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Editor's Notes

• #2: Thank you and good morning everyone.A little over a year ago, I was participating in a brain storming session. We wanted to improve our distribution and logistics results around the world. Kimberly-Clark is large diverse global company and we considered ourselves pretty knowledgeable about logistics but we are always looking for ways to improve. The question was, how could we identify and improve the results in the various markets where we compete without spending a fortune doing it? Then it hit us. We needed to admit we did not know everything and that many of our partners had knowledge and skills that they maybe were willing to share with us. You see we have helped many of our customers in the past improving their supply chains. Now we needed open up our doors and see what we could learn from others.We called it “A Fresh Set of Eyes”, to represent bringing in an unbiased perspective to help us see where we are missing opportunities.
• #3: A Fresh Set of Eyes is very simple. You find a partner willing to work with you. You open up your doors and let your guest see everything and you set no boundaries as to where improvement ideas may be found.Over the course of a day or two, the host team and the guests talk about the processes and share experiences and knowledge. A joint presentation is developed outlining the opportunities and is presented to the host leadership team to get their support and guidance. At this point the host logistics team should now have list of opportunities reviewed and approved by the leadership team. It is now the logistics team’s responsibility to implement these ideas and turn them into reality.
• #4: Now what types of ideas are normally generated. There are the ideas we have never thought of. There are the ideas we knew about but just were not implementing and there the types of ideas we were thinking about, but did not know enough about them to try them. This is where an unbiased guest can share their experiences to help us overcome a fear and by telling us about possible problems to avoid.We try to look into as much of the total logistics process as possible and not limit ourselves to ourselves to any particular areas. The point is we don’t know where were there might be an opportunity. Traditionally we find between 15 and 20 actionable ideas that help our teams improve.
• #5: So who do we try to get to join us in a Fresh Set of Eyes review?We will work with partners who are well known for supply chain expertise. UPS has been gracious enough to support Kimberly-Clark in 4 of our Fresh Set of Eyes reviews. Working with non-competitors has also turned out be beneficial for Kimberly-Clark and our non-competing colleagues leading to sharing of benchmark data in other areas of the business. University professors have been very helpful and don’t forget other facilities in your company. What sort of improvement ideas are being generated? They range from help with distribution network design to inventory strategies and how the 5 S’s program can improve results.We have done 12 reviews in the last year in many places around the world. Erez will share in a few minutes some of the details regarding the review we did with UPS here in Israel. Let me share with you the reviews from 2 other countries.
• #7: Guatemala is another place where we partnered with UPS on a Fresh Set of Eyes review.In this situation UPS reminded us of a recommendation we have shared with many of our customers in the past, but we had failed to follow ourselves. This is in regards to the space we had allocated for a picking area. UPS had rightfully hi-lighted the fact our picking area should be larger. As I said before, sometimes the opportunity is something you know but you had forgotten.Additionally UPS helped us with some ideas on how to better capture and use data we collect as part of our customer service calling process. We started a pilot program in November and in the 1st month we have developed 600 new customer leads.We also picked up some ideas on how to improve our loading and delivery and some additional ways to justify investments in electric picking trucks.All told it was a very productive day for the K-C Guatemala team.
• #8: Now everything is not easy and a bed of roses.For any partnership to work, the program has to provide benefits to both parties. The Fresh Set of Eyes Program is no different.From the knowledgeable guest’s perspective, participating in a program similar to this will help to build stronger partnerships. If you are a supplier you can help your customer be more profitable and more successful. You help the customer make more money by selling their product than by negotiating cost savings from you. Your knowledge is a better promotion investment than a cash discount. From the host’s point of view, this is a great way to “jump start” creativity and other improvement programs. But the host must accept that they don’t know everything and that in this situation they are “students”.
• #9: While the Fresh Set of Eye’s program has been very successful for us, it can also fail miserably. I had a boss one time tell me, that to play baseball you need both a pitcher and a catcher. I am sorry for using a baseball analogy. The point being that success requires both parties be committed to the success of the program. If either party does not understand the purpose of the program or does not care, then the Fresh Set of Eyes program will not work.This is not something you can force. So deciding who to partner with on this program is vital. In fact if you had to decide between a really smart partner who was partially committed and a somewhat smart partner who was fully committed, I would suggest working with the fully committed partner every time. Alright. At this time, I would like to have my friend Erez Mossenson, The Supply Chain Director of Hogla-Kimberly share with you the specifics of the Fresh Set of Eyes programs we did here in Israel with UPS.Erez.