areas of information exchange which allows us to automatically upload this information into our respective systems. Since we don’t have to type it in, it literally will save us hundreds of hours of manpower a year. Even more important, the information enters our system immediately and since no one touches it, there is less chance of error. This will reduce costly errors throughout the supply chain. It saves our manufacturers time and money and improves the service to our growers.

We have begun working with manufacturers to explore their bottlenecks and logistical issues. Instead of looking at it separately at each level of the supply chain, we are looking at it holistically to determine the most effective, least costly way of getting products to our growers when they need it. Done correctly, this should smooth the flow of product throughout the supply chain, allow for more just-in-time inventory, reduce errors and increase cash flow.

We are creating a centralized marketing intranet that will be shared by the members of IHA with our manufacturers. Our manufacturers will be able to maintain their marketing and product information in an agreed upon format in a centralized location that is easily accessible. This will save distributors and manufacturers a lot of time and disruptions since we will all be using the same format so manufacturers only have provide the information once. This will also allow us to communicate important information to our growers more quickly and effectively.

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July 2008