Increasing supply security with SCM expertise

In order to ensure the availability of 775,000 parts for Mercedes-Benz after-sales in 170 countries, the Global Service & Parts (GSP) department has around 50 locations that supply more than 5,000 dealers. UNITY has made a significant contribution to the standardization of supplier support at Mercedes Benz by introducing a supplier management playbook that increases the security of supplies to an even further extent and reduces costs. Therefore, a new supplier segmentation was developed in the project. This makes it possible to focus the bundled expenses of supplier management on strategically important supplier relationships with a great amount of leverage. At the same time, the focus was placed on a new integration process with a standardized checklist and optimized capacity management. The operational supplier management was expanded to include KPI-led shop floor management and a defined process management control loop was introduced for continuous process improvement. Supplier management in the GSP department will be even more preventive by implementing the defined measures and processes. This is of strategic importance, particularly in today’s challenging times, because it makes a decisive contribution to securing the supply chains.