James S. (Steve) Garrett brings a fierce tenacity to everything he does. It has helped him earn two degrees while working and raising a family, fight kidney cancer, and serve as a change agent at Timex Corp.
As vice president of global supply chain and logistics, Garrett, who speaks with an accent that reflects his Arkansas roots, is a supply chain expert with 25 years of experience who joined Timex in 1995. Since joining Timex, he has served in various positions, including project manager of an installation team for a planning solution from i2 Technologies Inc. (Dallas) at the company's largest production facility in Cebu, The Philippines.
For the past few years, Garrett has spearheaded an effort that will ship product directly from its assembly facility in Cebu to retailers. In addition to Timex's Direct Ship Initiative, Garrett oversees the distribution center in North Little Rock, U.S. customs compliance, system development for manufacturing and distribution, forecasting and global procurement. These operations involve six direct reports and 200 employees. Timex produces dozens of watch styles and relies on many different types of packaging. The same watch is often packaged differently for different customers. Timex would often have the right watches in inventory, but not in the right box.
MAKING 3W A REALITY
The Direct Ship Initiative grew out of what now-retired Timex chairman Fred Olsen dubbed "3W," a shorthand term for three weeks from raw material to watch on the retail shelf. Under the Direct Ship Initiative, watches are not packaged until the order is in hand and then the watches ship from the manufacturing facility to store door. "This avoids all the ... inventory problems," says Garrett, adding, "We're not quite at the 3W level, but we expect to go from ... finished watches to ... delivery 8,000 miles away in 13 days."
The effort on direct ship really began in earnest in April 1998. The first enabling technology, i2's Factory Planner module, was installed in 2000. A warehouse management system (WMS) from Provia Software (Grand Rapids, MI) was implemented in 2002. Since the Cebu plant was designed for bulk shipping to Timex distribution centers, infrastructure was needed to transition from shipping 50 of one watch style per carton to several styles per carton. This required a new building and sorting system in Cebu, as well as an interface between the Provia WMS and the sorting equipment. The Provia system also links to an enterprise resource planning system from Oracle Corp. (Redwood Shores, CA), which handles order management.
BREAKING DOWN BARRIERS
"It's difficult to ... convince internal groups that having product 8,000 miles away will be okay. It takes tenacity to move forward," says Garrett. Interim steps to demonstrate that the delivery, fill rates and finances of direct ship work include a two-year-old program that ships 50-watch packs from Cebu to the Wal-Mart Stores distribution center in Bentonville, AR, bypassing their usual stop at the Timex DC in North Little Rock.
ON-TIME DELIVERY
The final pieces of the puzzle include negotiation of shipping agreements to avoid drop charges and installation of Provia's ViaView module, which will communicate with Timex's shipping partners, GeoLogistics (Santa Ana, CA) and UPS (Atlanta). Postponing packaging until order receipt and eliminating bulk shipments to Timex's U.S. distribution center should cut inventory costs by about one-third and generate a 33% reduction in annual operating costs. Eventually, the program will enable Timex to direct-ship most of its product from Cebu and devote regional warehouses to Internet order fulfillment, repair and service.