ITTOOLKIT [ IN PRACTICE ]
Partnering with Customers and Leveraging Data to Boost Health
In May 2023, Kenvue, the company behind iconic brands such as Tylenol and Listerine, spun off from Johnson & Johnson, becoming the world’s largest pure-play consumer health company by revenue. The spinoff also meant Kenvue’s leadership team had to establish strong supply chain operations as a consumer goods company, rather than as part of a pharmaceutical firm.
THE COMPANY Kenvue Inc. is an American consumer health company. Formerly the Consumer Healthcare division of Johnson & Johnson, Kenvue is the proprietor of well-known brands such as Aveeno, Band-Aid, Benadryl, Combantrin, Zyrtec, Johnson’s, Listerine, Mylanta, Neutrogena, Trosyd, Tylenol, and Visine. by Karen Kroll
trucks leave Kenvue’s four distribution centers strategically located across the United States; the company also has one in Canada. Then, the trucks head to customer distribution centers. DIGITAL FIRST To ensure an ef cient operation, Kenvue has leaned into technology, becoming a digital- rst company. This has meant shifting from a more transactional approach to focusing on data analysis. The company also uses technology to boost service to its retail customers and to help drive the decision-making process. Kenvue centered on the on-time, in-full (OTIF) metric, knowing that optimizing this would maximize its revenue, as well as customer revenues. One example is using technology to improve the order-to-cash process. When a customer places an order, Kenvue has to ensure it has the right inventory in the right distribution center and can ef ciently move it to the customers’ distribution centers.
This required benchmarking, among other measures, its service levels, technology, and the ways in which its logistics processes could impact how Kenvue was going to market. The good news? The company didn’t need to completely overhaul its operations. “But we did have to ask ourselves, ‘If we want to be best in class, what needed to change?’” says Rodney Leonard, vice president, U.S. deliver operations. The consensus that emerged identi ed leveraging data and partnering more strategically with retail customers as the approach that would provide the most substantial opportunities. “That’s what we are focusing on,” Leonard says. In doing so, Kenvue has reduced unloading times, overages, damages, and shortages, while boosting on-time shipment arrivals at its customers’ warehouses. Across the globe, Kenvue’s 2023 sales hit $15.4 billion, with 10 brands bringing in sales of $400 million or more. About half of net sales were generated outside North America. Each day, more than 100
July 2024 • Inbound Logistics 205
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