Towards a more efficient Supply Chain : A study at Bombardier Rail Control Solutions with a focus on centralizing their Supply Chain

Abstract: To remain competitive in today’s business environment, companies must continuously become more efficient and improve their business. This can be achieved through developing and streamlining a company's Supply Chain.   Bombardier Rail Control Solutions (RCS) has grown mainly through acquisitions, however, the acquisitions have not been integrated in a good way into their existing Supply Chain. This has result in a decentralized Supply Chain where RCS’s different sites are using different ERP systems. The consequence of this has led to an increased manual workload, a lack of visibility between sites and an inefficient Supply Chain.   The goal of this project has been to identify how Bombardier RCS can develop and streamline its Supply Chain by centralizing different parts of it, e.g. ERP systems and different processes. To achieve this, there has been a close collaboration with Bombardier through the project through interviews, meetings, discussions together with studying literature. In addition, presentations have been presented continuously to ensure that the results have followed Bombardier RCS’s goal. RCS’s historical data has also been analyzed.   Based on the above-mentioned methods, several problems have been solved and improvement areas have been identified. Issues that have been solved include centralizing master data and how to centralize processes at Bombardier RCS. Improvement areas include the benefits of centralizing Bombardier RCS Supply Chain and the advantages with a central warehouse. Bombardier RCS should also centralize their entire ERP system to enable global MRP calculations and so on. Furthermore, it has been identified that there is an improvement potential regarding Bombardier RCS's delivery performance, which can be solved by either integrating RCS’s Supply Chain or/and through keeping products on stock.   The conclusion is that Bombardier RCS should centralize their Supply Chain step by step since it is impossible to centralize everything at once. By centralizing the Supply Chain, this can reduce manual workload, create visibility between different sites, contribute to a better delivery performance and streamline the Supply Chain. By doing this, Bombardier RCS can get more competitive, which can contribute to a continued strong market position in the industry.