Industrial Supply-Chain & Logistics

Adding value and flow to the management of upstream and downstream products and services.

How do African businesses in the 21^st century cope with demand and supply uncertainty? How do African businesses build and optimize their supply chain organizations? And which supply chain strategy and planning options can African businesses best employ?

At Gracie Davis we apply deep and unique functional expertise to help our clients overcome typical supply chain challenges. We tailor our Supply Chain Management (SCM) principles to the specific characteristics of the sector that our clients operate in. From ‘manufacturing’ to ‘petroleum’, or from ‘commodities’ to ‘construction’, Gracie Davis SCM professionals take fresh and innovative ideas from one sector, and if applicable, apply them to lift the performance of our clients in other sectors. We offer practical support through a range of proven transformation approaches and supply chain solutions that are designed to achieve both short-term impact and long-term sustainability.

Over the last decade, Gracie Davis SCM consultants have worked hard at developing a well-healed network of international business partners in various industries across the globe. We have partnered with numerous industry-leading Supply-Chain & Logistics manufacturers to facilitate the delivery of innumerable products and services of special interest to many of our African (particularly West-African) clients, engaged in manufacturing and distribution businesses. Said clients are typically interested in the procurement of specialty vehicles such as Bulk Cargo tanker-trailers for cement, sugar, grain, flour, mixers; or tankers for transporting liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), compressed natural gas (CNG), diesel (AGO), trucks, vans & buses, oil & gas storage/piping units etc.

All our partners have rock solid reputations and are original equipment manufacturers (OEM) with the joint capacity to produce over 295 different types of customized industrial products that cut across the industrial supply chain spectrum. Working together with our partners, we are able to investigate production and technological drivers of critical footprint decisions such as – economies of scale, specialization benefits of production technology, and the tailoring of production process technologies to local conditions.

As a consequence of the strong relationships forged with our partners over the years, Gracie Davis maintains leveraged access to an innumerable number of industrial products and services (as mentioned above); and we have repeatedly been able to bring our partners over to our client’s position, in terms of being able to consistently furnish ‘best bargain’ prices for industrial products and services desired by our clients. Furthermore, we provide scenario evaluations that range from simple logistics scenarios to complex optimization models of entire value chains, including impact of supply chain elements like inventory and international trade-related costs.

Gracie Davis SCM professionals provide supply chain management services in:

Supply Chain Strategy and Planning – Strategic supply-chain planning falls in the middle of a decision-making spectrum that has ‘business-strategy formulation’ at one end and ‘tactical supply-chain planning’ at the other. With a focus on fundamental changes in manufacturing and distribution capacity, strategic supply-chain planning is about identifying what should be done to enhance supply chain performance, supported by tangible practical details as to how this can be achieved. In contrast, tactical supply-chain planning is short or medium-term in scope and impact, with supply-chain planners using past demand to make forecasts for the near term and adjusting these forecasts on the basis of market intelligence and research.

Gracie Davis SCM specialists identify, quantify and assist in planning our clients’ supply chain optimization and transformation. We identify what sort of SCM planning – strategic or tactical – best suit our clients and the issue being at hand.  Through comparative analysis we define areas where our clients need to do things differently, and articulate a road map for getting there.

Logistics – Through strategic planning, information technology advances and re-engineering processes, Gracie Davis Logistics Consultants improve our client’s supply chain performance by improving customer service, operations, developing cost-effective solutions for their supply chain process, recommending appropriate warehousing options, packaging, material handling and other distribution issues.

Based on a thorough analysis of our clients SCM logistics problems, Gracie Davis consultants can implement new technologies in warehouse management, materials management, transportation management and reverse logistics that will result in net cost reduction and improved logistics management for our clients. We specialize in sourcing and securing suppliers who work with us to provide cost-effective solutions (products and services) for our clients, helping them increase productivity in the process.

Procurement – As a consequence of the strong relationships forged with our numerous industry partners over the years, Gracie Davis has repeatedly been able to bring our partners (especially those in manufacturing) over to our client’s position, in terms of being able to consistently furnish ‘best bargain’ prices for products desired by our clients. We have consistently shown that we can improve our clients procurement operations to achieve better pricing, greater efficiency, tighter spending controls and improved service levels.

Whether it is bulk transportations vehicles from China, amphibious exploratory equipment from Norway, or commodities from Brazil; our sound and well-tested supply-chain management system integrates all of our service & product partners and suppliers into an efficient and optimized inquiry-to-delivery process for our clients; achieving a 100% integrated management platform of service suppliers from all over the globe, in the process.