The Supply Chain Project

Mini Project #1 with Tableau

First of the “Mini Project” Series in the DAA Bootcamp.

As part of an interview, I was asked to look into a dataset and answer the following questions:

Give an overview of our business.
Where does the company make the most money?
How can we have less late deliveries?

The Data

You can find the data I used for this analysis here.
This is real data for DataCo Global, which was acquired by Sword Consulting Group.

Key Insights

Here are the most interesting findings:

The most profitable category for the company is Fishing.
The most profitable product is the Perfect Fitness Perfect Rip Deck in the Cleats Category.
The days actual for shipping are DOUBLE the days scheduled estimate.
All of the categories with the highest delivery rish include all the highest selling and profiting categories which implies that there is a more overarching issue with shipping within the company.

The Analysis

An Overview of the Highest and Lowest Categories & Products

In these visuals, we can see that there are about 9 categories that make up the MAJORITY of the sales and profit for the company. These include: Fishing, Cleats, Camping & Hiking, Cardio Equipment, Women’s Apparel, Water Sports, Indoor/Outdoor Games, Men’s Footware, and Shop by Sport.

An intersting finding here was that although the category with the highest sales was Fishing, the product that has the highest profit margin comes from the “Cleats” category: Perfect Fitness Perfect Rip Deck. It might be beneficial for this company to remove certain categories and place more emphasis on their already popular Fishing Department.

Now let’s take a look at the lowest performing categories and products:

There are some categories and products here that should be under consideration for removal from their catelog to help streamline their focus into the products and categories that are actually making the company a profit. The Strength Training category, along with the two Ellipticals and the Jolt Slopt Rangefinder could be removed from focus to help allocate time, energy and money towards the others that are returning revenue.

A Look Into Shipping

When we take a look into the Scheduled Shipping Day compared to the ACTUAL Shipping Days, we see that in actuality it takes TWICE as long to deliver these products than what is estimated. On the right, we see that the categories with the Highest Delivery Risk are congruent with the top performing categories in the company overall. This implies a foundational dysfunction within the shipping department that is permeating across the entire company.

Conclusions

In regards to the top performing categories, and lowest performing, some thought should be brought to eliminating the lowest 25% of these to help reallocate time and energy into those that the company is doing well in. This will help build a brand and customer rapport and ultimately help solidify future success and stability. This could also give the company a chance to refine its direction and vision to help propel its family to future success.
In terms of the shipping and having less late deliveries, a thorough process inventory should be taken of the shipping department to help highlight what what systems need to be defined further or create, what current habits or processes are actually hindering delivery time, and what plans need to be implemented to help the Shipping Department catch up to the sales that the company is seeing. It seems that the shippping “system” needs to be adjusted to provide the best customer experience with ordering with this company.

I’m would be extremely curious to see how the company is handling incoming orders, how many hands does the order go through before it is packaged, what does the time to shipment process entail and how can we make it faster? Answering these questions will undoudtedly bring this company to the next level and open the door for more sales potential.

What Now?

This project is part of a Data Analytics Bootcamp ran by Avery Smith. Thank you Avery for putting this bootcamp out into the world and allowing people from any place in their life to dive into the world of data!

I’m currently seeking a Data Analyst role and continually learning and improving my data skills through this bootcamp and other incredible resources available on the web. Please give any feedback you have to help build and refine my toolbelt!

Please contact me with any inquiries!

Email: andrewmendez519@gmail.com