FMCG supply chains operate under some of the most demanding conditions in logistics. High SKU counts, tight margins, rapid stock turnover and customers who expect speed and accuracy regardless of what is happening upstream. The pressure is constant with little room for error.\u00a0<\/p>\n
When businesses look for ways to improve, the instinct is to look sideways. What are competitors doing? What are the biggest players in the sector investing in? It is a logical starting point, but it has a ceiling. When everyone in the same industry draws from the same pool of knowledge, improvements tend to be incremental. The step change \u2013 the kind that reshapes cost structure or throughput \u2013 tends to come from somewhere else entirely.<\/p>\n
\u201cFMCG business operating inside its own bubble,\u201d says Peter Jones, MD of Prological Consulting. \u201cThe people running those supply chains are experts in their sector. But that also means they\u2019re largely drawing on the same knowledge as everyone around them.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt takes a deliberate decision to go looking outside your industry. Most businesses don\u2019t do it because there\u2019s no obvious trigger.\u201d<\/p>\n
What Ferrari found when it went sailing\u00a0<\/p>\n
When Ferrari launched its Hypersail project \u2013 a full-foiling, 30-metre monohull designed to break ocean records \u2013 the Italian marque was entering a field well outside its expertise.<\/p>\n
The connection, as Ferrari\u2019s team quickly identified, was aerodynamics. Modern foiling yachts operate on the same fundamental principles as high-performance cars: Both are concerned with how surfaces interact with their surrounds, whether that\u2019s through air or water. Ferrari brought decades of expertise in aerodynamic design, control systems and computational fluid dynamics to a field that had largely focused on sail efficiency and hull movement through water. The aerodynamics of the vessel had not been a major consideration.<\/p>\n
Ferrari Hypersail CTO Matteo Lanzavecchia explained at the project\u2019s launch, \u201cWe\u2019re trying to transfer the experience and know-how that Ferrari has in the automotive world \u2013 the control systems, aerodynamics and energy management \u2013 into the sailing world.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Peter sees the same logic at work in supply chain. \u201cFerrari already knew more about aerodynamics than anyone in sailing,\u201d he says. \u201cBut by working in a completely different environment, they discovered things they couldn\u2019t have found by staying in their traditional lane of high-performance cars and Formula One. That\u2019s the point.\u201d<\/p>\n
He points to FMCG. \u201cThe same thing is happening in supply chain. The answers to some of the sector\u2019s most persistent problems are sitting in other industries, but nobody has gone looking for them yet.\u201d<\/p>\n
The FMCG application<\/p>\n
For FMCG businesses, there are equivalent opportunities for innovation. Peter uses truck payload as a concrete example. \u201cFMCG trucks very rarely run at full weight or full cube,\u201d he says. \u201cThat\u2019s an inefficiency the sector has largely accepted because it\u2019s how things have always been done.\u201d<\/p>\n
The solution, he argues, already exists \u2013 not within FMCG, but in automotive engineering. Purpose-built loading systems and trailer designs developed in the automotive sector can add 35 to 50 per cent payload capacity per truck movement. \u201cThat knowledge is out there,\u201d Peter says. \u201cIt\u2019s just not sitting inside the FMCG world. It exists somewhere else.\u201d<\/p>\n
This is the same move Ferrari made: Take a problem that exists in one domain, locate the engineering answer in another, and apply it. The difficulty for FMCG operators is access. Businesses embedded in a sector develop deep knowledge of that sector, but along with this comes limited visibility into the worlds outside it.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Advisers with cross-industry experience are in a different position. \u201cWe won\u2019t know any individual FMCG business (or any other) as well as the people running it,\u201d Peter says. \u201cBut we know more about the full range of what\u2019s available, what is possible across industries, technologies and engineering disciplines than any FMCG operator is likely to have. That perspective is where the value lies.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pace and the cost of a narrow view<\/p>\n
The competitive pressure facing FMCG supply chains is heightened by leaner operators, shifting consumer expectations and the pace of technological change. Businesses benchmarking themselves only against others in the same sector are working from a narrowing frame of reference. The insight that changes a cost structure or improves throughput doesn\u2019t necessarily come from an obvious place.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Ferrari\u2019s Hypersail yacht is expected to launch and sea trial in 2026, with ocean records in its sights. Whether it breaks them or not, the engineering exchange the project has generated is already indicative of the value of operating in unfamiliar territory.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe best supply chain solutions I\u2019ve seen in FMCG didn\u2019t start inside FMCG,\u201d Peter says. \u201cThey started somewhere else, and someone had the curiosity to go looking. That curiosity is how the businesses that keep finding advantage get ahead.\u201d<\/p>\n