Friday, October 16, 2020

HERSHEY: Sweetening the Supply Chain One KISS-(es) at a time

 

Hi, I’m Priyanka Sunil- A final year MBA student from Amrita School Of Business majoring in Operations and Marketing. Welcome to my progressive learning space for Logistics and Supply Chain Management.

This is my final blog in this space. I dedicate this one to the love of my life; CHOCOLATES!!!

I don’t trust people who say they don’t like chocolate. I love them. In fact, I can eat, sleep, and breathe chocolates. Today I’ll take you through the story of a century-old chocolate factory Hershey and their constant efforts to better their supply chain.

In its brown-and-silver wrapper, Hershey's Milk Chocolate was perhaps the best-known American candy bar of the 20th century. The company makes and distributes products similar to Hershey's, Reese's, Hershey's Kisses, Kit Kat, Twizzlers and Ice Breakers, and recently Hershey's Bliss chocolates, which are iconic brands.


(Photo: The Hershey Company)

 

Supply Chain Sustainability

Hershey is committed to the responsible procurement of the ingredients and raw materials it buys. It has implemented programs and strategies to contribute directly to sustainability and livelihoods of the communities in which it relies on to provide the ingredients for its goods, while taking the required measures to protect human rights and the people and habitats behind the ingredients that make the famous products of Hershey. Hershey released its first Human Rights Policy early in 2019. Today, Hershey makes is mandatory to include human rights training into the new employee orientation process for all global procurement professionals. Additionally, Hershey is well on-track to meet several 2020 responsible sourcing commitments and has already achieved its goals to source 100% certified and, 100% RSPO-certified mass balance palm oil, and 100% third-party certified sustainable virgin fiber pulp and paper products in the U.S. and Canada

Supplier Diversity

 Along with other suppliers, Hershey seeks the opportunities for qualified minority, women, veteran, LGBT, disadvantaged, and disabled owned companies to compete on an equal basis as primary suppliers in order to strengthen the base of world-class suppliers. To find certified diverse suppliers they use ConnXus database

Certified Ingredients-Cocoa Certification and Palm oil certification

Hershey is committed to sourcing 100 percent certified and sustainable cocoa for all chocolate products around the world.

Traceability to the Plantation Level

The Hershey Company is committed to increasing traceability and reliability in the supply chain of cocoa and is aggressively collaborating to this end with its manufacturers, as well as producers and customer governments.

 

How Hershey's supply chain is adjusting to changing demographics and population shifts

The 21st century saw the emergence of many crucial demographic changes that would have significant impacts on both the demand and supply dynamics of supply chain management. Hershey found that significant increases in global demand over the next 15 to 20 years would come from urban middle-class customers in developing markets. A typical trend of the supply chain of the global confectionery industry is to satisfy the bulk of demand from a manufacturing facility based in the same area. Hershey Company's history of opening manufacturing facilities in Johor, Malaysia, as a real-world example of how businesses can use demographic knowledge to influence important supply chain decisions. In order to determine which location will be better, the the organization used a decision system with weighted factors for consideration such as continuity of supply and various cost dimensions, including operational and logistic costs.

Hershey’s supply chain redesign

In early 2007, a three-year supply chain restructuring initiative was launched at Hershey, pairing an increase in manufacturing capability with a sharp decrease in the number of production lines. The move led go 1500 people losing their jobs. Around the same time, Hershey outsourced the production of certain low-value products and established a new production plant in Monterrey, Mexico. The initiative finished with about $185 million in annual savings. Three years later, the Hershey Company announced project Next Century as part of the company's ongoing efforts to create an advantaged supply chain and competitive cost structure. The Next Century capital invested in plant expansion of the existing West Hershey in distribution and administrative facilities located in Hershey, Pa. As part of the project, production was shifted from the company's century-old facility at 19 East Chocolate Avenue in Hershey, Pa., to a planned expansion of the West Hershey facility, which was built in 1992. Total capital expenditures were pegged at between $250m and $300m, with annual savings projected at between $65m and $80m at the program’s conclusion in 2014.

The company has spent $800 million in increasing its processing capabilities over the last five years and has made attempts to introduce the 2.0. supply chain. Through growing automation in its distribution centers and introducing late-stage differentiation, it has also concentrated on making its distribution activities more agile.

"Smart complexity" is a key part of the supply chain 2.0 vision. How do we balance the complexity that arises when meeting customer versus efficiency? How do we make sure it does not slow down the manufacturing network and slow down the supply chain.?

To an extent, the company addresses this issue is by evaluating the profitability of each stock-keeping unit (SKU).  This has helped them to increase efficiency for itself and productivity for its retail partners.

Hershey then went on exploring the beginning of the process: supply-chain design and analytics. Hershey approached LLamasoft Inc., a supply-chain design software provider. They helped Hershey make supply-chain design an internal capability. Hershey executives were made to involve and understand the full impact of major strategic decisions. The effort gave the company a high-level view of operations’ Also this helped it to detect any possible conflict between internal disciplines. LLamasoft has this Data Guru application that consolidates and transforms data from various sources into what can be used in a single supply-chain model. It identifies opportunities for future cost avoidance or cut – a major part of Hershey’s previous supply-chain overhaul initiatives. They report compound growth of 6.8 percent in net sales, and 21.4 percent in net income, between 2009 and 2013 due to this investment in technology

Fulfillment

Hershey takes a holistic perspective on digital and in-person purchases. They believe that in-store purchases can be driven by a strong e-commerce presence. Working with retail partners, Hershey also found that shoppers demand that each retailer's in-store assortment and digital assortment be similar. If only shipping is offered, the average price point goes up since retailers and vendors like Hershey prefer a higher price point. But if buy-online, pickup-in-store (BOPIS) is offered, lower price points may be available To run it all, they are increasing trips online, driving larger basket sizes, while maintaining margin profile.

Drop-Shipping

Hershey has been able to advertise "worry-free summer shipping" and brighten up the gloomy spots of the calendar by delivering chilled drop shipping straight to the customer

 With more manufacturing capacity, software upgrades,  M&A, dedicated resources for just a few basis points of overall sales and direct-to-consumer fulfillment, Hershey’s is showing us an all-new recipes for supply chain success.

 

References

https://www.scl.gatech.edu/education/professional-education

https://www.thehersheycompany.com/en_us/sustainability.html

https://www.thehersheycompany.com/en_us/sustainability/shared-business/responsible-sourcing.html

https://www.confectioneryproduction.com/news/29890/hershey-releases-latest-sustainability-report-focusing-on-support-for-its-entire-supply-chains/

https://www.supplychaindive.com/news/hershey-retail-ecommerce/540959/

https://www.supplychainquarterly.com/articles/1773-chocolate-bars-and-population-shifts-how-hershey-s-supply-chain-is-adjusting-to-changing-demographics

https://theferrarigroup.com/more-evidence-of-supply-chains-value-the-hershey-company/

 

 

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