Industry News
September 2009
Herbalife proves it’s Excellence with ‘Supply Chain of the Year’ Award
HERBALIFE Europe announced in June 2009 that it has won two awards at the Supply Chain Distinction Awards, including the coveted overall ‘Supply Chain of the Year’ award for its ‘breathing factory’ project. The award was given after Herbalife’s Venray-based supply chain team demonstrated a particularly strong ability to place its customers’ needs at the heart of its operation.
The Supply Chain of the Year award was given to recognise the evening’s ‘winner of winners’ and acknowledged Herbalife’s outstanding achievements in realising corporate growth and taking its business to the next level.
Martin Bartlett, VP Finance and Distributor Operations for Herbalife, commented, “This is the first time a direct selling company has won this award, which makes it important for both ourselves and the industry as a whole. The nature and dynamism of direct selling clearly demands innovation and excellence and this is where we come from. Furthermore, this award also shows our Distributors that they are supported by individuals and services of unparalleled quality, including one of the world’s leading supply chain operations.”
Herbalife was also awarded the ‘Supply Chain Skills’ award for maximising value and efficiency levels through proactive and innovative recruitment and training of the workforce. Working with its partner Olympia, Herbalife has instigated a combination of trained, long-term but temporary staff and full-time employees to overcome one if its biggest challenges, that of predicting workforce requirements.
Wil-Jan Bekkers, Herbalife senior manager for distribution operations explains how this works, “Herbalife’s direct selling model means that the business often faces challenges that more traditional sales businesses avoid. Our customers are our Distributors and our Sales Team, and they don’t forecast product sales because they don’t need to. This makes our own production planning very difficult and we have to ride unpredictable waves with peaks and troughs in product demand. Instead of trying to force some kind of pattern onto this for our own purposes, our approach has been to accept them, and find a way to deal with them. This is what ‘breathing factory’ is all about.”
