Course Description

Improve service whilst reducing costs; an impossible task? With effective management and leadership, world class companies do this every day. Getting more with less is possible and this seminar shows you how. In every Supply Chain, the service levels are paralleled with costs to serve. However, changes to costs have an effect on service levels; as what is done and the way it is done, in turn determines the costs and the service.

There is a dynamic trade of relationship between the cost, service and productivity levels in the interacting supply chain operations. Doing things better therefore involves consciously managing the productivity in a holistic way across the supply chain. This seminar will therefore show how to apply a thorough understanding of the costs of supply operations and use enhanced skills to deliver effective cost management. These in turn will improve internal and external customer service levels. In addition, the skills obtained will help you to examine productivity levels and make structured productivity improvements that will reduce costs yet also, improve service.

Participants will consider cost behaviors and cost management, thus understanding financial relationships in the supply chain. These will be applied in terms of utilizing resources and monitoring the productivity of processes and methods. In turn, these will result in performance of outputs, customer service and improvements to supply operations

Course Objective

Participants will consider cost behaviors and cost management, thus understanding financial relationships in the supply chain. These will be applied in terms of utilizing resources and monitoring the productivity of processes and methods. In turn, these will result in performance of outputs, customer service and improvements to supply operations

Who Should attend?

            • Procurement, Buyers and Purchasing Professionals

            • Stock, Logistics, Warehouse and Distribution Personnel

            • Owners and operators of companies with supply operations

            • All those who need an understanding of the relationships between cost, service and productivity in supply operations.

Course Outline

Day 1 - Understanding Costs

            • Fixed, variable and marginal costs

            • Overheads, direct/indirect, prime and marginal costs

            • Job, batch, contract and process costing methods

            • Absorption, marginal and opportunistic pricing

            • Depreciation of assets

            • Break-even analysis

            • Cash flow analysis

            • Activity based costing

Day 2 - Financial aspects in the Supply Chain

            • Total cost of ownership/Total acquisition costing/Whole life costs

            • Investment appraisals

            • Cost benefit-analysis techniques

            • Capital expenditure analysis (Payback, DCF, NPV)

            • Capital purchase options (buy or lease or rent)

            • Pricing options for products/services (open/closed costing)

Day 3 - Understanding Productivity

            • Utilisation of resources

            • Productivity of processes and methods

            • Performance of outputs

            • Method study

            • Work study

            • Time studies

Day 4 - Developing Internal/External Customer Service

            • Customer requirements

            • Meeting the requirements

            • Customer service measurements

            • Working with the internal customer

            • Trade offs between costs and service

            • Trade offs between productivity and service

Day 5 - Making Business Improvements

            • Positively effect key financial drivers

            • Increasing throughputs

            • Reducing inventory

            • Reducing costs and operating expenses

            • Using improvement models