BCI Global: Worldwide advise for supply chain solutions and location choices

BCI Global conducts research, offers advice, carries out implementations, and manages projects in the fields of supply chain strategy and design, international business strategy as well as site search and location selection.

We interacted with René Buck, CEO and Patrick Haex, Managing Partner to get a clear picture of what BCI Global is all about

Q. What was the impetus behind the establishment of BCL Global? How has the company evolved over time?

BCI Global was founded in 1985 when René Buck started the company on the day that he graduated from the University of Nijmegen, the Netherlands. The company employs experienced professionals in offices in the Bay Area, Los Angeles and Atlanta; in Europe in the Netherlands, London and Frankfurt; and in Asia in Shanghai and Singapore. BCI Global is today a fast growing global boutique with passionate professionals, co-operating and interacting with internal and external stakeholders, powered by team spirit.

Clients rate our support, know how and experience as excellent. Based on their positive experiences with BCI Global more than 95% of our customers comes back with new questions. Based on positive assessments by clients and peers Forbes Magazine lists BCI Global already for 4 years in a row as one of America’s Best Consulting Firms. In its inaugural listing in September 2022 BCI Global was even recognized as one of the 200 World’s Best Management Consulting Firms.

Q. What are BCI Global’s main areas of expertise and advice?

The areas of expertise are development of supply chain strategies and distribution network designs and location studies for new software development centers, advanced manufacturing plants, engineering centers, IT support centers, distribution centers.

Q. How has the importance of IT in general and data evolved over the last decade?

Supply chains have become more complex and are still global. One cannot imagine supply chains to be run without proper IT infrastructure and related systems.

Within BCI we support our clients on fact based decision making. Therefore data has and will be key. Data availability and consistency has improved over the last decade but it can be quite cumbersome to retrieve data from a client on the end to end supply chain. Especially for organizations that have a legacy or have been around a long time and have had many ERP systems or versions of ERP systems and did not invest yet in modern Business Intelligence tools or data repositories/data - lakes.

Q. Where does supply chain visibility fit in here?

Supply chain visibility is an important capability for many multinational companies with a global footprint. The pandemic and the aftermath have pushed our clients towards a junction: either you operate global complex supply chains and therefore the need for end to end visibility is paramount or companies reduce complexity and move towards an in region for region set up.

Whereas in the past multiple business cases were needed to justify the investment of supply chain visibility, the need for resilience and the offering of software vendors and 4PLs/LLPs have reduced such need. Key for clients is to understand the level of visibility (functional/geographical scope, item level visibility or shipment level of visibility), the data integration needs, the journey towards better decision making including data management, and whether a company would like to invest or to outsource towards a 4PL/LLP.

Q. Better and faster decision making – how can companies enhance their capabilities here?

A big part of our work is re-defining the global footprint for multi national companies covering the source, make and deliver function. As these value chains are complex and interlinked this is not an easy task. Several companies are creating a Digital Twin of their supply chain in order to make better decisions and in a shorter time window.

A digital twin is a model of your supply chain typically from an end to end perspective – often an network model in a network design tool populated with data or maintained with latest data.

Can you recall in the pre-covid era, the US government imposing overnight duties on specific products sourced from China? Senior leadership would like to know the impact in hours rather than weeks or months. The volatility in the supply chains which have become clear during the pandemic is forcing companies to invest in better decision making capabilities. BCI supports clients in the proof of concept phase of these digital twins, development and maintenance of digital twins and supply chain center of excellence and in project based network design. Important is to understand the key questions senior leadership is trying to address in order to make a digital twin successful as scope creep is a big risk factor.

Q. What are the company’s core values and guiding principles?

The mission of BCI is Unlocking Potential – Delivering Solutions. Our clients have internal drivers to grow the company and to retain and attract talent in a challenging external environment. ‘Unlocking Potential’ means the search for opportunities and potential (market, bottom line, talent, sustainability) on short term but also in the long run. ‘Delivering solutions’ refers to BCI Global’s in-depth analyses and scenarios, a transparent and independent way of working and a result oriented attitude. Our clients value our well-based analyses, our experience with peers in their industry verticals, our independence and unbiased views and our global reach.

Meet the pillars of the company

René Buck (1959) is CEO of BCI Global. René Buck started BCI Global on the day that he graduated from the University Nijmegen, the Netherlands in April 1985.

More than 38 years later BCI is one of the leading independent international manufacturing footprint & location strategy and supply chain & distribution network design consulting companies. With his entrepreneurial spirit René developed a world class team. René has supervised projects all over the world in a broad range of industries and is widely recognized and an energetic, trusted and independent advisor.

Patrick Haex (20+ years of experience) is BCI’s managing partner and Head of the Worldwide Supply Chain practice within BCI Global. His role is to lead the BCI consulting and implementation delivery team as well as to interact with clients on supply chain engagements. In Patrick’s practice he is active in a wide range of industry verticals including FMCG/CPG, Lifestyle/Fashion, E-commerce, Life Sciences, Industrial, High Tech and Spare parts. Patrick has conducted and implemented supply chain solutions in various geographies across the globe including the US, Europe, Middle East, Africa, Asia Pacific and China.