Mobil Oil Streamlines its Lubricants Business with Manugistics Software
After using Manugistics supply chain management solutions for only 18 months, Mobil Oil's U.S. Lubricant Business has streamlined manufacturing and significantly improved customer service while lowering inventory. In particular, says the Rockville, Md. software company, Mobil has been able to better manage its complex supply chain for four key lines of business, resulting in significant savings across multiple plants.
"Mobil has a significant competitive advantage in the petroleum products market because of the quality of our products and the technical expertise that we provide," said Jim Sheahan, network capacity and logistics specialist, Mobil. "But, if we can't get the right product at the right point to meet our customers' requirements, none of that matters. We knew that with the right supply chain management system, we could improve our customer service, lower our costs, and leverage our competitive advantage.
"When choosing supply chain management software, we focused on three key areas: software functionality, vendor stability, and ease of integration with other functions such as our transaction systems and manufacturing execution systems (MES). Manugistics demonstrated leadership in each of these areas," said Sheahan. "In addition, we were confident that Manugistics would continue to develop advanced scheduling functionality to meet our increasingly complex manufacturing environment."
Mobil's U.S. Lubricant Business serves four key markets: industrial, automotive, base oil, and special products. Its domestic business represents about 400 MM gal/yr of oil, across all four lines of business and results in 1,600 different package combinations. Manugistics is used for planning in six primary locations, three of which are production plants and three of which are distribution centers.
Mobil has a complex, multistage manufacturing environment, which involves two processes: simultaneous in-line blending and kettle blending, which is sequential. Its manufacturing schedules are constrained based on the size and characteristics of the tanks used to store the finished product. Manugistics Advanced Manufacturing Scheduling (AMS) provides Mobil with the capability to customize its production based on the characteristics of those tanks. In addition, AMS enables Mobil to schedule make-to-order items just in time while providing more flexibility in scheduling make-to-stock items. Mobil also uses Manugistics Demand Planning to improve forecasting and Manugistics Supply Planning to support replenishment planning and control material movements between plants.
"Our next step will be to use Manugistics to connect with our suppliers for improved replenishment," said Sheahan. "Our most expensive components are additives, so if we can provide accurate consumption information more quickly to our additive suppliers, we can help stabilize our ordering pattern, improve our relationship with them, and ultimately drive dollars to the bottom line."
A vendor of supply chain management tools, Manugistics offers the Synchronized Supply Chain Management Solution to assist managers in making the right decisions involving product demand, supply, manufacturing scheduling, and transportation.