Project cars 3 key3/15/2023 The supply chain team looked at how they can streamline this process. Local jurisdictions also require cell providers to use poles that match the environment. Very often existing street poles do not have the structural integrity to handle the cell equipment, requiring cell providers to install new poles. Some small cell sites are attached to street poles. Poles for cell towers are custom materials with a long lead time. To simplify the installation process, the supply chain team laid out four pallets on a warehouse floor and developed the most effective way to kit materials so that the engineers in the field will be able to access materials in order of use when in the field, enabling efficiencies at the point of installation. This lack of space adds difficulty to the field team’s installation work. But often the sites are a very small work area between a sidewalk and the street. So, they took the 80/20 rule, worked with the engineering team to determine requirements, and reduced 47 unique builds down to 4 standard builds that would accomplish 80 percent of what they needed. They looked back at 2 years of data and determined that one out of every seven sites built was a unique configuration. The team knew that they wanted to be able to scale and move quickly and realized that doing so would be enabled by reducing complexity to deliver economies of scale. They named this initiative Project Network Enterprise Optimization (Project NEO NEO). With these considerations in mind, the UScellular supply chain team took a step back, imaginging the criteria for an optimally effective and efficient path forward. But the company was unsure if this was the most effective network for the company’s priorities. UScellular utilizes 13 warehouses across the US, positioned so that every network cell site is within 500 miles of a warehouse. As a result, proper planning is required to source and receive critical components upfront to assure that these materials do not cause a project bottleneck. Meanwhile, material lead times ranged from 9 days to 9 months. The supply chain team conducted an in-depth analysis of 3 key projects and determined that 61% of components were internationally sourced, and most critical components are manufactured in Asia or Europe. For this reason, supplier reliability, supply chain resilience, and agility were among the primary considerations of the UScelluar supply chain transformation. Further, projects rarely proceed flawlessy.
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