Hubbell Lighting Focuses Spotlight on Supply Chain Management Strategies amid Dim Economic Conditions

Hubbell Lighting Inc., a division of Hubbell Incorporated (NYSE: HUBA, HUBB), provides a full range of indoor and outdoor lighting products for commercial, industrial, institutional and residential markets. Headquartered in Greenville, South Carolina, they rank among the top lighting companies in the world.

Given the nature of its business, Hubbell Lighting operates a highly complex supply chain consisting of:

• a diverse product portfolio with varying product life cycles (longer cycles for commercial products, much shorter for residential),
• differing supply models (make-to-stock, make-to-order),
• multiple sales channels (direct and distributors),
• multiple plants (in the US and overseas) and
• considerable outsourcing.

All in all, Hubbell is a clear example of today's globally distributed, multi-enterprise supply chains. Effectively managing this level of complexity is difficult under normal circumstances, but with the recent economic downturn, the challenge of volatility and the urgent need for responsiveness has brought about greater focus on their supply chain management strategies.

The Hubbell Lighting Challenge

One economic reality in particular that is impacting Hubbell Lighting is that housing starts are decreasing from one year ago. This is introducing increased risk and forcing Hubbell Lighting to look at demand differently. The precipitous drop has made demand planning based on historical trends irrelevant or impossible. Hubbell is heavily foreign-supplied (yielding increasing lead times), so Hubbell needs to cut out as much as possible in the supply chain to decrease lead times in order to stay as close to the demand signal (have as much visibility into near-term demand) as possible. The objective is to operate in a 'Just-in-time' type of environment with a leaner, demand-driven supply chain. Inventory risks in this environment are high, so understanding inventory positions at all times is a necessity.

With such volatility of forecasts and orders, there is a great need to quickly understand the impact of unexpected change, determine the action alternatives, and then execute to minimize or avoid any financial and customer service losses.

The RapidResponse Advantage

Kinaxis helps Hubbell to dynamically align supply and demand. Hubbell lighting is using RapidResponse to help assess and mitigate risk, as well as respond to unplanned supply chain events.

In response to fluctuating demand, with RapidResponse Hubbell

• completes daily supply chain runs (to continually reconcile demand plans to reality)
• instantly calculates and re-calculates "what-if" supply scenarios (in close collaboration with suppliers)
• creates structured scorecards to understand operational impact of changes and to compare action alternatives against set KPIs

The Results Speak for Themselves

Overall, with RapidResponse, risk is more visible throughout the extended supply network and enables supply chain teams throughout the organization to act swiftly and confidently in response to the changing landscape.

What-if scenarios (i.e. used for procurement in particular) can be done in a matter of minutes, and empower front-line staff to make the most profitable (or least costly) decisions quickly.

And inventory management has become significantly more effective with the demand and supply chain visibility and analysis capabilities offered by the RapidResponse solution.

About Kinaxis

Kinaxis™ helps manufacturers manage increasing business complexity and achieve operations performance breakthroughs with its proven solution for demand and supply chain planning, monitoring and response. Kinaxis RapidResponse is an on-demand service that enables collective risk tradeoff and response to change by empowering front-line decision makers with integrated tools for supply chain visibility, demand management, supply management, sales and operations planning (S&OP) and supply chain risk management. Global leaders such as Casio, Jabil, Qualcomm, and Raytheon are realizing superior customer satisfaction and a competitive advantage with RapidResponse. For more information, visit www.kinaxis.com or the Kinaxis blog at www.21stcenturysupplychain.com.

Want to learn more?
Please join us online at:
community.kinaxis.com

Copyright © Kinaxis Corp. All rights reserved. Kinaxis, the Kinaxis logo and RapidResponse are trademarks of Kinaxis Corp. All other brands and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.