Four companies have cleared the first hurdle in the competition for the Supply Chain Management Award: Bayer Pharmaceuticals, BSH Haushaltsgeräte, Electrolux Hausgeräte, and Takeda Pharmaceuticals will present their solutions to the on-site jury and their fellow participants on November 10 during the EXCHAiNGE supply chain summit. Four other companies are competing for the Smart Solution Award 2020: Heureka Business Solutions in collaboration with Kaut Bullinger, Robominds in collaboration with Daimler Trucks, Schubert Additive Solutions, and Waku Robotics. Those attending the event will also have the opportunity to cast their votes live on November 10. The Supply Chain Awards will be formally presented during the EXCHAiNGE Award Night ceremony on November 11.
“The ideas that were submitted illustrate that supply chain skills are seen as mission-critical for adding value and achieving success,” remarks Harald Geimer, Partner at PwC Management Consulting. “Anyone who makes it to the final round has already made a big splash and scored a real success,” adds Dr. Petra Seebauer, Managing Director of EUROEXPO Messe- und Kongress-GmbH and an initiator of EXCHAiNGE.
About the awards
The Supply Chain Management Award will be presented for the 15th year by PwC Strategy&, and the industry trade journal LOGISTIK HEUTE, a publication of HUSS-VERLAG in Munich. The award honors outstanding SCM concepts that have been developed and implemented and can serve as a model for other companies. The aim is to optimize supply chains, lower costs, increase transparency, or improve collaboration between teams. The last winner in 2019 was Continental.
The Smart Solution Award will be presented for the third year, honoring particularly innovative concepts that are still in an early stage of implementation. The prize highlights solutions with the potential to fundamentally transform traditional value chains. The last winner in 2019 was parcelLab.
The honorary sponsor for both awards is Steffen Bilger, Member of the German Bundestag and Parliamentary State Secretary at the Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure.
Finalists of the Supply Chain Management Award 2020
Bayer Pharmaceuticals: Bayer’s submission focuses on shortening the complex and time-consuming planning process while maximizing production output. The key to this success is to establish an integrated and automated planning process supported by AI technology. The project was implemented at a key Bayer manufacturing facility in Garbagnate, Italy. The results after eight weeks of running scenarios: Output was up 4 percent, planning costs were cut 15 percent, and planning precision rose 8 percent. Bayer Pharmaceuticals is engaged in various therapeutic fields, including cardiology, oncology, and hematology. The company, one of three divisions of Bayer AG, has some 38,500 employees worldwide and generated revenues of 17.96 billion euros in 2019.
BSH Hausgeräte: “Nobody is perfect—but a network can be!” That’s the theme of the application from BSH Hausgeräte GmbH, which describes a multidimensional redesign of network structures dubbed SCM³. BSH Customer Service has achieved a paradigm shift away from a centralized supply chain and toward a reallocation of responsibilities and competencies within its global corporate network. This evolution into a digital crowd solution permeates the entire supply and data network. The larger innovation network promotes the ongoing development of all networks through an established global community. BSH Hausgeräte GmbH, a global leader in the home appliance industry, has been a Bosch Group company since 2015. BSH manages its spare parts logistics comprising some 300,000 spare parts through a network of 6 central and 22 regional depots.
Electrolux Hausgeräte: Electrolux’s solution targets the transformation of the supply chain toward greater customer-centricity. This includes optimizations in seven areas to achieve better service, more flexibility, and transparency along the entire supply chain while monitoring inventories. The solutions range from establishing an agile supply chain organization (including a control tower) and more in-depth cooperation with R&D to the use of digital tools in production and the increased integration of suppliers into the production process. Additional key success factors of the new customer centric supply chain include excellence in new product launches, inventory management, and strategic approaches customized to each sales channel. Electrolux is one of the leading appliance manufacturers worldwide (core brands: AEG, Electrolux, Zanussi) and operates 15 production facilities and 41 warehouses with 12,000 employees in operations throughout Europe.
Takeda Pharmaceuticals: Takeda’s submission centers around a cloud-based control tower solution for an innovative, one-batch-to-one-patient stem cell therapy for Crohn’s disease. The supply chain has been fundamentally redesigned to provide a revolutionary new patient experience. The collaborative approach to this time-sensitive manufacturing and transportation model uses secure, direct-to-hospital shipping without intermediaries. This expedites lead times to a coordinated surgical team, since the temperature-controlled product expires in only 72 hours. The dynamic solution provides real-time visibility and end-to-end tracking, empowering all stakeholders along the supply chain (production, logistics partners, treatment centers, patients, customer care) to proactively engage as a whole in delivering a patient-centric service. Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited was founded more than 230 years ago in Japan. The biopharmaceutical company is proud of its strong culture based on the values of “Takeda-ism” and a “patient-trust-reputation-business” approach. Takeda focuses its R&D efforts on oncology, rare diseases, neuroscience, and gastroenterology. The company, with over 50,000 employees in some 80 countries, generates annual revenues of about 30 billion US dollars.
Finalists of the Smart Solution Award 2020
Heureka Business Solutions and Kaut Bullinger: Heureka’s “Logistics Optimization System” software uses artificial intelligence to control the entire warehouse without a control center or dispatchers—cutting logistics costs by about 30% in the process. Kaut Bullinger, the iconic company with roots going back to 1794, implemented the solution in its “Apollo 11” project: AI controls the entire material flow from goods receipt to dispatching, drawing always on the absolute latest data thanks to speeds of about a million simulations per minute. This ensures the shortest possible routes, an optimized warehouse structure, and steady and reliable employee workloads. It also cuts energy use and enhances ergonomics. Heureka Business Solutions GmbH was founded in 2016 and has about 40 employees working at three locations.
Robominds and Daimler Trucks: The submission of Munich-based startup Robominds features a mobile robot solution for shopfloor logistics focused on bin picking. Together with its partner Daimler Trucks, Robominds envisions an optimized picking area run largely autonomously by robots. Robominds, founded in 2016, achieves simple, flexible, interoperable system integration thanks to its AI-based “robobrain” software solution and modular hardware platform.
Schubert Additive Solutions (SAS): The submission is about on-demand additive manufacturing of 3D parts, which SAS believes will revolutionize not only component design but also the supply chain and warehousing. Electronic construction data can be retrieved from a digital warehouse anywhere in the world within seconds for production, thanks to the PartBox part-streaming platform from Schubert Additive Solutions, a spin-off of Gerhard Schubert GmbH Verpackungsmaschinen. All you need is a commercial filament 3D printer and PartBox, which features direct and secure LTE access to the digital warehouse. This makes it possible to produce formatting parts, replacement parts, wear-and-tear parts, etc. in batches of any size.
Waku Robotics: Waku Robotics has established an end-to-end, independent comparison platform that lets customers select a mobile robotic solution adapted to their unique needs from over 70 currently affiliated suppliers. The dashboard lets users monitor the various KPIs of the mobile robots, continuously track the solution’s progress, and request additional products and services as needed. Waku Robotics was founded in Berlin in 2019.
