Design for controlling in distribution process redesign: Principles and methodologies through a case study

Abstract

The last decade has seen the wide spread of the management principle known as Supply Chain Management (SCM). This integrated way of thinking has offered valuable improvement in nowadays management attitude, but there is still something lacking, especially in the area of supply chain controlling, because there’s no redesign principle in the SCM body of knowledge which explicitly takes into account the impact of a given (configuration or management) decision on the process visibility and on the capability of assuring a rational behaviour in the operative decision making. This paper aims at introducing a set of management principles coupled with a new procedural arrangement of well-acknowledged methodologies with the aim of improving cost and control performances while performing a distribution process redesign. The main objective of the paper is then to provide managers with a suitable and effective methodology to control costs and to process visibility, which are deadly important especially in those industries in which the critical activities are concentrated at the end of the logistic process. In order to prove its effectiveness and usability, a successful application to a large multinational company in the elevator business is here presented.

This paper is the result of research collaboration among authors. Nevertheless, the Introduction has been written by A. Perego, the Concluding Remarks have been written by M. Perona, while the rest of the paper has been written by G. Miragliotta.