Supply Chain Planning: De'Longhi Appliances Srl. Analysis and improvements

Abstract

This Thesis discusses the Supply Chain Management topic, in particular the Supply Chain Planning (SCP) area is analyzed. It refers to evaluations concerning how best to plan the market demand and how to design and manage the company supply side in order to perceive the company financial and service level objectives. The analysis is entirely based on a case study: De’Longhi Appliances Srl, the Italian productive plant of De’Longhi Group, specialized in the production of coffee maker machines. It mainly analyzes the content of the Production & Material Planning office, where I did an internship period. It refers to the short term side of the supply chain planning, meaning the way Production & Material Planning personnel adjust the production program and plan the material procurement, so that to satisfy upper level market requests. Moreover, it describes the De’Longhi Appliances supply relationship network and the way everyday information and data sharing are managed with suppliers. This work is based on two key concepts: Flexibility and Collaboration. Flexibility refers to the ability of the company to properly answer to market requests through a flexible and dynamic configuration of internal operations. On the other side, collaboration refers to the relationship among offices and enterprises to improve the information sharing process, reduce the aggregate lead time, and properly answer to supply side criticalities. It refers to vertical collaboration when analyzing the relationship among internal offices and departments, while it deals with the concept of horizontal collaboration concerning the relationship among companies.

This Thesis is divided into three sections: 1_Content contextualization. It introduces the Supply Chain Management topic and the company object of the analysis, De’Longhi Group. Starting from a general overview, the business examined during the following sections is described; 2_Supply Chain Planning analysis. A description and an analysis of the current Supply Chain Planning process is provided, in order to explain how market demand comes into the factory and how it is translated into components production and purchasing orders; 3_Supply Chain Planning improvements. It introduces the Swim Lanes project that is dramatically changing the De’Longhi Appliances Supply Chain Planning process. After a brief introduction, the short-term side of this process s analyzed: Swim Lanes Operation. Possible medium-term evolutions are introduced in the last chapter.