The Challenge/Opportunity
Agility and efficiency are the bedrock of success in the consumer goods industry. Igloo recognized that its distribution and manufacturing operations required a significant overhaul to meet the industry’s unique challenges. The consumer goods market is complicated by ever-shifting consumer demand, seasonal fluctuations and the constant pursuit of cost-efficiency and savings.
Igloo Products Corporation contracted with Scott Sheldon to identify and implement improvements within their distribution and manufacturing operations.
The Solution
After an initial one-week assessment, the Scott Sheldon team developed a project roadmap containing projects grouped into three categories: quick hits, tactical and strategic. We deployed our Warehouse Tune-up and Network Optimization Methodologies to gain quick hits in Igloo’s distribution operations, in line with their seasonal timeline. Quick hits included identifying basic operational metrics and implementing a scorecard, consolidating same-customer shipments to a single building, ensuring multi-pallet handling at all times, and workload balancing.
These methods yielded recommendations in the areas of facility layout changes, process and system improvements, operational metrics and facility locations.
“Since Igloo has a seasonal business model, it was imperative to implement as many improvements as possible before the seasonal ramp-up started.”
The Results
Projects that were implemented before the season started delivered a large portion of the projected savings well ahead of schedule. Additional facility and system enhancements have been identified as “post-peak” improvements for the following year.
