Skip to main content

Supply Chain Maturity

Supply Chain Maturity

Managing the supply chain and finances are the core factors that determine the success of any organization. For ages, executives keep on experimenting with different approaches to optimize their supply chain and cash flow. Supply chain management is one of the most important strategic aspects of any business enterprise. Decisions must be made about how to coordinate the production of goods and services, how and where to store inventory, whom to buy materials from and how to distribute them in the most cost-effective, timely manner.

What are those Critical Dimensions or Key Performance Indicators that drive the agility and maturity of a supply chain? Most of them are quite obvious and most of the organizations keep a religious watch on this but even then those companies make only the 10% of all those organizations that can benefit much more if they streamline their processes, capabilities and compliance related stuff connected with SCM. Let us look at some of the critical dimensions in this respect:

Supply Chain Visibility: End to end supply chain visibility is the first major need to make it more agile and mature. It is highly recommended to use a commercially available best of breed (or ERP) solution to monitor line level statuses in orders, on hand inventory and those assets that are not stationary and this includes field inventory, service equipment, containers etc. Certain visibility initiatives like financing triggers, warning alerts on events that drive inventory stocking, tracking actual total landed cost as sales order progresses etc. are the hot initiatives in this area

Automation Level: It is not just automation of order entry to picking to shipping and from forecasting to demand to plan to build/procure but also end to automation of all systems that complements your main system of reporting and transactions. It includes systems like PLM or B2C order capturing portals that are input systems as well as Business Intelligence tools that act as the output systems to your main transaction system. The more the automation, more mature and agile is supply chain

Logistics Agility: Processes such as using nearest warehouse to the customer, supplier drop ship, transit order re-direction or grouping shipments in same route play a major role in streamlining the supply chain. Organizations need to keep on thinking on new actions in this space and plan to execute them frequently.

Business to Business Collaboration: Customers and Suppliers are to businesses that one must collaborate with. This will not only keep the inventory to the minimum level but also will help in improving fill rates and reduce stock-outs. Identify the processes where collaboration will help the organization most and take actions accordingly.

Risk Management: Supply chain resiliency is one of the most critical factors in maintaining the agility of supply chain and it is seen that though most of the organizations are worried about this but do not take substantial actions in this area. It is important to manage supply chain resiliency to risk related events. Also, employ network design and inventory optimization tools to quantify supply chain risk and create short-term and long-term crisis response plans.

Compliance in Trade: The more manual hand-offs are present in the processes, more are the chances of inconsistency in compliance of trade laws. Also, not having a single source of truth and independent databases for import and export data per country will also contribute to non compliance ultimately impacting the supply chain processes. It is high time to have one single enterprise wide trade compliance platform that is automated and integrated with all the related processes.

Competitive Resourcing:The times of in-house resourcing are now ripe and the success of outsourcing story has proven that while the in-house resources in certain areas are more costly, they also are less efficient that their BPO counterparts. Need is to evaluate carefully, where exactly this initiative is required and what are the tangible or non tangible benefits expected and take an informed decision. The good part is that most BPO's come with their own collaboration and visibility techniques and also share their best practices that they picked from their customer across the globe and this makes move a "check and mate" move to improve the supply chain maturity.

Author: Puneesh Lamba
Source: Link

Popular posts from this blog

The 5 Scopes of Agile Planning

The 5 Scopes of Agile Planning The concept of planning within the agile methodology has often been misunderstood. Due to the commonly known statement "We value responding to change over following a plan" most of teams starting agile think that they will no longer need to plan for the future. Contrary to this popular opinion, planning plays just as big of a part in agile as it does in any other project management approach it is simply a little different. In its essence agile is built to cater the environments with constantly changing requirements and goals. Which means that the traditional planning model, of just setting something in motion at the beginning of the project, is no longer viable. Instead, the planning needs to cater to the changing circumstances and help the team navigate them in the best possible way. To achieve this, the agile planning is organized in different scopes, where each of them are equally important and carry value towards the end goal.   Fir...
Read more

The Eagle's Dynamic Strategy

The Eagle's Dynamic Strategy Business strategy is important as it can give you a competitive edge in securing clients over other companies who are pursuing the same business model. In order to develop that edge, you need to identify a competitive advantage and develop your business strategy around it. Once you have done that, you need to sustain that advantage. Simply put: Business strategy is the process that allows you to leverage, develop and sustain a competitive advantage over other companies targeting a similar market. The problem is sustaining that competitive advantage over time. Can you sustain your advantage? The problem is that we no longer do business in a bubble. Therefore, your competitive advantage can be enjoyed only for a short period of time. Modern business strategy must be a continuous process evolving with new competitive advantages. One must build their business on the basis of moving from one competitive advantage to another as smoothly as possib...
Read more

When the Business Negotiations is Over. What to Do?

When the Business Negotiations is Over. What to Do? The negotiation is over and done with (or at least this meeting that is a part of the negotiations is done with) and the negotiation styles and negotiating techniques have all been put away. Now you can go home, put your feet up, and relax until the next meeting. Hold on - it turns out that things really don't work that way. Reaching the end in a negotiation is when the work really starts. Do you know what you need to be doing now? What Was Achieved? The most important thing to realize is that you need to get together with your negotiating team as quickly as possible after the negotiation is over. Our memory of what happened starts to slip very quickly so speed is of the essence. One of the most important things to discuss is a review of whether or not you got what you wanted. If you had taken the time to define your objectives before the negotiations started, then you'll be well positioned to evaluate the outcome. ...
Read more