Why putting humans at the center is key to supply chain transformation

With each passing year, the supply chain is becoming an increasingly indispensable function that has to combine high-level corporate strategy with data operations,” says Goksal Gungor, General Manager, Assan Aluminyum, a leading manufacturer in the global aluminum industry, headquartered in Turkey. “Organizations that don’t see the supply chain as critical in achieving business goals are doomed to fail.”

For Assan Aluminyum, the importance of supply chain management was well-recognized across the company. As a manufacturer of a core manufacturing material, they knew how vital a link they were in their customers’ own supply chains and across their entire business ecosystem’s value chain.

As for so many big industrial manufacturers, their challenge was to find ways to adapt effectively to changing needs while maintaining production and improving both profitability and customer satisfaction. The company needed to demonstrate that despite being transformational, their new approach would not interrupt or break the supply chain.

In reframing their future to be more agile and customer-focused, the Assan Aluminyum leadership team realized they needed an organization that could present a global transformation strategy with a holistic view of Assan Aluminyum’s supply chain. However, this partner would also need to respond to more specific, local needs to address the cross-sector requirements of its customers.

EY’s combination of deep experience in technology-enabled transformation, the manufacturing sector, and local market presence meant we were able to collaborate with Assan Aluminyum to truly reframe its future. We did this by finding ways to innovate at scale, while deploying the most effective and appropriate technologies at speed. At the same time, the needs of humans – both customers and staff – were kept at the center of their thinking.

Considering Assan Aluminyum’s core focus on increasing its supply chain’s agility and responsiveness to specific customer needs, the starting point for the EY team may seem counter-intuitive: greater centralization.

“To achieve operational excellence across the supply chain, we first opted to create a centralized infrastructure to integrate business processes,” says Gokhan Gumuslu, Region Management Consultant Leader for EY CESA (Central, Eastern, Southeast Europe and Central Asia) and EY Head of Consulting, Turkey. “This allowed us to monitor operations in a more efficient way and, in turn, enable more effective adaptation to shifting product lifecycle management needs.”

An increased focus on meeting customer needs – to provide a fast and accurate service, accommodate product variations, and offer competitive pricing and information quickly – was supported by a range of digital tools identified and provided via the EY Supply Chain Reinvention Framework and Supply Chain Operating Model methodologies.

These tools helped to:

• Improve inventory visibility and traceability
• Connect the control tower dashboard to multiple systems using a BI Dashboard tool
• Modify the CRM system to support customer recycling for scrap management and efficiency improvement
• Roll out SAP modifications to improve order management and sales management processes
• Produce SAP reports to support product management reporting, data management and data entry forms
• Enhance the procurement system underpinning a centralized structure

Thanks to the team’s Supply Chain Operations experience, we were able to deploy these new technologies and data solutions quickly, rapidly improving Assan Aluminyum’s digital readiness, data quality and analytical capabilities, via real-time data reporting.

Overall, there were five key aspects to the transformation program:

1. Improving service levels in the end-to-end management of the sales and supply chain operations, including advanced planning services and integrated planning developments within the company.
2. Adopting product lifecycle management by examining and improving product portfolio management to continue launching innovative new products in the market.
3. Improving supply efficiency including Assan Aluminyum’s scrap procurement processes, supplier relations and all logistics processes to improve environmental efficiencies.
4. Helping to ensure operational excellence by optimizing performance management and use of data.
5. Managing transformation with a long-term communications plan to support the transition to a learning organization and adopting a transformational mindset.

The collaboration between EY and Assan Aluminyum ultimately transformed far more than the supply chain, instead reshaping the entire organization. With clear communication and a strong working relationship that put humans at the center, applied technology at speed and employed innovation at scale, the project gave rise to a fundamental shift in how Assan Aluminyum operates as an organization. For instance, the improved visibility into supply chain operations has also enabled other positive changes, with Gungor citing a 10% increase in the use of recycled aluminum roll, helping the company get closer to achieving its core sustainability goals.

“These tangible results show that we are on the right track to achieve our goals,” says Gungor. “I’m also very proud to mention another achievement in our supply chain transformation project. The Supply Chain Professionals club – founded by a domestic association in Turkey and several stock organizations – has awarded Assan Aluminyum first place among more than 200 companies in the most innovative project category. Everyone at Assan Aluminyum and our fantastic partner EY has made this achievement possible.”