A supply chain is the network that exists between a company and its suppliers. Any business involved in it strives for supply chain excellence.
The supply chain process begins from the point of gathering materials to create a product until when the product reaches its end user. A supply chain includes many parties such as manufacturers, vendors, producers, logistics companies, warehouses, distribution centers, producers, and retailers. These parties involve themselves in marketing operations, manufacturing, distribution, product development, finance, and customer service.
A company develops a supply chain in order to reduce costs while remaining competitive in the business landscape. The processes involved in maintaining it are Supply Chain Management.
When organizations endorse and practice effective Supply Chain Management processes, they can easily solve emerging issues. They can also correctly solve emerging issues and prevent the disruption of production or other parts of a supply chain.
A proper supply chain management procedure allows items to move quickly and efficiently to their final destination - the consumer.
Supply Chain Excellence is continuous year-to-year improvement of a company's financial performance. Supply chain excellence is also making sure to outperform the industry based on certain metrics that correlate to market capitalization.
It's about getting the right items to the right location, in the right amount, at the right time, and at the right quality. This should happen the first time while also making sure to minimize waste and be open to possible changes in the future.
If a company is able to drive improvement on all the points below, they have achieved supply chain excellence. They are:
Do this by defining your needs and opportunities. Use these when planning how you can optimize the people, operations, and technology involved to gain the best value. Meanwhile, keep in mind that the mission and vision of your supply chain should align with your company’s.
This should be in all areas of the supply chain. This enhances operational costs and improves quality by complying with the contracts and reducing organizational risk. Clearly define the terms of leadership and responsibility, while making sure you invest in the necessary infrastructure and technology.
Maximize your resources employ new talented people into the supply chain. People who understand the best practices of a supply chain would be very beneficial, and if they don’t, they should receive help through training. Developing a skilled workforce and fostering innovation is a priority in any supply chain, be it local or global.
The supply chain should be dedicated to performance management. Such as responding to market changes and requirements while keeping focusing on your business's needs. Provide incentives should for process excellence metrics linked to objectives and procurement kept in control.
Establish a strategic sourcing strategy by eliminating redundancies, refining business processes, and keep the ideas for continuous improvement coming. This reduces your company's expenses, ensures quality, and increases satisfied customers.
Apart from purchase and transaction costs, supply chain professionals should be aware of other unseen expenses in purchasing. For example, “How much does the way I work with my vendor affect my cost?”
Establishing good alliances with your primary suppliers and carrying out win-win approaches are crucial for success.
It is important to proactively manage your supplier relationships and develop a framework to measure how your key suppliers perform. A segmentation plan can also be used to categorize suppliers based on relationship stance, sourcing complexity, and the values they deliver.
Implementing a standard automated pay process for procurement is important. It reduces inconveniences such as buyer involvement when it comes to buying from preferred suppliers.
To maximize strategy, ensure good inventory control and that your supply meets the demand. Focus on effective management, maintaining integrity, and taking trials and errors before choosing your best fit.
Self-distribution may not be to everyone's taste. Nonetheless, it gives you the power to ensure standardization of your products, reduce inventories, and make final touches before your products reach consumers. This is possible by working closely with your distributor.
Create and monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) regularly. To put it simply, when you don’t set standards for processes within your supply chain, you end with higher expenses. They can be over shipment or late delivery which are inconveniences that you could have avoided. Perform continuous improvement on both logistic processes, key logistic expenses, metrics, and benchmarks.
Managing your supply chain is a vital part of running your company, and achieving supply chain excellence can be challenging. It requires a lot of expertise. Zebra Technologies has partnered with AccuSpeechMobile to provide our customers with the right solutions to reduce costs, save time, and increase profitability.
If you would like to make your supply chain logistics more productive, contact our industry experts at AccuSpeechMobile today. We’ll help you select the solutions necessary to meet your business goals.
