Company: IBM Corporation, Armonk, NY USA
Company Description: The International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) is an American multinational information technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York in the industry of Information Technology & Services. IBM is a leading cloud platform and cognitive solutions company. Traditionally known as a provider of Computer Hardware, Services and Software to the marketplace.
Nomination Category: Achievement Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Achievement in Organization Recovery
 Nomination Title: Embracing Disruption, the Pathway to Resiliency
- Which will you submit for your nomination in this category, a video of up to five (5) minutes in length about the achievements of the nominated department since 1 January 2020, OR written answers to the questions for this category? (Choose one):
Written answers to the questions
- If you are submitting a video of up to five (5) minutes in length, provide the URL of the nominated video here, OR attach it to your entry via the "Add Attachments, Videos, or Links to This Entry" link above, through which you may also upload a copy of your video.
- If you are providing written answers for your submission, you must provide an answer to this first question: Briefly describe the nominated organization: its history and past performance (up to 200 words):
Total 165 words used.
- If you are providing written answers for your submission, you must provide an answer to this second question: Outline the organization's achievements since the beginning of 2020 that you wish to bring to the judges' attention (up to 250 words):
Total 193 words used.
Covid-19 Pandemic laid the next big challenge for all companies. Global supply chains were forced to ask themselves how to deliver to demanding client expectations given the new set of restrictive, global supply chain constraints imparted by the post-pandemic environment. How can companies optimize the end-to-end supply chain for delivery reliability, cost effectiveness and with sufficient resiliency?
While IBM’s resiliency plan was focused around site product specialization and cost effectiveness, successful supply chain execution in the pandemic environment, required an improved resiliency strategy. The objective of the new “Resiliency Strategy” was two-fold:
- To improve the speed at which real-time, potentially disruptive events can be monitored, analyzed and feedback into the supply decision process to eliminate, mitigate or prevent supply chain risk or performance degradation
- To improve response and recovery time to disruptive events that can not be prevented, avoided, or otherwise mitigated proactively.
The new Resiliency Strategy rebalanced IBM’s Global product manufacturing and order fulfillment capacity based on optimization of client delivery expectations, supplier network capability, product portfolio complexity, geographic location, logistics network accessibility, technical skill transfer requirements and availability of physical resources, such as manufacturing space, capital equipment and local labor market.
- If you are providing written answers for your submission, you must provide an answer to this third question: Explain why the achievements you have highlighted are unique or significant. If possible compare the achievements to the performance of other players in your industry and/or to the organization's past performance (up to 250 words):
Total 243 words used.
As the outcome of resiliency strategy, IBM is well positioned to face a significantly diverse set of disruption scenarios, minimizing recovery times and client delivery impacts while providing maximum revenue protection. In order to maintain current site cost profiles and minimizing additional investment for site setup, synergies between products and facilities needed to be established in the current use of manufacturing assets. In summary, the key positive impacts to the business are as follows:
- Improved response and recovery times to any critical, potentially disruptive scenarios through the implementation of new business continuity plan execution by 35% to 60% depending on specific location
- Improved network balance and ability to produce and fulfill critical products at multiple sites in multiple geographies
- Minimized disruption to critical revenue streams by spreading risk over multiple sites and building in synergistic product capabilities at those sites
- IBM re-balanced 35% of the storage products and 15% of the raw materials for components both manufactured in Europe, reducing carbon footprint with optimized cross-geography shipments of finished goods
- Increase global supply chain control tower integration and collaboration within the network of skilled resources at all site locations
- Developed new techniques and tools to support product introduction and product site-to-site transfers without requiring dedicated on-site physical support for qualification or operator training
- Developed new strategic sourcing processes that encompass the capability to integrate risk elements and disruptive scenarios including natural disasters, global and supplier financial risks, geo-political risks at global and regional levels
- You have the option to answer this final question: Reference any attachments of supporting materials throughout this nomination and how they provide evidence of the claims you have made in this nomination (up to 250 words):
Total 238 words used.
Several examples of key Innovation elements that resulted from the Resiliency. Strategy project, many of which will permanently remain in the IBM Supply Chain landscape are listed below:
- Development of a new End-to-end Supply Chain Resiliency risk and measurement methodology and analytics tool called Supply Chain Resiliency Advisor (SCRA).
- Universal Test Cells: One of the biggest technical innovations that was developed to enable the new Resiliency Strategy was related to simplification of product test cases and configuration procedures. The goal was to make available a ‘universal’ test cell, at any site for a broad range of products, technologies, and operating systems. An Industry 4.0 solution, the universal test cells IBM designed and developed eliminated 37% of the manual steps in testing. The universal test cells have more flexibility to quickly reconfigure product testing and increase test cell capacity for many product families. Application of the Universal Test Cell concept reduced the need for new capital equipment funding by 75%.
- Structure in multiple sites: how to control cost and manage structure in multiple sites and maintain the engineering change process with existing resources, was another problem area. To solve this problem the CIO / Engineering team implemented an automated IT solution in the primary site / control tower site to easily copy the EC changes into the 2nd resiliency site. This innovation in SAP and MFS (Floor control) allowed IBM to manage MTM structure in multiple sites with existing resources.
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