Science and innovation company DuPont used Everstream Analytics solutions to identify its major risk areas, resulting in visibility across the entire supply chain, risk prevention, and cost avoidance.
Customer Objective
With its broad portfolio, global footprint, and extensive network, DuPont has a highly complex supply chain. The strategy for this supply chain is defined not by the logistics team – which is located across several countries – but by multiple business units within the organization. A key objective for DuPont was to achieve a holistic view of its entire supply chain in order to assess risk and improve efficiency. Additionally, the company knew it needed greater supply chain resilience. DuPont had experienced damaging disruptions, including the tragic 2011 tsunami in Japan that affected its sole supplier plant and the 2013 strikes in the U.S.A. that disrupted operations at East Coast ports. Therefore, another key challenge for DuPont was to monitor incidents and minimize impact on the supply chain.
Overall, DuPont wanted to achieve holistic supply chain management but according to An D’haenens, DuPont Logistics Manager EMEA, “We didn’t know how or where to begin.” DuPont was looking for a way to begin the process of finding a solution that would enable everyone to access supply chain information, with visibility of different routes and specific modes of transport (sea, air, or road) along with both global and per-country perspectives.
Everstream Solution
To meet DuPont’s goals, Everstream Analytics delivered a unique supply chain risk management solution, customized to provide continuous assessment study and software that improve the resilience of DuPont’s supply chain. This solution comprises both a targeted risk assessment process and a supply chain incident monitoring platform. To create transparency on exposure and vulnerability within multiple risk categories, Everstream embarked on a major risk assessment exercise. Guided by DuPont, this bespoke study focused on seven risk categories deemed most likely to impact the supply chain: strikes, power outages, telecoms outages, industrial fires, terrorist attacks, IT failures, and the financial stress of suppliers.
After mapping and visualizing the DuPont supply chain, Everstream was able to give a risk exposure rating to all elements of the supply chain. For this customized assessment, Everstream provided risk severity scores for each supply chain entity in scope and a resiliency rating based on the available alternative capacities, time-to-recovery, and the importance of the entity to DuPont business. And, the solution identified risk hotspots and choke points as well as appropriate risk mitigations.
Customer Benefits
End-to-end supply chain visibility: Everstream Analytics provides DuPont with comprehensive, real-time, global- and country-specific insights. Prior to this solution, D’haenens relayed that “different people had been aware of different pieces of the supply chain” but not all of it and that the risk assessment has been “an eye-opener.” The team can now make contingency plans, manage and track risks, and receive alerts and incident status reports.
Quantify risk and establish robust backup plans: The bespoke risk assessment revealed disruption potential at Rotterdam and Antwerp ports in the Netherlands. This enabled DuPont to quantify the risk and establish more robust backup plans than simply shifting operations to alternative ports.
Demonstrate the case for operational improvements: The study also identified some supply chain partners with inadequate IT contingency plans and fire prevention systems, enabling DuPont to take risk-mitigation action. As the study is ongoing, it also provides continual guidance to maintain service levels, minimize disruption, adjust the supply chain, take additional mitigation measures, and achieve fast post-disruption recovery.
Avoid substantial risk-related cost: Everstream Analytics enabled DuPont to accurately estimate potential financial damage – inventory loss from fire in just one European site could cost up to $1.65 billion and a 10-day transportation delay on major outbound lanes could result in $11.13 million in sales losses. Data like this supports early, fully informed decision making so that DuPont can respond promptly and effectively to disruption and execute on business contingency plans. This avoids the substantial costs of lost production and sales, premium-rate transport, personnel costs, and brand damage