Wolf

It’s About the Supply Chain - The Whole Supply Chain

Tom Wolf published this article on December 5, 2011 in Build your Business. No comments. | Comment

When it comes to competitiveness, it’s not about one part of the supply chain.  It’s about the entire supply chain.  The key to competitiveness lies in designing and building a supply chain that is optimally efficient from start to finish, and we draw the wrong conclusion from economic history if we believe that we can achieve competitiveness by concentrating on just one part of the supply chain.

Henry Ford is a great example of this assertion.  He is an iconic figure because he put the automobile within reach of the average American.  He did this, we have all been taught, by applying mass production techniques to the manufacturing process.  To suggest, however, that Ford’s only contribution to efficiency was the assembly line is to miss the bigger – and much more significant – story.  What Ford really did was streamline the entire supply chain.  He figured out how to efficiently transform bits of metal and wood from the mines and forests of one part of the world into cars parked in front of his customers’ homes in very different parts of the world.

To be sure, he accomplished this in part by revolutionizing the way automobiles were manufactured in his factories, but he also did it by the way he sourced raw materials, turned them into usable components, distributed the final products to local markets through his dealer network, financed them, and ultimately transferred ownership to individual consumers.  His success was therefore not simply a triumph of manufacturing process design.  It was a much broader – and much more impressive – triumph of supply chain design and management.

Wolf has worked hard over the past year to create its own efficient supply chain.  It has concentrated on building relationships with very productive manufacturers; it has worked hard to eliminate redundant activities throughout its supply chain; it has exploited its size and scale to develop its own line of private label products; and it has worked solely with the independent building materials dealer channel.  Taken together, they are all part of Wolf’s effort to create the most efficient supply chain in the building products industry.  As it succeeds in this effort, it will give its dealers the ability to put high quality building products within easy reach of their customers.

Wolf’s goal is to do for building products what Henry Ford did for cars: create a supply chain able to transform raw materials into great products consumers can use.  For Ford, that meant putting Model T’s in front of homes throughout the nation.  For Wolf and its independent dealer customers it means putting great kitchens, beautiful decks and attractive trim products in homes throughout the markets we serve

So, it’s all about the supply chain.  From start to finish, Wolf has worked hard to design and build a supply chain that can transform raw materials into finished products as efficiently as possible.  This supply chain is efficient because of the partnerships Wolf has forged with manufacturers and the work it has done to streamline its own processes.  It is also efficient because of the strong partnership Wolf has forged with the independent dealer channel.  The result is an unbeatable source of value, sales and profits for the independent dealers and their customers.