Case Study - Global Business Change
Transition to Offshore Printing & Distribution
Introduction
Project Consultancy moved the production and despatch of over 400 journals to Singapore and delivered huge benefits to Blackwells. The project took almost three years in total and ultimately delivered more benefit in a single year than the total cost incurred.
Feasibility
In 2003 Project Consultancy were asked by the Global Operations Director to investigate the feasibility of relocating the Blackwell Publishing journal printing and distribution operation from the UK to Singapore.
After an extensive data gathering and business modelling exercise it was concluded that there was a strong business case to be made which would deliver millions of pounds worth of savings each year to the company.
A more extensive project was set-up with Project Consultancy leading the project and operating as a member of the steering group within Blackwell Publishing.
The project
The pilot
Our first step was to find the right supplier in Singapore, after a thorough look at potential suppliers we issued a tender. The responses were evaluated and after extensive negotiations Singapore Post was selected for warehousing and despatch whilst five separate printers were selected.
Our first stage was to run a pilot project where we selected between 30 and 40 Blackwell owned titles to test that everything would work as planned. We introduced some temporary changes and ran the pilot for six months with the costs and benefits being carefully monitored. The pilot was a success with the benefits being in line with those expected. This was reported and the go-ahead given to proceed with the scale-up.
During the pilot we worked on what would be needed if the project was given the go-ahead. It was clear early in the pilot that we were looking like succeeding and so by the end of it we had planned the changes needed to make the temporary changes permanent.
The Scale Up
With the pilot being a great success the ‘scale up’ project was initiated. This was to move over 400 titles to Singapore. In order to manage the risk to the business these titles were to be put in groups depending on the benefit available and their publication dates. These groups of titles would then be moved at separate times.
With the new suppliers being positioned thousands of miles away and the working day only just overlapping it was necessary to implement some significant business and IT changes. No longer would people just be able to ‘ring up’ or ‘nip down’ and clarify things. An infrastructure was built where files could be submitted automatically to companies in Singapore and then tracked through the production and despatch stages. This tool informed the suppliers what to expect so production and resources could be planned and was updated every day as more information became available. This was all browser based and available to suppliers and Blackwell staff over the internet.
Alongside these changes it was important that the publishing societies were in agreement to their journal being published overseas. An extensive consultation exercise was conducted to ensure permission was granted to move the titles.
Having gained permission and built the systems to support the move the actual move of journals began. Initially we concentrated on the printing and main label despatch from Singapore with the remaining stock being flown and/or sailed back to the UK (again this was all trackable though the new system). Once the main label operation was working smoothly we then turned our attention to back labels, the transport back to the UK was making significant inroads into the benefit being delivered and needed to be addressed.
To be consistent with the stocking policy (where two years stock was needed) we moved a large amount of back stock from the UK to Singapore. There was also an extension needed to the systems work, we produced a daily file of products and fed this to the warehouse management system in Singapore – this ensured that as stock arrived it could be booked into the warehouse.