Most toll coating companies have good technical coating abilities but few can offer the broad reach around the world that Carestream brings to bear in its business and for its customers. The company has a 100-year legacy of technical, supply chain and logistics expertise that translates to smoother sailing for its customers around the globe.

Carestream has more than 50 warehouses worldwide, and imports finished and semi-finished products into more than 40 countries, with sales and support teams stationed in over 150 countries. Customer order services are provided in three customer call centers around the world, managing orders in 14 languages for the convenience of customers everywhere. Serving more than 15,000 customers, the call centers annually process 150,000 customer orders, with 300,000 order lines.

In addition to Carestream’s precision technical capabilities, its global supply chain is designed and equipped to help customers move their products around the world. Carestream helps its customers with order management, inventory management, warehousing services and transportation services.

The company’s global logistics operations allow Carestream to place product wherever a customer needs it. The abundance of Carestream warehousing facilities allow the customer to stock the product they need in locations near, or conveniently positioned for fast delivery to, their manufacturing facilities. This helps them manufacture and supply their products to their own customers efficiently by reducing material shortages and wait times.

The benefit to Carestream customers is access to a supply-chain solution custom-designed for them, from order management to inventory management to physical distribution. Carestream can tailor all parts of the supply-chain logistics to help serve customers worldwide.

For example, a customer may want to stock a product in Taiwan. Carestream can do it for them so it’s easy for the customer to get it, when they need it, with no downtime waiting for overseas shipping. Carestream can also help enable customers to export from the U.S. and ship directly to their customers if that is the business arrangement they have designed.

Generally Carestream conducts a monthly forecasting and ordering process with customers, based on how long it takes to coat the material they need and on the customers’ own manufacturing process timelines. Often Carestream will create a rolling horizon forecast with fixed and firm zones, and an ordering / inventory forecasting process to accommodate any manufacturing lead time. This helps assure an adequate supply of what the customers need, when they need it.

Quality

Carestream’s Supply Chain and Logistics organization includes customer order management, inventory management and physical logistics operations. Worldwide, approximately 40% of its associates have earned Carestream quality certification. These certifications range from Quality Advocates who have training in transactional lean and Six Sigma process improvement tools, to higher certification levels of Green Belts and Black Belts. Black Belt is Carestream’s highest distinction, requiring four weeks of training with a key focus on statistical analysis, to enable world-class quality and continuous improvement to achieve the highest level of customer satisfaction.