Kimberly Clark’s company was founded in 1924 in the United States.

The company has

manufactories in 30 countries and sold in more than 170 countries worldwide. The products
include facial tissue, hand towels, wipes and facial cleansing. As of 2012, the company’s well-
known products; Kleenex maintains 46% of tissue market segment. The company also concerned
about the customer-oriented supply chain by improving distribution efficiencies, reducing
transportation costs and carbon footprint.

1. Workflow Processes

Kimberly-Clark used to rely on historical data to predict their supply chain management.
The new logistics workflow process of Kimberly Clark’s company starts with their customers.
The company needs to match its shipments with actual demand, so they need to use the data from
their client POS system in order to manage the replenishments. Then the manufacturer uses the
software that utilizes sales data to generate shipment forecasting (James A., 2013) . When the
order passes through Kimberly-Clark's SAP order management function which is responsible for
the order collection, validation and fulfilling the information required for customer orders. The
output from this process is the document that can help to reduce the order errors and maximize
customer satisfactions. Pass the order information through the transportation plan and stock
information management to check the readiness of products. When the packages are ready to
ship, they will be passed through the distribution center and ship to the customers.

2. Policy on location of warehouse

Since Kimberly Clark’s company is a global business, it has to select the location of the
warehouse carefully. The basic needs of the location are linked with the infrastructural facilities
that related to the full-looped logistics process of the company. For example, the developed
transportation routes like roads, railway stations, airports, seaports. The availability of electricity
and water supply are also important to the supply chain as well. The company has 36 based
countries with offices and manufacturing. 

The company used to have their facility networks around 70 centers with a number of
overflow facilities and many of them were not located near the company's major markets.
Therefore, Kimberly-Clark needs to reorganize its supply chain network into larger, strategically
located closer to their key customer markets. Moreover, to reduce the truck trips, the company
needs to bring the critical supply chain functions such as the co-packing operations, assembling
products operations under the same place to reduce time and cost of transportation (Mark J.,
2008).
The result after placing warehouses closer to its customers was the number of order
frequency increases and the transportation time was reduced.

3. Inventory management strategy

The company set its strategy to connect the supply chain to the store shelf and serve the
specific needs of its retail and grocery customers or it is called demand-driven supply chain
(Robert J., 2013).
 Kimberly-Clark invested in systems that explore the retailer data and predict the
purchasing patterns. The company hoped that the inventory at multiple retail locations would be
balanced. It is all about data analysis including metrics like total inventory levels that feed into
the system and can prevent over-ordering with specific stores. 

4. Collaborative arrangement between supply chains and partners

In order to plan strategically and truly demand-driven supply chain, Kimberly-Clark

needs to corporate with their strategic clients. The information about actual consumer purchases
is what it wants. Therefore, the company conducts the pilot project in North America with Terra
Technology and its three potential retailers that provided the purchasing data from their point-of-
sale system. The company uses the forecast in demand-planning and shipment-planning for those
stores. It also uses the information to guide internal decisions and planning as well.

5. Information and technology

In its quest to achieve a demand-driven supply chain, Kimberly-Clark turned to software

that generates shipment forecasts based on point-of-sale data (James A., 2013). The demand-
driven forecasts, which are more accurate than the historical sales forecasts, let the manufacturer
better serve those customers but with much less inventory and reduce the errors of forecasting.
The company adopts the analytics software that allows the company to have the forecasts
at a moment’s notice (Heather C., 2012). The software’s algorithm processes data provided by
retailers and feeds those data into the solution’s engine daily. It also helps the business to scale
their inventory up or down depending on the market demand and immediate need. The result is
not only limited to the forecasting but also identifies the predictive inputs that align with the
business process. For example, the data from POS and the actual orders would predict and show
in different results.
Reference

James A. Cooke, 2013, “Kimberly-Clark connects its supply chain to the store shelf”,
Retrieved from https://www.supplychainquarterly.com/topics/Strategy/20130306-kimberly-
clark-connects-its-supply-chain-to-the-store-shelf/

Mark Jamison, July 10, 2008, “Kimberly-Clark's Supply Chain Network of the Future”, 
Retrieved from https://www.industryweek.com/the-
economy/environment/article/21941651/kimberlyclarks-supply-chain-network-of-the-future

Robert J. Bowman, October 7, 2013, “Kimberly-Clark's Epic Demand-Driven Journey”,

Retrieved from https://www.supplychainbrain.com/blogs/1-think-tank/post/17440-kimberly-
clarks-epic-demand-driven-journey

Heather Clancy, November 10, 2012, “Kimberly-Clark Makes Sense of Demand”, 

Retrieved from https://consumergoods.com/kimberly-clark-makes-sense-demand