1. Supplier Management: Increased collaboration to accelerate global shipments
Leggett & Platt:
Developing a well-oiled
international supply chain
Fortune 500 manufacturer takes its antiquated supply chain technology
into the 21st century by implementing an on-demand global trade solution
that streamlines compliance and procurement.
By Bridget McCrea, Contributing Editor
hen John Wainwright thinks back 10 years
ago to the way Leggett & Platt (L&P) Global
Services handled purchasing and compliance
across its 160 international and domestic
branches, this vice president says the system
was “wonderful, by 1975’s standards.” In other words, the Fortune 500 manufacturer of engineered components and products
relied on outdated, disparate technology systems to manage its
supply chain.
According to Wainwright, L&P’s many branches around the
world operated autonomously, with disparate systems and a
decentralized IT infrastructure. Data sharing, for example, was
minimal among the company’s numerous purchasing centers.
Account processing and inventory management were equally
as disparate at the firm, which was straining under the pressure
of having too many manual and error-prone processes. And on
the compliance front, Wainwright says the import management
and process review was handled almost entirely by customs brokers and carriers.
That changed in 2005, when Wainwright and his team conducted an internal analysis and realized that the Chicago-based
firm—whose products can be found in consumer items such as
box springs, innersprings, recliner motion mechanisms, and retail
store shelving—was due for a complete overhaul of its international procurement processes.
One of the primary challenges the company was facing, according to Wainwright, was the lack of control over internal compliance
processes on imported goods, an oversight that could have wound
up costing the company dearly in fines and/or shipment delays.
W
After a thorough assessment, Wainwright says L&P realized
that its existing systems wouldn’t sufficiently support the growing
company’s needs. “We wanted to start with a clean slate,” says
Wainwright, “and introduce an entirely new purchasing process
and the software to support it.”
As part of a larger implementation that included both a transportation management system (TMS) and warehouse management system (WMS), L&P rolled out Amber Road’s global trade
management software (GTM) Supplier Portal (see sidebar) to
streamline its global logistics and compliance processes. Wainwright says that the company looked at several different systems
available on the market before “coming to the conclusion that
Amber Road would be the best fit.”
Back to the future
As a global entity, Leggett & Platt Global Services acts as a centralized compliance entity for all of L&P’s U.S. imports. Its Supplier Portal is one of several tools that enables paperless transactions and functions to and from suppliers and within the firm’s
supply chain. The 125-year-old firm is comprised of 19 business
units and 19,000 employee partners who work in 160 manufacturing facilities in 19 countries.
Since 2005, L&P has relied on its on-demand Supplier Portal to effectively manage the purchasing and compliance process
across its myriad international and domestic locations. According
to Wainwright, about 80 percent of L&P’s compliance needs are
executed at the time a purchase order (PO) is issued on behalf of
one of its branches.
“The PO stops with my group,” Wainwright explains, whose

2. department then performs the necessary compliance testing,
applies for the harmonized tariff number, inputs the country of
origin and country of export, and handles the requirements set
forth by the FDA, FCC, EPA, DOT, and other government agencies (OGAs). “All of this is done before the PO is accepted for
dispatch to the actual overseas suppliers that will be filling the
order out of the country.”
When L&P’s suppliers receive the PO in a paperless format via
the portal, the wheels begin to move as the order is put into the
production phase. When that order is ready to ship, the vendor
uses the online system to create a packing list and invoice based
on the already-issued electronic PO—thus eradicating the need
for multiple, manual entries.
“Not having to re-enter the information by hand has paid a
huge benefit in terms of compliance,” says Wainwright, “because
the information is based off of what is already in the system and
it’s not being entered into the system twice.”
Wainwright says that the paperless nature of the system allows
L&P to use its stored data to manage other links in the supply
chain. The Global Services group, for example, uses information from the portal to create advanced shipping notices (ASNs),
which in turn are used to pay supplier invoices.
That streamlined setup replaced a largely manual system that
resulted in a large number of replications and errors. “At this
point we’re just relying on the core data that’s already sitting in
the system,” says Wainwright, “with no hands touching it and no
fear of replication.”
The same data is shared with customs brokers, used for import
compliance, and then delivered straight through to the receipt of
the goods at L&P’s operational branches. “Received amounts are
compared to what was dispatched by the supplier and matched
up to invoice payments and original POs,” says Wainwright. “It all
comes together to make up an integrated, paperless environment
that’s largely supported by our Supplier Portal.”
Measuring the benefits
Since implementing its Supplier Portal, L&P has documented
numerous benefits, not the least of which are fewer clerical errors
and faster, more streamlined international supply chain management. “We’ve been able to remove the need for another set of
hands when it comes to generating documentation and/or replicating existing data,” says Wainwright. “Extra hands equal extra
errors, the need for revisions, and issues upon entry.”
Using its Supplier Portal, the global compliance department
at L&P can rest easy, knowing that it is dealing with consistent
data that can’t be changed internally or by its suppliers. “They
can only change the actual shipped quantities,” Wainwright
describes. “The SKUs and descriptions are literally locked down
and cannot be altered.”
According to Wainwright, the portal has saved L&P both man
hours and the hassle that used to go into double-checking data
and information as orders made their way from initial PO to final
payment of invoices. The company has also been able to reduce
overall order cycle time and streamlined interactions with customs brokers.
The latter has resulted in both improved efficiencies and
reduced fees, according to Wainwright, who adds that the number of errors detected in L&P’s post-entry audit review has “gone

3. Supplier Management: Increased collaboration to accelerate global shipments
down remarkably.”
Thanks to L&P’s Supplier Portal, the
company has also been able to more accurately measure how quickly it moves its
goods, the efficiency of its processes, and/
or any delays experienced at customs.
“We’ve traced these points internally and
have seen a return from the system,” says
Wainwright, who adds that the portal has
also helped the manufacturer control centralized payment of both suppliers and service providers. “We’ve seen great improvement from this standpoint as well.”
To shippers that are currently considering a more streamlined global supply
chain approach, Wainwright says understanding the organization’s internal process is the best first step. “Don’t try to
design your processes based on a specific
piece of software,” he advises. “Instead,
understand exactly what you want and
buy a solution based on that. Make sure
the process drives the effort, and that the
software doesn’t drive the process.”
Bridget McCrea is a Contributing
Editor to Logistics Management
Supplier Portal: One piece of a larger, on-demand platform
A
ROAD’S SUPPLIER
PORTAL IS ONE piece of
a larger, on-demand platform that the company has
developed to automate and
streamline global trade. Ty
Bordner, vice president of
product management and
solutions consulting for
the East Rutherford, N.J.based sof tware vendor
says that the system was
designed to help users
better manage the transactional and customs data
generated when importing
and exporting goods.
The Supplier Portal dashboard provides supplier transparency for Purchase Orders and all related
According to Bordner, transactions by workflow stage with click-through access to the underlying detail.
Supplier Portal typically
replaces the manual, timeconsuming process of filing necessary import documentation—includAs part of Amber Road’s global trade management solution,
ing the invoice, packing list, and bill of lading—something that organi- the Supplier Portal module allows companies to easily obtain the
zations have dealt with manually. “It’s traditionally handled by printing supplier shipment data required to clear customs. However, there
out documents and then using DHL, UPS, or another provider to send are other supplier collaboration capabilities provided by the Amber
those documents (at a cost of roughly $30 per package) to customs bro- Road solution. For instance, a U.S. importer wanting to claim zero
kers in the importing country,” Bordner explains.The customs brokers duties under the rules of a Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA, U.S.receive the physical documents and then re-key the information into Korea, etc.) must obtain proof that the imported goods qualify
their own systems—a process that often results in errors.
under the rules of origin defined by the agreement. This informa“Some of these shipments may be very large with hundreds of tion must be provided by the supplier of the goods and comes in
line items,” says Bordner. “Not only do these shipments take hours the form of a signed certificate. Amber Road’s Supplier Portal
to key in, but the odds of injecting errors into the process are very provides the online collaboration software to make this process
high.” Such errors can be extremely costly in the compliance world, easy and efficient.
where even just the wrong classification of a specific good can
“If the proof is in the system then the company pays no duties,”
result in fines and/or shipment delays.
says Bordner. “That’s pure profit margin for the user.”The Supplier
As shippers like L&P have already learned, the Supplier Portal Portal can also help shippers determine which of their supplihelps alleviate these issues by automating a previously manual ers are C-TPAT (Customs Trade Partnership Against Terrorism)
process by acquiring a PO from an importer’s ERP system, and by certified, making them “less risky” to do business with. “When
then making that PO available to the respective supplier.When that all of that information is online and easily accessible and when
supplier logs into the portal, it sees the PO in the system and inputs companies have vetted their suppliers for these and other risks,”
a ship quantity and date. “The supplier pushes a button and creates says Bordner, “shipments flow through customs faster and supply
a transaction that is now available for L&P to see,” says Bordner, chains flow more smoothly.”
—Bridget McCrea, Contributing Editor
“without anyone having to rekey in any information.”
MBER