Murray, a major U.S. manufacturer of lawn & garden and outdoor recreational equipment, engaged The Progress Group to help it improve customer service and reduce operating costs in its service parts operations.
Murray was operating two service parts DCs for four manufacturing plants. The DCs were responsible for procuring, storing, and distributing approximately 60,000 SKUs for Murray’s retailers, primarily mass merchandisers, both domestic and international.
The Task: Develop A New Vision for Customer Support ...
The Progress Group’s assignment was to develop a comprehensive new vision for improving the company’s customer support operations and organization, and to articulate that vision through a compelling, bottom-line oriented business case to build support for its implementation. We were asked to consider every aspect of Murray’s customer support efforts, from how they managed their call center to how they integrated their independent distribution network into problem solving and customer support operations.
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...And a Plan for How to Implement It
We worked as a team with Murray’s staff and management to develop a new Customer Support department with both operational processes and an organizational structure designed to meet the company’s goals. We evaluated and selected 3PL providers and reorganized the company’s internal organization. The plan included revised procedures for managing part life cycles and replenishing inventories. The team helped rationalize the distributor network, going from 15 to 13, reassigning selected geographic dealership areas, and relocating some distributor DC’s. The redesign plan included combining the two existing DC’s into a single, more efficient facility in a new geographic location for better logistical flow of parts and better access to export ground lanes for a 5% to 10% advantage over prior locations.
As a result of this project, Murray was able to move its next-day parts delivery coverage from 60% to 85% of the dealer base -- with no additional facility costs, only minor increases in transportation costs and an overall 15% decrease in its per-piece shipping costs.
Along the way, we helped the Murray team establish metrics – and challenging performance targets – for all aspects of service parts supply chain performance.
The redesign plan included combining the two existing DC’s into a single, more efficient facility in a new geographic location for better logistical flow of parts and better access to export ground lanes for a 5% to 10% advantage over prior locations.
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