Supply Chain Intelligence for a Fortune 100 Brand

A Fortune 100 global brand with manufacturing across several divisions, including those from recent acquisitions, wanted to integrate and improve their supply chain practices. Trust relationships with suppliers and transparency were key pillars of this initiative, but these values must be fostered in an information environment of ground truth. Extrasensory¹ was engaged to establish a global directory of the vendor ecosystem across related industries, giving the corporate supply chain function a foundation on which to build their improvement process.

Motivation

The client was manufacturing through 2,300 partners at 7,700 individual facilities spanning 35 countries, at least to the best of their knowledge. At best, a constantly-changing vendor list across multiple divisions was difficult to harmonize, especially in regions without uniform names and addresses. At worst, such ambiguities would be taken advantage of: A fraudulent actor might overproduce a branded design for sale in gray markets, get caught, and then simply rename themselves to reapply. Such actors were typically also unscrupulous and irresponsible about working conditions, pay, safety, and child and forced labor, posing serious and unknown risks to the brand.

Approach

Extrasensory worked with the head of supply chain and his team to understand the patterns of unstructured data collection, standardization, and maintenance used by the supply chain function. To gain a deeper understanding of the data as collected, Extrasensory arranged to send a representative to 12 of the client's suppliers in China and profiled them according to the client's process. A proposed solution was designed and prototyped as follows:

• Aggregation of partners, vendors, suppliers, and manufacturing facilities across brands in the same and adjacent industries using web data extraction.
• Corroboration of the publicly available data with the client's internal systems and processes.
• Extension of these systems and processes to incorporate unstructured data for the profiling process.
• Hosting of the directory as a public-facing website allowing suppliers and their workers to view and contribute to their profiles.

Results

In total, over 21,000 businesses and facilities supplying 21 brands, including the client, were identified and cataloged into the directory. 38% percent of the client's vendor list was corroborated by another brand, and 77% could be geo-located. The client was now ready to take defined steps to engage the suppliers in the improvement process: Claim or create a profile in the directory, complete all relevant fields including photos, and arrange a site visit by a representative. By conducting the process in public, transparency and trust were assured.