About

Starting Semester: Fall 2024
Assigned: No
Location: Atlanta

HD Supply

Client Profile

Supplies, Solutions & Savings—All From One Source



HD Supply has more than 40 years of experience supporting our customers with leadership positions in maintenance, repair, and operations (MRO). With 40+ distribution centers spread across 25 states, HD Supply provides an expansive offering of high-quality, name-brand, and proprietary products.

Project Description

HD Supply imports approximately 10,000 containers a year through our direct import Supply Chain to support customer demand. Each week our inventory planning and replenishment teams are creating purchase orders, with a production lead time ranging anywhere from 30-90 days from purchase order create date to the cargo ready date. The goal is to order full containers from our suppliers which helps optimize ordering patterns, as well as our ocean freight spend. Ocean containers are either shipped as in 20' or 40' container with the goal being to fill each container to its maximum capacity so we are using all the space in a container while not wasting space. On average, our suppliers are utilizing about 80% of our container space. Our top 5 vendors are shipping at an average of 91% container utilization, while our 5 worst performing vendors are at 51% container utilization.



Part of our import strategy is utilizing Consolidation freight stations (CFS) if we have multiple suppliers in proximity with partial container volumes to aggregate up to a full containers. This helps reduce inventory orderings needs with improving container utilization. This avoids rounding up too much and pushing excess inventory into our network that may not be needed. Our distribution centers have issues with space so excess ordering/inventory will not decrease progress at our facilities.



The goal of this project would be to optimize HD Supply's replenishment logic to improve our container utilization across all suppliers. The group will partner with internal partners and suppliers to determine the best approach in optimizing our ordering patterns. This will give the students an understanding of global import supply chain and experience working with cross functional teams to support company operations.

Skills

Optimization / Process improvement
Strong Communication skills
Team players
Inquisitive personality / self-starter
Problem solving through partnership with others