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From SUPPLY CHAIN REVIEW - January 2005 Young Achiever Tracey Azzopardi earned the LAA 's 2004 Young Achiever of the Year Award by working from the bottom-up and thinking big

Azzopardi joined Synthes in August after 12 years grounding in third party logistics (3PL) with a small Sydney-based 3PL, Totalflow Logistics. She began as a clerical trainee at the age of 18, winning the Australian Trainee of the Year Award in 1993, and seemed destined to follow her mother into the accounting profession.

However, Fred Frost, Managing Director of Totalflow, recognised her potential and presented the logistics industry as an alternative career. She became more involved in operations - documenting processes for ISO9002, customer service and eventually warehouse management - and never looked back.

Azzopardi enrolled at TAFE for an Associate Diploma in Business Management - Logistics over four years. After the other trainees went home, she headed back to the warehouse for a few hours to key pick slips ready for the next morning.

The 10,000 square metre warehouse held 8,000 pallets and included DG class 3 product, pharmaceutical raw materials, food ingredients, car parts, books and cosmetics. She became involved in everything from pick face routing to industrial relations, contract tenders and budgets.

"That's the beauty of working for a small 3PL, you get to experience the lot," she says.

Azzopardi recalls the exhilaration of winning a major contract from a big 3PL and then the hard graft of 65 days straight working to prepare the warehouse. Another highlight was implementation of Berger's (now Advanta) Warehouse Management System (WMS) in 1998. This allowed Totalflow to manage split cases and control batches, which differentiated their service in a competitive marketplace.

It also required re-engineering the entire work process.

New documentation detailed customers' special requirements requested during contract negotiations. This enabled Totalflow to systematically record and deliver a consistent high level of customer service.

A culture of 'Right on Time' included daily staff KPIs (orders processed 'right' and number of orders processed 'on time' each day) and cycle counting. Totalflow achieved 98 percent inventory accuracy.

"We would meet for 15 minutes each week, in the warehouse packing area, and go through the results," she recalls.

Azzopardi looks back on her 3PL career fondly. She says it instilled a discipline of efficiency, which she now finds invaluable.

"It's a good background to learn how to make the best of existing resources and become very creative. You are measured on stockholding, stock turns and fulfilment. You need to talk to clients and understand what they want," she says.

Azzopardi joined the New South Wales Logistics Association of Australia (LAA) and, in 1997, became a committee member, reaching the level of Director and Vice President from 2002 to 2004. Along with Ben Marshman, she helped launch focus groups covering areas such as career development, inventory accuracy and OH&S.

Moving on

After handling everything her mentor could throw at her, Fred Frost admitted there was little else left to learn. It was time for Azzopardi to move on.

A large advertisement in the Sydney Morning Herald in mid 2003 caught her eye. Synthes, a global medical device manufacturer, was restructuring its executive team, creating the new position of Divisional Operations Manager.

Glass cases in the Australian head office are a clue to the company's trade - filled with (fake) human bones bolted together using stainless steel screws and titanium nails. Synthes develop, produce and market instruments, implants and biomaterials for the surgical fixation, correction and regeneration of the human skeleton and its soft tissues.

Products bearing the brand name Synthes are a familiar sight in virtually every operating room around the world.

Azzopardi now has four direct reports - Customer Service Manager, Warehouse Supervisor, Inventory Controller and Instruments Technician - and responsibility for 18 staff nationally. Although Synthes' Advanta WMS was familiar, responsibility for purchasing and managing inventory presented a fresh challenge.

She set about this by assuming control of stock management in each state and restructuring her division to focus on ensuring the right mix of product. The positions of Warehouse Manager and Senior Leading Hand were replaced by a Warehouse Supervisor and the new role of Inventory Controller.

Stock control

The nature of Synthes' national warehouse in Sydney becomes apparent as soon as you walk through the door. It has a carpet and no forklift trucks in sight. Items are held in bins and categorised into sterile and non-sterile products. Synthes use an RF system, which includes lot numbers for traceability.

The hospital phones through an order to customer service, which enters the data into the system.

Orders and released backorders are sorted by aisle and picked, consolidated packaged and air freighted the same day. High value, short lead time stock is replenished and air, freighted direct from Scandinavia.

After the bombing outside the Australian embassy in Jakarta, Azzopardi escorted an urgent shipment to its destination because there was no direct flight to Indonesia. She was in Jakarta the following afternoon.

Spine surgery is generally scheduled, but the demand for surgery on trauma-related patients is instant. Small hospitals are unable to hold shelf stock, so they are loaned kits and charged only for the items used.

Synthes holds around 1,000 sets located all around Australia. A kit for wrist surgery would include both the instruments (tools), instructions and a range of implant sizes for the operation. Femur kits are enormous - and heavy.

Loan sets are national resources rather than the previous state-based sets, which instantly boosted fulfillment rates. Each set is also created and managed nationally.

"You can't take the risk of having the wrong size leg. You send the whole kit, with a range of sizes," she explains. "Loan coordination is a very demanding job. When the kit is returned, we log the usage, replenish the kit and put it back into stock."

One of the first initiatives introduced by the new manager was daily cycle counting - a practice Azzopardi swears by. Monthly stocktakes at all branches were also introduced.

It saw inventory accuracy rise above 99 percent across 60,000 SKUs nationally.

"The more you do [cycle counting] the easier it gets and the more accountable it becomes," she says.

By analysing inventory movements and demand, Azzopardi was able to reduce interstate branch stock by 75 percent, but overall availability improved. Order fulfillment rates improved to 98.3 percent (lines shipped in full upon receipt, all orders dispatched same day).

"A lot if branches were holding excessive stock just in case. We looked at an analysis of what's used in six months and brought [stock levels] back. We then looked at four months and brought it in a bit more. You can't just pull everything in and hope," she says.

Other achievements include documenting and implementing uniform national procedures, ISO9002 accreditation, reducing the number of transport suppliers and standardising service levels.

Azzopardi is full of ambition. She set herself the goal of becoming a national manager by the time she was 30 - and got there by the age of 29. Look out for this rising star, who is locked on an upward career trajectory and hungry for more challenges.

"I relish the challenge, the responsibility and being part of a team. This is why I go to work every day. It's fantastic," she says.

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