Using Tableau Public for Sample Customer Analysis

Tableau has an offering called Tableau Public that allows you to easily publish your reports to the web.  As a corporate user, you should note that the data you publish is publicly available- so you will want to be careful what you publish).

For those who don’t know, Tableau is powerful and flexible reporting engine.  We have found it very helpful for understanding your supply chain.  One of our clients, Armstrong World Industries reported that this reporting allowed the modeler to sit down with the business user and answer questions about the supply chain on the spot.

Below is a quick example of the type of reports you can generate.  I loaded customer level data showing the time in transit from the warehouse in Chicago, the total demand, and the demand broken down by mode (rail or truck) and by product (A, B, or C).  The first tab you see below shows the each of the customers, sized by demand, and colored by the transit time from the Chicago warehouse.  You can get a lot of information from your supply chain with a map.  (The map below should be interactive so you can play around with it on your own).

Production Sourcing Optimization at Pepsi

Consumer Goods Technology (CTG) published a case study on the Pepsi Bottling Group (PBG) (now part of PepsiCo).

In the case, they discuss how Pepsi used a network optimization approach to production sourcing.  That is, they wanted to optimize what product is made when and where.  They wanted to do this considering the full supply chain.

The savings reported were significant.  The article quotes:

  • An increased number of cases available to sell due to reduced warehouse out of stocks
  • Reduction in raw material and supplies inventory from $201 million to $195 million
  • A 2 percentage point decline in the growth of transport miles even as PBG revenue grew
  • Increase in the return on invested capital

This example reminds us that an important part of network design is about deciding what products should be made in which locations.