Supply Chain Coach

Supply Chain Coach grew out of Tom French’s experience managing logistics for large companies and providing Third Party Logistics (3PL) services.

Without the coaching option, companies who need supply chain help have had two choices: either outsource to a 3PL vendor or engage a supply chain consultant. Tom learned first-hand that there were problems with each:

In addition:

Because they don’t provide visibility into your entire supply chain process, you don’t know where your costs reside and which processes or product lines may be responsible for the bulk of those costs. You could actually have an unprofitable product line and not know it.
The 3PL vendor and your staff have a tendency to develop an adversarial relationship, with the vendor perceived as a threat or, at best, an outsider who fails to understand your internal processes and requirements.

It’s definitely not a situation that fosters continuous improvement.

This leaves you with two problems:

In logistics more than with any other business operation, the devil is in the details of implementation, and your requirements can change rapidly after your consultants have gathered their data. You need step-by-step coaching throughout the implementation, along with mentoring to develop managers who can make the right adjustments in the future and identify areas for continuous improvement.
You face a shortage of well-trained supply chain managers, not just within your company but outside it. There is no significant pool of managers available who understand both the big picture and the intricacies of supply chain processes as well as how to apply affordable technology.

The optimal solution: supply chain coaching.

Our expert coaches stay with you to develop an effective internal supply chain structure. They not only help you collect data and formulate solutions but help you set up processes, integrate low-cost technology, and train your managers to adapt and improve processes as changes and new opportunities occur.

A record of performance

We have been able to help clients save at least 20% on supply chain costs, while improving reliability and speed of delivery and providing visibility into costs. In some cases, the savings have been much greater. For one large electronics distributor, for example, we were able to reduce shipping costs by more than 50%.

Tom French

Tom held a variety of leadership positions at the Deutsch Company before moving to Marshall Industries, an electronics distributor, where he opened eight regional stocking locations, eventually gaining division level responsibility for Marshall’s electromechanical product lines. He successfully streamlined the distribution systems to reduce inventory by over 80%.

In the 1980’s Tom formed his own business, which became the world’s second largest supplier of heat shrinkable products and was purchased by Raychem Corporation.

He then invested in a third party warehouse, FGS Corporation, where he helped create an annual double digit growth rate and later sold the company to another third party logistics service provider.

Tom became Vice President of HA Logistics in 1996, a privately held logistics provider whose top line revenue grew from $8M to $34M.

In 2000, Tom took on the position of Vice President of Logistics for the Hub Golden Gate Group, LLC, the third largest operating company of the $1.3 billion Hub Group, Inc., specializing in customized contract logistics service provider solutions. Tom initiated this business as a start-up. When he left in 2004, the Golden Gate Logistics division was on an annual revenue run rate of $65M.

Bob Mundell

Bob has over twenty years of experience in the supply chain, logistics and transportation industries. For over ten years, he has been leading implementation projects to help companies integrate a Transportation Management System with their ERP or WMS systems. With his vision and creativity, Bob has designed a number of complex solutions, such as the optimizing of outbound orders prior to scheduling manufacturing for a job shop environment that saved one company millions of dollars. His approach is to use software as a tool to run your supply chain as opposed to running your supply chain around the software.

Bob graduated from Ohio State University with a BA in Computer Science and began his career with PPG industries as a programmer and analyst before being promoted to Manager of Information and Financial Services. At Ashland Chemical, he became a Senior Systems Engineer spanning the entire operation from sales order processing to inventory to purchasing. His experience at these two companies showed him that supply chain management software would be a growing market and an important way to bring savings to the bottom line.

Consequently he became a consultant in 1992, helping companies develop the software to run their supply chains, and he learned to appreciate the value of optimizing small shipments into larger ones to yield significant savings. Then he joined InterTrans Logistics and led the project to develop and implement their transportation manager and integrated optimizer solutions. When i2 bought Inter Trans, Bob then went to work with PricewaterhouseCoopers and led the project team for TMS implementation.