EBOOK

Turning Ideas into Action

How Whirlpool Corporation

Leverages Supply Chain Design
to Create an Agile Organization
 Change Happens
When Whirlpool Corporation acquired one of its leading
competitors, Maytag, it touched off a time of incredible
growth for the organization. Resources needed to be
allocated quickly to ensure customer service remained at
the level both organizations were known for. Then, when
the recession hit in 2008, the organization needed to scale
back capacity and conserve resources just as quickly.
After a lingering downturn, housing development is
starting to return, and Whirlpool is back in growth mode.
This means they are, once again, looking to add additional
capacity and ensure service and product availability meets
customer expectations and demand.

Market conditions change

quickly and opportunities
pass by quickly. In our
market, we need to be first on
the ground, introducing new
innovations into the market.
Brian Streu, Manager, Supply
Chain Design,
Whirlpool Corporation

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 Surviving the
Roller Coaster
Whirlpool Corporation isnt the only organization riding this roller
coaster we call the economy. Millions of businesses, large and
small, global and local, have gone through the same ups and
downs over the years. Some, like Whirlpool, come out stronger
than ever. Others are never heard from again.

Whirlpool credits its success to its ability to adapt its supply

chain to the reality of the economy and the needs of the market.

The companies that succeed in a volatile

economy are those that do supply chain
design right and make it a part of their
everyday business processes.
- Toby Brzoznowski, Executive VP,
LLamasoft

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 Design as Discipline
When LLamasoft pioneered supply chain design 15 years ago,
business leaders tended to see supply chain design and supply
chain management as part of the same discipline. For many,
supply chain design was a special project they kicked off
once every three to five years. Modeling even a single what-if
scenario was time-consuming, and by the time results were
presented, the dynamics of the market could have changed
drastically, rendering the answers meaningless.

Today, the pace of change and the way businesses operate

means they cant afford to wait weeks to get supply chain
answers. Businesses need to constantly evolve and work from
a living and breathing digital model that allows them to ask new
questions and simulate different scenarios quickly and easily.

TIP
A holistic supply chain design initiative enables businesses to continuously optimize the end-to-end supply
chain, rapidly test new strategies and react to changing market conditions.

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 Power Modeling & Analytics

Data Knowledge
Management Management

Talent Development

Four Core Competencies

Supply chain design isnt just about the technology. Its about how that technology supports the people who use
it to make decisions. Whirlpool Corporation Manager of Supply Chain Design, Brian Streu, lays out the four core
competencies they needed to develop within the organization to turn supply chain design from a series of ad-hoc projects
into a 21st-century discipline.

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 1. Power Modeling
and Analytics
Technology advancements have made it much easier to create massive models that operate in real-time with
your business. Whirlpool Corporation supply chain designers needed to learn not only how to create a digital
model of their network, but also understand how to analyze the results and present their findings visually to a
wide array of people.

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 2. Data Management
Like many global organizations, Whirlpool uses disparate ERP, planning and execution systems across its plants and
business units. To ensure accurate answers, the companys supply chain designers needed to take a close look at their
data collection and cleansing processes to ensure the data entered into the model was both current and correct.

TIP
Ever heard of data munging?
Its an industry term referring
to the process of collecting
data from various sources
and then cleansing and
standardizing it so that it is in a
format that can be used by the
modeling software.

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 3. Knowledge
Management
Supply chain design is often seen as tribal knowledge: one
or two specialists know how its done, and if they leave the
company, their knowledge goes with them. Whirlpool found
that supply chain design applications made it easier to see
whats been tried and to transfer that knowledge from one
designer to the other.

4. Talent
Development
Lastly, good supply chain designers are so in demand that it
can be hard to find them on the open job market. Whirlpool
looks internally for people who understand the supply chain
process and then develops them into quality analysts.
TIP
Supply chain designers are highly valuable.
Given their vantage point, they know a lot
about how the organization works warts and
all. Make sure they have a career path
so you can retain both the talent and the
inside information.

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 From Project to Process In the past, we had to
make broad sweeping
Turning project-oriented supply chain modeling into an everyday business assumptions. Now we can
process at Whirlpool required three different elements to come together: get real answers fast!
Brian Streu, Manager,

1. Technology
Supply Chain Design,
Whirlpool Corporation

LLamasoft supply chain modeling tools changed a project that took six
months to a year to complete into a business process that could be
completed in a few days.

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 2. Executive Support
Once executives at Whirlpool Corporation realized the types
of questions the supply chain modelers could answer, they
started asking more questions. Streu and his team took that
opportunity to educate executives on what they could do if
they had organizational support behind the effort.

TIP
In order to have the greatest impact on the
business, supply chain design must be a top-
down, executive-driven process with leadership
that understand the importance of creating
a repeatable design process that is linked to
business value and goals.

3. Collaboration
Executive support allowed Whirlpool to create a Supply Chain
Center of Excellence. However, the team realized they still
needed localized knowledge, and they regularly partner with
colleagues in different business regions and markets.
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 Going Forward
While it may seem counterintuitive at first, nothing promotes
supply chain flexibility like standardization. Standardizing
modeling processes, as well as cross-functional collaboration,
allowed Whirlpool Corporation to create a living, breathing
supply chain model that adapts quickly to market dynamics and
the needs of their business.

Now, that the team has the capability to answer previously

unanswerable questions, the challenge is to manage all the
requests. Whirlpool is working with LLamasofts project
scorecard capabilities to prioritize requests by comparing ease of
implementation against the relative benefit to the organization.

When you can score impact against effort,

those projects that should be your highest
priority bubble up to the top pretty easily.
Brian Streu, Manager,
Supply Chain Design, Whirlpool
Corporation

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 About LLamasoft WOULD YOU LIKE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT
SUCCESS IN SUPPLY CHAIN DESIGN?

We love helping our customers design thriving supply chains.

LLamasoft enables organizations around the world to model and
optimize their supply chain operations for major improvements
in cost, service, sustainability and risk mitigation. Were driven to
make supply chain optimization easier, better and faster, so you
can make the world a better place. We continue to innovate with
an aggressive development roadmap including new solutions for
supply chain visibility, planning, and predictive analytics.

Named the fastest growing North American supply chain

software company in Deloittes Fast 500 for three years running

50% of Fortune 500 companies have designed their

supply chains with LLamasoft The ROI of Supply Chain Design
LLamasoft has supported over 2,000 supply chain
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design projects

LLamasoft, Inc.
201 South Division Street, Suite 200
Ann Arbor, Michigan 48104, USA
Phone: +1 866.598.9831
LLamasoft.com | Info@LLamasoft.com
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2016 LLamasoft, Inc. All rights reserved. v.09/29/16