Description

Zebra Technologies is a public company based in Lincolnshire, Illinois, USA, that manufactures and sells marking, tracking and computer printing technologies. Its products include thermal barcode label and receipt printers, RFID smart label printers/encoders/fixed & handheld readers/antennas, and card and kiosk printers that are used for barcode labeling, personal identification and specialty printing.

Opportunities

After the acquisition of Motorola Solutions’ Enterprise business, providing mobile computing and advanced data capture communications technologies and services, Groenewout was asked to determine the strategic direction of Zebra/Motorola’s European distribution footprint.

Solution

Supply chain simulation models were used to determine:

• number, location, market region and function of the European distribution centers
• Operational logistics costs, required investments-/transition costs.
• Lead-time indications
• High level sanity check on TAX aspects

Benefits

• An overall business case to support the decision on the future distribution concept. This embeds the financial aspects (operational expenses-OPEX and capital expenses-CAPEX).
• A trade-off between insourcing or outsourcing the warehouse(s) to a Logistics Service Provider. This includes a qualitative evaluation, as well as a financial one (typically the impact on required investments/transition costs when insourced vs. outsourced).
• Implementation schedule for the favored distribution network scenarios from AS-IS towards the TO-BE 5 years from start.