• Advertise
  • Contact Us
  • About Us
  • Supplier Directory
  • Login
  • Subscribe
  • Logout
  • My Profile

  • CORONAVIRUS
  • LOGISTICS
    • Air Cargo
    • All Logistics
    • Express/Small Shipments
    • Facility Location Planning
    • Freight Forwarding/Customs Brokerage
    • Global Gateways
    • Global Logistics
    • Last Mile Delivery
    • Logistics Outsourcing
    • LTL/Truckload Services
    • Ocean Transportation
    • Rail & Intermodal
    • Reverse Logistics
    • Service Parts Management
    • Transportation & Distribution
  • TECHNOLOGY
    • All Technology
    • Artificial Intelligence
    • Cloud & On-Demand Systems
    • Data Management
    • ERP & Enterprise Systems
    • Forecasting & Demand Planning
    • Global Trade Management
    • Inventory Planning/ Optimization
    • Product Lifecycle Management
    • Sales & Operations Planning
    • SC Finance & Revenue Management
    • SC Planning & Optimization
    • Sourcing/Procurement/SRM
    • Supply Chain Visibility
    • Transportation Management
  • GENERAL SCM
    • Business Strategy Alignment
    • Education & Professional Development
    • Global Supply Chain Management
    • Global Trade & Economics
    • HR & Labor Management
    • Quality & Metrics
    • Regulation & Compliance
    • SC Security & Risk Mgmt
    • Sustainability & Corporate Social Responsibility
  • WAREHOUSING
    • All Warehouse Services
    • Conveyors & Sortation
    • Lift Trucks & AGVs
    • Order Fulfillment
    • Packaging
    • RFID, Barcode, Mobility & Voice
    • Robotics
    • Warehouse Management Systems
  • INDUSTRIES
    • Aerospace & Defense
    • Apparel
    • Automotive
    • Chemicals & Energy
    • Consumer Packaged Goods
    • E-Commerce/Omni-Channel
    • Food & Beverage
    • Healthcare
    • High-Tech/Electronics
    • Industrial Manufacturing
    • Pharmaceutical/Biotech
    • Retail
  • REGIONS
    • Asia Pacific
    • Canada
    • China
    • Europe
    • Latin America
    • Middle East/Africa
    • North America
  • THINK TANK
  • PODCASTS
  • VIDEOS
  • WHITEPAPERS
Home » Q&A | How Ace Hardware Ensures Supplier Excellence

Q&A | How Ace Hardware Ensures Supplier Excellence

January 7, 2019
Robert J. Bowman, SupplyChainBrain

Ace Hardware manages a supplier base numbering in the thousands. Kevin Kryscio, senior director of supply chain, discusses how the company ensures consistent supplier performance in a constrained supply-chain world.

Q: What are some of the major supply chain challenges that you’re facing today at Ace Hardware?

Kryscio: Some are new, and some are existing issues. We’re always tethered to our supply base in terms of our success measures. We have to work with suppliers to be competitive to the marketplace. The thing that’s new is that we're going through a retail industry and digital transformation. We see record low unemployment at 3.9 percent, which obviously impacts us across the industry. We see issues in transportation. We track things like our load to truck transportation ratios. We see tariffs, which are continuing to hit us across the industry. At Ace, we’re deeply engaging with our supply base to understand their challenges, how we can work together and give them visibility, toward the goal of getting things to the shelf on time.

Q: What are some of the challenges that you’ve faced in keeping tabs on the supply base?

Kryscio: We work with over 2,000 vendors. The top 150 are the big hitters, so we focus extensively on them, to understand what's going on with their supply chains. Among the challenges we see are industry consolidations. ERP [enterprise resource planning] implementations and warehouse moves cause disruption, so we usually get engaged when those things occur. Everyone says, “Don't worry. It will go smoothly." And typically it doesn't.

One of the things that's really encouraging within the supply base is increased demand-planning activities, including S&OP [sales and operations planning] and integrative business activities. Supply chain is getting a higher seat at the table in terms of decisions and discussions around the company's operations. That’s really important for success.

Q: How good a job are you doing in getting demand signals at the point of purchase, and propagating that up through your organization and to the supplier base?

Kryscio: Certainly it's a challenge. We're working toward that. Our marketing team does a fantastic job of gathering consumer data. What the supply chain's doing now is trying to latch onto that same data, and then raise our game in terms of looking at point-of-sale data as well. We’re seeing new demand streams, including dotcom. And we’ve acquired two businesses that we're integrating with the company. Consumer expectations are getting higher and higher, and the margin of error is getting narrower.

Q: A lot of companies are taking more of a risk-management perspective in the way they manage their suppliers. Is that the case with you?

Kryscio: I would say yes. We're looking at the risk element from an engagement perspective. We’re giving extensive data to our vendor base. We provide them a portal that can see the forecast, our inventory levels, our service to retailers, and sales. Risk is a shared conversation.

Q: How deep into your supplier base do you want to have visibility?

Kryscio: We love to get visibility, but there's an issue of practicality that comes into play here. With the top 150 vendors, we have to understand the principles of supply chain. Lead times and inventory strategies need to be a broader conversation from a sourcing perspective. We go through a checklist of 20 different items. Some things are very positive, and others need some work. We empower the suppliers and develop that strategy together.

Q: What kinds of technology are you looking at these days to help you with those goals?

Kryscio: The priority for us is around demand planning, and tools that help us to predict demand. The organization typically has been very functional in nature, but now we’re focusing on achieving a total cost view. How do you buy things in such a way that you balance inventory, service, labor and freight?

Q: Looking to the future, what do you consider to be the biggest potential constraints and challenges that you face at Ace Hardware?

Kryscio: We're being asked to respond faster and better, so we're thinking about strategies and tools that can help us to achieve that. How do you blend the traditional Ace strategy with dotcom requirements? Also, acquisitions will continue to occur in our industry, so how do you react to those? How do you become seamless in integrating those things? With the transformation of digital and retail, we have to stay ahead of the game.

Our CEO tells us that the heart of who we are as a wholesaler is about supply chain and delivering on time the right way. We’re proud to say we support over 5,000 retailers across the globe, 4,500 of whom are in the U.S. Some of them are single owners, and this is their means of making a living.

RELATED CONTENT

RELATED VIDEOS

Forecasting & Demand Planning Inventory Planning/ Optimization SC Finance & Revenue Management SC Planning & Optimization Sourcing/Procurement/SRM Supply Chain Visibility Business Strategy Alignment Quality & Metrics Consumer Packaged Goods Retail
KEYWORDS Business Strategy Alignment consumer packaged goods Forecasting & Demand Planning Inventory Planning/ Optimization Quality & Metrics Retail retail supplier chains SC Finance & Revenue Management SC Planning & Optimization Sourcing/Procurement/SCM Supplier Relationship Management Supply Chain Visibility
  • Related Articles

    Q&A | What Makes a Great Supplier Relationship?

    How United Technologies Ensures Supplier Quality

    TMS at Ace Hardware: "The Gift That Keeps on Giving"

  • Related Events

    Drive Operational Excellence and the Intelligent Factory: Digital Manufacturing Operations Management

    12 Steps to a Resilient Enterprise

Robert J. Bowman, SupplyChainBrain

Crafting a New Transportation Bill: The Battle Begins

More from this author

Wake up to Coronavirus Updates and the latest Supply Chain News!

Subscribe to our Daily Newsletter

Timely, incisive articles delivered directly to your inbox.

Popular Stories

  • Coronavirus-watch-Armada

    Virus Update: Amazon Offers Help With Distribution; NYC Delays Vaccinations After Moderna Shortage

    Coronavirus
  • container port

    New Global Visibility App Sees Delays Before They Happen

    Logistics
  • Can Employers Require Employees to Get the COVID-19 Vaccine? Part 1

    Watch: Can Employers Require Employees to Get the COVID-19 Vaccine? Part 1

    Coronavirus
  • U.S. Vaccine Rollout Hindered by Faulty Coordination, Messaging

    WHO Fumes at Western Drugmakers As China Fills Vaccine Void

    Coronavirus
  • Smartphones

    Podcast | Why We Need to Ramp Up Recycling of Old Tech

    Logistics

Digital Edition

Scb home issue 27

2020 Supply Chain Innovator of the Year

VIEW THE LATEST ISSUE

Case Studies

  • LSP Saves Customer $1.5 Million a Year With MPO Global Inbound Management

  • Auto Supplier Wows Key Client Using riskmethods Supply Chain Savvy

  • Integrating Shipping and Compliance Saves Conglomerate Millions

  • How a Consumer Goods Giant Upped Its On-Time Delivery Performance

  • LSP Wows Global Client, Quickly Advances to Become End-to-End Provider

Visit Our Sponsors

6 River Systems ArcBest Armada
aThingz BluJay Burris Logistics
DSC Logistics DCSA (Digital Container Shipping Association) DHL Resilience360
Genpact GEP Honeywell Intelligrated
Infor Logility Magnitude Software
MPO Old Dominion Oliver Wight
OpenSky Ports America Purolator
QAD Precision Red Classic Riskmethods
TGW Systems Transportation Insights Watson Land Company
Westfalia Technologies Workjam Yang Ming
  • More From SCB
    • Featured Content
    • Video Library
    • Think Tank Blog
    • SupplyChainBrain Podcast
    • Whitepapers
    • Webinars
  • Digital Offerings
    • Digital Issue
    • Subscribe
    • Manage Your Subscription
    • Newsletters
  • Resources
    • Events Calendar
    • SCB's Great Supply Chain Partners
    • Supplier Directory
    • Case Study Showcase
    • Supply Chain Innovation Awards
    • 100 Great Partners Form
  • SCB Corporate
    • Advertise on SCB.COM
    • About Us
    • Privacy Policy
    • Contact Us
    • Data Sharing Opt-Out

All content copyright © 2016 - 2018 Keller International Publishing Corp All rights reserved. No reproduction, transmission or display is permitted without the written permissions of Keller International Publishing Corp

Design, CMS, Hosting & Web Development :: ePublishing