1.

1 Origin of the Report

Project Report is one of the most important topics of our 4th year B.B.A course. Now the world is
competitive. So we have to earn the knowledge about the critical environment of business. This type
of research report helps the student to acquire practical knowledge about the modern business
organization. It will also help the student to be an effective manager in future. Supply chains
encompass the companies and the business activities needed to design make deliver and use a product
or service. Businesses depend on their supply chains to provide them with that they need to survive
and thrive. This is the project report I have prepared as a requirement for the BBA program of
National University. I was collected data from the HR manager and SC Manager. During the
Preparing these report, had the opportunity to develop my concept about Unilever and there entire
supply chain process.

Supply Chain (SC)

A supply chain is a network between a company and its suppliers to produce and distribute a
specific product to the final buyer. This network includes different activities, people, entities,
information, and resources. The supply chain also represents the steps it takes to get the product
or service from its original state to the customer.
A supply chain involves a series of steps involved to get a product or service to the customer.
The steps include moving and transforming raw materials into finished products, transporting those
products, and distributing them to the end user. The entities involved in the supply chain include
producers, vendors, warehouses, transportation companies, distribution centers, and retailers.
The elements of a supply chain include all the functions that start with receiving an order to
meeting the customer's request. These functions include product development, marketing,
operations, distribution, finance, and customer service.
As mentioned above, supply chain management is a very important part of the business process.
There are many different links in this chain that require a lot of skill and expertise. When supply
chain management is done effectively, it can lower a company's overall costs and boost
profitability. If one link breaks down, it affects the rest of the chain and can be costly to a
company.

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Supply Chain Management (SCM)
Supply chain management is the management of the flow of goods and services and includes all
processes that transform raw materials into final products. It involves the active streamlining of a
business's supply-side activities to maximize customer value and gain a competitive advantage in
the marketplace. SCM represents an effort by suppliers to develop and implement supply chains
that are as efficient and economical as possible. Supply chains cover everything from
production to product development to the information systems needed to direct these
undertakings.

1.2 Objectives
 To utilize my theoretical knowledge in realm of marketing world to understand the
complex/ competitive market situations and gain experience with the organization.
 To Understand the Procedures of Unilever Supply Chain Process.
 To Find the Effective Supply chain Factors.
 To evaluate the impact of SCM.
 To analysis the SWOT of Unilever.
 To Find out Problems of Unilever Group.
 To give recommendation of these problems

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1.3 Methodology

A variety of research methods were employed to fully capture the performance of Unilever of their
sustainable agriculture practice. Unilever was used as an in-depth case study for the thesis. Given
the nature of the data made available from Unilever’s suppliers, both qualitative and quantitative
assessments were carried out. Descriptive statistical techniques were used to carry out a quality
assessment of the data. Furthermore interviews were also carried out with key persons in the
relevant departments in Unilever, and the businesses that they are working Collaboration with
to design the latest version of their Sustainable Agriculture self-assessment.

This research is prepared both with primary data and secondary data.

Both primary data and secondary data were collected to organize this report. But the report is
basically emphasized on secondary data.

Primary Data were collected from the informal discussion with the manager of the
organization.

Secondary Data was collected from different sources e.g. annual report of the organization, web
sites, reports, prospectus, journals, newspaper etc.

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1.4 Scope
To conduct these study I have gather from various sources though they are all secondary and then I
make all the formation to make these report. I also used various journals and other r research paper to
get the concept about these terms.

1.5 Limitation

Although I have got co-operation from manager of Unilever, the major limitations that the study
faced during the study period are spot lighted below:

 The major problem I have faced is lack of understanding.

 Unilever & square one is international another one is local but they are so busy so, it is
very much tough for me to allocate time for collecting data and taking interview of the
manager.
 As most of the data is collected from secondary sources, there was very little opportunity
to analysis data.
 Time constraint is one of the problems, for which it has been difficult for us to gather enough
knowledge.

 Intense Political instability is one of the prominent problems that we face while preparing
the term paper.

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 Chapter 2

Company Overview of
Unilever Group

5
A Detail Overview of Unilever Group is included here:

2.1 History
Unilever Bangladesh is a company that has its own history intrinsically built with the development
of our nation and our culture. It has been part of the Bangladeshi household since the 19th
century with the same intention of bringing cleanliness and convenience to households as we do
today. Back then Sunlight soap was marketed through Lever Brothers India limited throughout the
undivided India. Later on, Lever Brothers Pakistan limited started its operation in Bangladesh on
a larger scale. In 1964, our soap manufacturing facility was setup in Kalurghat, Chittagong.

With time it gradually evolved and diversified into manufacturing personal products like skin
care creams, toothpastes, shampoos, detergent powders, and so on. Accumulating manufacturing
experience over 40 years, we have a legacy of leading the market with international brands
offered at affordable prices. Today, with 13 different brands in 8 different categories, Unilever
Bangladesh stands as one of the most progressive partner in development for the Government of
Bangladesh.

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 1964-1972

Productions started off with Sunlight soap and Lifebuoy soap. After the war of independence in

1971, Bangladesh became an independent country. At this time, Lever Brothers Bangladesh Ltd.
was constituted with Unilever owning 60.75% shares and the Government of Bangladesh owning
the remaining 39.25% shares.

1972-1980

Post liberation period evidenced accelerated growth for the company. Demand started rising and
the company continued its mission to meet consumer needs by producing quality soaps
Introducing Lux - the beauty soap and Wheel. Launched in 1972 Wheel entered the
merchandised laundry category, traditionally dominated by cottage soaps. It appealed to the
consumers with unique care benefits for hand and fabric, a generic weakness in cottage soaps. It
gradually became the secret ally of Bangladeshi women by extending the caring hand to ease her
daily laundry chores.

1980-1990

The early eighties witnessed expansion of the company through diversification. Calibrating
direction, the mission now included enhancing quality of life through other personal products
aspiring aestheticism like sparkling white teeth, fresh breath, beautiful hair, and glowing skin. A
Personal Product Plant was established to manufacture shampoo, toothpaste, and skin care
creams. Sun silk Shampoo, Close-up Tooth paste, Fair and Lovely for skin care and Vim for dish
washing was produced and marketed to bring great international and regional formulations to
Bangladeshi households at affordable prices. 1989 heralded the beginning of a fairy tale story –
the initiation of LUX photogenic contest that brought the real life experience of glamour, fame
and fortune to the doorsteps of young girls throughout the country.
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1990-1998

In the early 90's Unilever Bangladesh entered the tea-based beverage market introducing Lipton
Taaza, Lever's flagship packet tea brand, with the objective to be the most preferred tea of the
Bangladeshi consumers. World renowned Pond’s cream and Pepsodent – the dental hygiene
expert began to be manufactured from our Kalurghat factory. Washing drudgeries of the busy
homemakers were washed away with the introduction of Wheel washing powder and Surf Excel
for premium wash. In 1996-1997, our manufacturing facility owned and run by a third party was
set up outside Dhaka for wheel washing powder. With formulations suitable for local conditions,
the washing powder concept brought about a huge revolution in fabric washing habits in the
country.

1998-2004

These are the golden years in the history of Unilever Bangladesh as the company turned around
from severe losses due to competitive backlash - to a company with 6 years of consecutive
growth. Around the end of November 2001, our new personal products factory “Sankalp” in
Kalurghat started production which helped us meet the market needs from a shift on our
dependence on soaps to diverse personal grooming categories.

This is also the era when Unilever Bangladesh introduced many exciting new products such as
Pond’s face wash to end soap related facial skin woes or Lipton double chamber tea bags for
more zest in our tea cups and the markets responded enthusiastically. In 2001, we brought about
a new excitement in the kitchen care sector with the introduction of Vim bar, the dish cleaning
soap – a concept of convenience and common household habits combined together.

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In 2002 Rexona deodorant entered the market building in awareness about body odor problems
and creating a new personal grooming habit in the country. The company’s soap formulations
changed radically during this time to bring in world class standards – without any price rises.
Lifebuoy, the health brand has moved from just the hard-working men’s soap to reminding one,
of the bond of love that binds a family in a healthy circle, free of germs and sickness. In 2004, as
a new variant, bringing in the goodness of Neem – an Ayurvedic medical marvel, Lifebuoy has
reinstated its earnest Endeavour to be ahead of consumer’s needs.

In the span of these six years, we gathered many accolades (link to awards page) to certify our
fast paced move towards world class performance. Unilever Bangladesh had a journey towards
adding new impetus to its trade marketing and today our products are available in 90% of the
households in Bangladesh.

In a companywide move to come out from behind the great brands and be known as Unilever
worldwide, Lever Brothers Bangladesh limited officially changed its name to Unilever Bangladesh
in December 2004.

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2.2 Unilever Vision

“To make cleanliness a commonplace; to lessen work for women; to foster health and contribute
to personal attractiveness, in order that life may be more enjoyable and rewarding for the people
who use the products. “

2.3 Unilever Mission

Unilever's mission is to add Vitality to life. They meet every day needs for nutrition; hygiene and
personal care with brands that help people feel good, look good and get more out of life.

2.4 Unilever Goals

The goals of UBL are:

 To manufacture high-standard products.

 Promoting products to the highest extent.

 Producing large volume to achieve production cost economies.

 Enabling quality products to be sold out at obtainable prices.

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2.5 Objectives of the company

The objectives of UBL are as the bellow:

 To manufactured high-standard product.

 Promoting product to the highest extent.
 Producing large volume to achieve production cost economies.
 Enabling quality products to be sold out at obtainable prices.
 To achieve and continue growth in sales
 To continuously develop human resources

2.6 Strategies of the company

Unilever Bangladesh consistently focuses on growth and risk minimization through product
diversification and increasing the market share of existing products by responding to changing
customer needs

2.7 Organizational Structure

The activities are organized around 5(five) different departments. However, the departments are
headed by Directors. The departments are:

1. Customer Management Department(Sales & Distribution)

2. Brands and Development Department
3. Supply Chain Department(both production & distribution logistics)
4. Human Resources Department(HR)
5. Finance, IT & Legal Department(Finance)

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 Chapter 3

Analysis & Evaluation

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3.1 Supply Chain Model of 'Unilever Group'
The business strategy of Unilever is to achieve the highest profitability, growth, and return-on-
assets. It has sold many plants and has had to put in place processes to coordinate with the third
parties that own them, complicating its processes to meet its asset goals. Unilever’s operating model
has three components: quality, service, and cost. While keeping its global branding, the company’s
strategy is to have local supply chain for local demand to minimize complexity.

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3.2 Distribution and Selling

 Unilever’s products are generally sold through its sales force and through independent brokers,
agents and distributors to chain, wholesale, co-operative and independent grocery accounts, food
service distributors and institutions. Products are distributed through distribution centres,
Satellite warehouses, company operated and public storage facilities, depots and other facilities.

 Home and Personal Care in North America (HPCNA) has also developed distribution centers for
third-party manufacturers where products are collected to create heavier more efficient loads to
re-supply customer distribution centers.

 Home & Personal Care business in Europe (HPCE) selects hauliers on cost, performance and
environmental impact.

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3.3 E-Procurement
Unilever meets two of the key corporate strategic thrusts: World Class Supply Chain and
Simplification by implementing NPI strategic sourcing and e-procurement enablement. These are
two of the six thrusts for implementation of world-class supply management:

 Implement executive buying

 Attract, develop and retain world-class buyers
 Professionalize NPI sourcing
 Enable e-procurement globally
 Accelerate and leverage simplification
 Drive information and measurement

Aggregation of demand and access to new suppliers through real time partnership has enabled
Unilever to improve efficiencies of the extended supply chain. Workflow automation has helped in
simplification of the internal processes, which has created scale for Unilever to leverage. For
Unilever e-procurement represents the opportunity for sustaining the benefits gained from strategic
sourcing through information, compliance and business process simplification. There are four ways
of defining the benefits of e-procurement:

 A structural enabler for re-engineering the NPI procurement process enabling further benefits
to be gained through strategic sourcing, business simplification, visibility of total spend and
effective integration routes both internally, e.g. ERP, and externally.

 The means for conducting electronic business upstream using lowest cost links, i.e. cXML.

 A business model prompting re-evaluation of the mechanisms for connecting customers,

enterprises and suppliers (incl. Exchanges and Marketplaces)

 A single front-end interface both externally to suppliers and internally for ERP and other areas
of integration
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Strategically e-procurement complements Unilever's overall e-initiatives. Learning from these and
the strategic sourcing expertise gained during implementation, has improved business ability for the
future e-procurement of both NPI and direct materials. Workflow automation and simplification to
global sourcing processes has resulted in increased productivity and reduction of transaction costs.
Data made available can then be applied to harmonize items purchased, rationalize needs with
suppliers and monitor and reduce usage, thus further increasing Unilever's buying opportunities.

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3.4 Global Supply Chain Management Solutions Providers
In an effort to streamline its daily operations, Unilever has partnered with several technology and
logistics providers on a worldwide basis. Some of the major providers are:

Technology Providers:

 Mindtree Consulting
 Ariba
 Toll-MTS
 Finmatica
 SAP
 Manugistics Group Inc.
 SSA Global
 Vastera Inc.

Logistics Providers:

 DSC Logistics
 Excel
 Transplace

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3.5 Supply Chain Strategies of Unilever
Unilever’s logistics operations present perhaps the biggest opportunity to streamline its supply chain
and boost the company’s ability to achieve its lofty growth goals. The company is in the process of
consolidating its nearly 30 warehouses down to five massive distribution centers capable of shipping
customer orders within a day’s time. Much of that consolidation is a recognition that retailers are
adopting zero-inventory policies, which require an optimal use of flow-through and cross docking
in the warehouses. To increase asset utilization, lower inventories and improve service, Unilever
adopted collaborative planning, forecasting and replenishment (CPFR) relationships with some retail
customers. Thanks to those CPFR efforts, Unilever has been able to achieve 10% inventory
reduction, 10% forecast accuracy improvement and 5% increase in sales due to better on-the-shelf
availability. According to Fred Berkheimer, vice president of logistics for Unilever Home and
Personal Care, since orders are often impacted by factors that cannot be projected, collaboration
between manufacturer and retailer is necessary to increase forecast accuracy. “High accuracy in
replenishment can only be achieved through order forecast collaboration and extended supply chain
visibility,” says Berkheimer. Today, Unilever’s logistics department is experiencing include
improved relationships with retailers, better planning, improved on-time performance and more
efficiency in handling promotions.

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Path to Growth
In 2000, the company launched a five-year Path to Growth initiative to drop the total number of
brands down to 400 by the end of 2004, achieve 5%-6% annual sales growth and a 16% increase in
operating margins. Three years ago, the company was running hundreds of manufacturing sites
under an umbrella of 300 operating companies. Path to Growth mandates a reduction in sites to 150
locations. Unilever's supply savings programme is one of the cornerstones within the Path to Growth
Strategy towards the implementation of a world-class supply chain. Through Path to Growth,
Unilever’s five-year strategic plan announced in February 2000, the company has greatly
strengthened its business.

Unilever's Path to Growth Strategy

=> Reconnect with the consumer - to anticipate the future

=> Focus the brand portfolio - reflecting consumer appeal and growth potential
=> Pioneer new channels - to be in the right place at the right time
=> Develop a world-class supply chain - simplifying sourcing, manufacture, and marketing
=> Simplify the business - reducing complexity

Significant progress has been made towards the achievement of its strategic ambitions with a much
more focused brand portfolio and faster growth in the leading brands, while the major reductions in
costs and streamlining the asset base have resulted in sharply higher margins and improved capital
efficiency.

Under the so-called "Path to Growth" strategy, Unilever first reorganized into two units—foods and
nonfoods—in each major geographic area. Path to Growth also calls for Unilever, by 2004, to cut its
collection of brands to 400, from a high of 1,600 two years ago. That core of 400 strong sellers—
which includes SlimFast, Dove, Ben & Jerry's ice cream and Lipton tea—is expected to make up
90% to 95% of Unilever's total sales, up from 84% today. So far, 700 slow-moving brands, plus an
incongruous industrial dry cleaning business, have been sold. Five hundred more are still to be
divested, including a group of oils and spreads put up for sale last month.

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Over the period 2000 – 2003, Unilever has generated over €16 billion of un-geared free cash flow.
The company has also successfully integrated Bestfoods, one of the largest acquisitions ever made
in the industry. With one more year to go under Path to Growth this creates a strong basis for the
next phase of company’s development.

"Chipping of "Goods" Initiative – RFID

Unilever's Supply Chain Innovation team wants to understand how better tracking of products will
affect manufacturing plants, distribution centers and stores. Unilever anticipates that manufacturing
plants will have to reduce the length of product runs and make other refinements to react more
quickly to changes in demand. And retailers will have to provide more timely information to
suppliers.

In continuation to this strategy, on July 29, 2002, Unilever launched its third phase of a supply chain-
tracking project under Britain's "Chipping of "Goods" initiative. The company planned to put RFID
tags on 30,000 six-packs of Lynx deodorant and monitor them as they move from a manufacturing
plant to three Safeway stores. As part of the initiative, Unilever's U.K. home and personal care
products company, Lever Fabergé, is putting RFID tags on six-packs of Lynx deodorant at its factory
in Leeds. After the individual cans of deodorant are made, they are vacuum-sealed and a small white
label with an RFID tag in it is affixed to the package.

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3.6 SCM Technologies in Unilever’s Business Model

Unilever's overall technology vision includes a strong push from client-server to thin-client
architecture, Web technologies that bring the company closer to its customers, and business analytics
to make management information easier to access, according to Rick Ballou, IT business-area
director for Unilever Home and Personal Care North America. With a market capitalization of $28
billion, the consumer-products giant reported that its recent IT achievements include the rollout of
business-intelligence software from Hyperion, and "SAP ERP wall-to-wall" as a global standard.
Unilever also has seen significant cost savings from its investment in Ariba's sourcing technology,
which has resulted in a reduction of the office-supply purchasing budget by millions of dollars, and
a consolidation of data centers from 18 to five; eventually, the number will fall to three. A cross-
functional global committee already is working on the shift from desktop client-server to portal
technology. On the B2B front, in addition to its RFID efforts, Unilever is participating in an industry-
wide effort to standardize data elements throughout the supply chain through UCCNet. Unilever has
also expressed their continued interest in CRM. Unilever collaborates on statistical and market
promotion forecasts for key products with a few large customers, using a collaborative system from
Waltham, Mass.-based Syncra Systems Inc. The organization as whole had multiple ERP and CRM
systems from several vendors, and 34 custom-built data warehouses. Unilever currently runs 100
separate, complete SAP enterprise resource-planning systems.

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3.7 SWOT analysis for Unilever Group

Unilever is a company that serves in almost all the continents and over 190 countries of the world.
It has a wide variety of products serving the people of all ages. Based on its core competencies and
strategic outlook its strengths are;

Strengths
 Company operates its operations nearly 190 countries in the world. And they also have 270
manufacturing sites worldwide.
 Strong portfolio of brands and diversified product range.
 Company has more than 400 brands all around the world. Most of the brands known as
multinational brands but some of them operate in some countries and company calls it local
brands.
 More than 13 international brands have contribution in sales more than 1 billion Euros. And
Unilever top 25 brands account for more than 70% of sales
 Company spend huge amount on Research and development worldwide.
 Unilever has 400 brands worldwide. But brands available in market are with different
packaging with different quantities.
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Weakness

Internal attributes of the organization that are harmful to achieving the objective. Unilever has the
following weaknesses out of which the strong competitors like P&G, Nestle and Others

 Strong competitors

Unilever has strong competition worldwide by multinational. E.g. P&G, Rackitt Benckiser,
Nestle, etc these are also the companies that operate worldwide, have big market shares, huge
product line and millions of customers.

 Substitute products

As Unilever operates in more than 100 countries and there are lots of substitute products
available in the local market. Because of product quality and extensive R&D company charge
higher prices for its products but the local products are much cheaper.

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Opportunity

External conditions those are helpful to achieving the objective.

 Health conscious products demand
Now a day's people like to eat healthy food which contains fewer calories and use those products
which will not harm their environment. This gives a good opportunity to Unilever to add more and
more products in its product line.

 Changing life styles

Now people are more aware about innovations because of the media. Company can use changing
life style and increase the demand of the products.

 Emerging new markets

Now a day's new markets are emerging company can expand their business to cover these markets.
Like Russia, Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan.

 Increase production volumes

Unilever can concentrate to increase production volumes and they can try to increase their
availability in the market. By increasing production volumes and availability it is possible to achieve
high demands of products.

 Move operations to undeveloped countries

Company needs to focus to move their production operations in undeveloped countries. Than they
can find cheap labor and save money on operations and they can build a supply chain towards
expensive markets. Then their profitability will be high.

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Threat

External conditions which could do damage to the business's performance.

 Economic downturn

Biggest threat now days are recession. Most of the companies shut their operations or make
redundancies people losing their purchasing power. It has affect all over the world in this
situation coming times will be very crucial for company.

 Environmental effects

Peoples are very conscious about the environment. They don't like to buy products which can
be harmful for the environment. Company needs to focus on how to become environment
friendly. It needs to focus on its environmental friendly products.

 Global competition

The chances of Global competition are growing. New companies are coming with innovation.
If Unilever wants to stay in market they need to focus on innovation to kill competition around
the globe.

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 New local products

New local products are introducing in the market. As the sizes of local companies are small they
have fewer expenses and when they provide cheap product they can grab the market share of
Unilever easily.

 Legal effects

If the government introduces any sort of law for tax or it introduce new limits for production
because the product is harmful for human use or natural environment. It will be very hard to
sell out the product in the market.

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3.8 Supply Chain Business Process Integration

Successful SCM requires a change from managing individual functions to integrating activities into
key supply chain processes.

An example scenario: the purchasing department places orders as requirements become appropriate.
Marketing, responding to customer demand, communicates with several distributors and retailers,
and attempts to satisfy this demand.

Shared information between supply chain partners can only be fully leveraged through process
integration.
Supply chain business process integration involves collaborative work between buyers and suppliers,
joint product development, common systems and shared information.

According to Lambert and Cooper (2000) operating an integrated supply chain requires continuous
information flows, which in turn assist to achieve the best product flows.

However, in many companies, management has reached the conclusion that optimizing the product
flows cannot be accomplished without implementing a process approach to the business. The key
supply chain processes stated by Lambert (2004) are:

 Customer relationship management

 Customer service management
 Demand management
 Order fulfillment
 Manufacturing flow management
 Supplier relationship management
 product Development and commercialization
 Returns management

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One could suggest other key critical supply business processes combining these processes stated by
Lambert such as:

 Customer service Management

 Procurement
 Product development and Commercialization
 Manufacturing flow management/support
 Physical Distribution
 Outsourcing/ Partnerships
 Performance Measurement

a) Customer service management process:

Customer service provides the source of customer information. It also provides the customer with
real-time information on promising dates and product availability through interfaces with the
company's production and distribution operations.

b) Procurement process:
Strategic plans are developed with suppliers to support the manufacturing flow management process
and development of new products. In firms where operations extend globally, sourcing should be
managed on a global basis. The desired outcome is a win-win relationship, where both parties benefit,
and reduction times in the design cycle and product development is achieved. Also, the purchasing
function develops rapid communication systems, such as electronic data interchange (EDI) and
Internet linkages to transfer possible requirements more rapidly. Activities related to obtaining
products and materials from outside suppliers. This requires performing resource planning, supply
sourcing, negotiation, order placement, inbound transportation, storage and handling and quality
assurance. Also, includes the responsibility to coordinate with suppliers in scheduling, supply
continuity, hedging, and research to new sources or programmers.

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c) Product development and commercialization:
Here, customers and suppliers must be united into the product development process, thus to reduce
time to market. As product life cycles shorten, the appropriate products must be developed and
successfully launched in ever shorter time-schedules to remain competitive.

d) Manufacturing flow management process:

The manufacturing process is produced and supplies products to the distribution channels based on
past forecasts. Manufacturing processes must be flexible to respond to market changes, and must
accommodate mass customization. Orders are processes operating on a just-in-time (JIT) basis in
minimum lot sizes. Also, changes in the manufacturing flow process lead to shorter cycle times,
meaning improved responsiveness and efficiency of demand to customers. Activities related to
planning, scheduling and supporting manufacturing operations, such as work-in-process storage,
handling, transportation, and time phasing of components, inventory at manufacturing sites and
maximum flexibility in the coordination of geographic and final assemblies postponement of
physical distribution operations.

e) Physical Distribution:
This concerns movement of a finished product/service to customers. In physical distribution, the
customer is the final destination of a marketing channel, and the availability of the product/service
is a vital part of each channel participant's marketing effort. It is also through the physical distribution
process that the time and space of customer service become an integral part of marketing, thus it
links a marketing channel with its customers (e.g. links manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers).

f) Outsourcing/Partnerships:
This is not just outsourcing the procurement of materials and components, but also outsourcing of
services that traditionally have been provided in-house.
The logic of this trend is that the company will increasingly focus on those activities in the value
chain where it has a distinctive advantage and everything else it will outsource. This movement has
been particularly evident in logistics where the provision of transport, warehousing and inventory
control is increasingly subcontracted to specialists or logistics partners. Also, to manage and control
this network of partners and suppliers requires a blend of both central and local involvement. Hence,

29
strategic decisions need to be taken centrally with the monitoring and control of supplier
performance and day-to-day liaison with logistics partners being best managed at a local level.

g) Performance Measurement:
Experts found a strong relationship from the largest arcs of supplier and customer integration to
market share and profitability. By taking advantage of supplier capabilities and emphasizing a long-
term supply chain perspective in customer relationships can be both correlated with firm
performance. As logistics competency becomes a more critical factor in creating and maintaining
competitive advantage, logistics measurement becomes increasingly important because the
difference between profitable and unprofitable operations becomes narrower. A.T. Kearney
Consultants (1985) noted that firms engaging in comprehensive performance measurement realized
improvements in overall productivity. According to experts internal measures are generally collected
and analyzed by the firm including:

1. Cost
2. Customer Service
3. Productivity measures
4. Asset measurement, and
5. Quality

External performance measurement is examined through customer perception measures and "best
practice" benchmarking, and includes:

1) Customer perception measurement, and

2) Best practice benchmarking.

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3.9 Procurement Process
Below is an illustration of the procurement process of Unilever from shopping for goods and services
to payment.

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3.10 Product Development and Commercialization

Product development includes not only the creation and launch of new products but also modification
or updates to existing products and initiatives to introduce changes to the overall development
program including quality improvements, reduction of time to market, enhanced collaboration with
suppliers, plant modernization and technology updates. Regardless of the focus the goal of the
product development process should be to find new and innovative ways to meet customer needs
that are not currently being served by the company. Successful product development is essential for
launching a company and for ensuring that the company continues to survive and prosper as
competitive conditions and customer requirements change over time, and while a good deal of
product development efforts focus on building the company’s existing product line they can also be
used to vault the company into an entirely new set of activities, markets and/or industries. In many
industries product development is a core competency that must be acquired and nurtured in order for
a company to remain in business and companies have come to realize that they must commit a
substantial amount of their investible R&D funds to new product development. No one academic or
organizational discipline can claim complete ownership of product innovation and it has attracted
the interest of researchers whose primary focus includes economics, engineering, manufacturing,
marketing, operations research and organizational behavior.

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3.11 Manufacturing Flow Management Process

Manufacturing flow management is an integral part of the supply chain management process. It
includes all activities which are essential to move products through the manufacturing set up and to
obtain, implement, and manage manufacturing flexibility in the supply chain. In order to compete
on the basis of manufacturing flexibility, planning and execution must extend beyond the four walls
of the manufacturer. Increasingly all the firms are depending greatly on outsourcing. So to make our
own manufacturing system responsive we have to make every link of the supply chain very agile.
Manufacturing flow management (MFM) process has both broad level strategic implications and
lower level day-to-day operations implications. The strategic portion of the MFM provides the
structure for managing the process within the firm and across key chain members. The operational
portion of the process represents the actualization of manufacturing flow management.

3.12 Physical Distribution

Physical distribution is the set of activities concerned with efficient movement of finished goods
from the end of the production operation to the consumer. Physical distribution takes place within
numerous wholesaling and retailing distribution channels, and includes such important decision
areas as customer service, inventory control, materials handling, protective packaging, order
procession, transportation, warehouse site selection, and warehousing. Physical distribution is part
of a larger process called "distribution," which includes wholesale and retail marketing, as well the
physical movement of products.

Physical distribution activities have recently received increasing attention from business managers,
including small business owners. This is due in large part to the fact that these functions often
represent almost half of the total marketing costs of a product. In fact, research studies indicate that
physical distribution costs nationally amount to approximately 20 percent of the country's total gross
national product (GNP). These findings have led many small businesses to expand their cost-cutting
efforts beyond their historical focus on production to encompass physical distribution activities. The
importance of physical distribution is also based on its relevance to customer satisfaction.

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3.13 Outsourcing/ Partnership
The business process outsourcing trend is not an uncommon thing these days and has now
transformed into a subset of outsourcing, which involves contracting operations and responsibilities
of a specific business process to a third party provider. The increasing complexity of new
technologies has led to almost an essential need for outsourced it services if companies wanted to
continue providing high quality service with up to date technology at minimal financial burden to
the business. This is been proven to be exceptionally successful within HR, finance, accounting and
IT/web development. However although it’s no doubt service providers offer a highly skilled,
educated, cost-effective workforce, being able to establish a strong outsourcing partnership will
ensure maximum productivity and profitability

3.14 Performance Measurement

Improvement in individual, group, or organizational performance cannot occur unless there is some
way of getting performance feedback. Feedback is having the outcomes of work communicated to
the employee, work group, or company. For an individual employee, performance measures create
a link between their own behavior and the organization's goals. For the organization or its work unit's
performance measurement is the link between decisions and organizational goals.

It has been said that before you can improve something, you have to be able to measure it, which
implies that what you want to improve can somehow be quantified. Additionally, it has also been
said that improvement in performance can result just from measuring it. Whether or not this is true,
measurement is the first step in improvement. But while measuring is the process of quantification,
its effect is to stimulate positive action. Managers should be aware that almost all measures have
negative consequences if they are used incorrectly or in the wrong situation. Managers have to study
the environmental conditions and analyze these potential negative consequences before adopting
performance measures.

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3.15 Warehouse Management
Warehouse management refers to the various processes related to maintaining and controlling a
business’ warehouse. It goes through every step of the process, from beginning to end, and is usually
overseen by warehouse managers. Starting from incoming freight and moving on to asset tracking
and logistics, warehouse management encompasses everything that happens in a warehouse.
Whether they own one warehouse or several, businesses can control the entirety of their warehousing
operations. Warehouse operations have a tendency to take a lot of time and effort. This is especially
true for the fundamental, overly time-consuming processes. These are the “necessary evil” day-to-
day operations — the ones that have to be done, but also take a lot of time to do. The basic warehouse
operations that need to be done regularly include receiving, moving inventory, shipping and ensuring
safe working conditions. A warehouse management system (WMS) is a piece of software that
controls, records and automates various warehouse operations. The goal is to increase the overall
productivity and efficiency of a business’ warehousing operations. These solutions are commonly
found as individual, standalone systems. That said, many enterprise resource planning (ERP) and
supply chain management (SCM) systems come with WMS modules that include the same features
found in a standalone system.
Speaking of warehouse management features, there’s no shortage of features available in a WMS. It
all starts with incoming freight, where barcode scanning and radio frequency ID tagging help with
data input, tracking what, when and how many products are received, as well as where they’re stored.
Order and fulfillment management features are also common, including reorder tools that provide
accurate information related to when orders are shipped and received.

Important in any modern WMS solution is real-time tracking capabilities. These include tracking
assets and orders as mentioned above, as well as the projects and schedules of your warehouse
employees. Analysis and business intelligence functionality takes all this data and provides insights
into KPIs, process inefficiencies and can even help assign tasks to your employees.

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 Chapter 4

Findings Recommendation &

Conclusion

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In these chapter we will discuss about the problem findings and how to overcome those
problems and at last the conclusion of the whole report.

4.1 Findings

We have mention earlier that, due to the company is not listed with the Dhaka Stock Exchange
market, so we could not produce the actual financial data of the company to find out the cost
efficiency. But after collecting some economic information, our logical thinking has come out with
this concept that, the company has reduced its cost tremendously during last four years. It has reduced
its cost by its supply chain management and now it is become a very important department of the
company. In every steps of its supply chain management it is reducing its costs, which brought high
profits to the company. I can explain the fact by emphasizing its supply chain factors and the
negotiations of the company with its suppliers of raw materials.

Unilever Bangladesh limited is one of the leading multinational companies in Bangladesh. We had
the opportunity to analysis on this company’s overall supply chain management. After that I found
these problems which are given below:

 The margin is low to Distributors, Which discourages the distributors.

 Facing trouble to increase its profit margin in some criteria which cause mostly due to lack of
customer interaction.
 Nowadays local brands are manufacturing similar product in lower price which is creating lots
of alternative in the market and making market disaster for the unilever.
 Manual record keeping software used by the distributors.
 Lack of information sharing to all its supply chain process.

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4.2 Recommendation

 Company should focus in this direction to pass on more benefit to the distributors. If margins
are increased from 4.76%, distributors will be more motivated.

 The company can increase its profit merging to 20.5% up then before by providing the best
customer support, following customer driven business process.

 In order to compete with local and cheaper brands, company should come up with
competitive products that can cater institutes more effectively and efficiently with a basic
Focus on pricing strategy.

 Software with Automation function can be used to solve these probl em.

 Improve the channel to get up to date from all its chain members.

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4.3 Conclusion
By my analysis I have found that, Unilever is globally successful company. They create brands for
specific countries and regions. Products for example, found in south Americas will not be found in
South Asian countries. Since difference in culture exists worldwide, the creation and supply of
brands have to be taken seriously. Unilever Bangladesh is the market leader in home and personal
care products.
The Unilever products are able to gain customer satisfaction and trust. Their production and
distribution is expanding rapidly.
In these report I discussed about totals organizational structure, their path, company history and
various analysis including SWOT. Unilever are starting to consider how they make Unilever’s
corporate commitments and activities more visible and relevant to their consumer.
I can refer that by using effective supply chain process the company can easily make changes to its
process. It also helps the company to increase their margin and also it can also reduce the cost.
Effective supply chain process helps to cut out store cost and to distribute product all over the city.
Supply chain also helps in Economic growth, Decrease pollution, and job creation, increase in cash
flow all these thing are interrelated with one another, these all thing are interrelated with supply
chain as well. Supply chain management can be defined as the process of planning, implementing
and monitoring the everyday operations of a supply chain. Supply chain management is an all-
encompassing process as it undertakes the management of availability of raw materials, their
processing into finished goods and the distributions of the same.
The aim of all this is to provide the highest level of satisfaction to the customer and thus increase the
business of the company. And with the increasing complexity of the supply chain, supply chain
management has also become about coordinating and collaborating with the different trade partners
now involved in the supply chain.

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Supply chain management is supposed to be undertaken by the high level management committee
of the company. The employees have to willingly adhere to their decisions in order to bring about
maximum efficiency in the supply chain.
Supply chain management decisions are made on three different levels the tactical, strategic and
operational levels. Strategic level involves long term decisions while tactical level includes medium
term decisions while operational level is concerned with very short term day-to-day operational
concerns.

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Appended Part

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References

Books & Articles

1. Hill, Charles W. L.; Jones, Gareth R. (8th Edition) Theory of Strategic Management with
Cases. South-Western Cengage Learing.

2. Mannan, M.A., Strategic Management. Published by Bangladesh Open University.

3. "Seeking Young People with Big Ideas." Unilever Bangladesh. N.p., n.d. Web. 05 Aug.
2014

4. Thomson et al. Crafting and Executing Strategy

Websites

 www.unilever.com
 www.slideshare.net
 www.scmworld.com
 www.scmr.co

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