How to Achieve a Successful Supply Chain

There are seven steps to achieve a successful supply chain. These are;

• Understand and Communicate: In this we study the business at six different levels. These are
  • Level I: Business As Usual
    • Organizational elements pursuing self interests
  • Level II: Link Excellence
    • The starting point of Supply Chain Excellence
  • Level III: Visibility
    • The next step in establishing a visible presence with other supply chain links
  • Level IV: Collaboration
    • Using visibility to do the work smarter and meet marketplace demands
  • Level V: Synthesis
    • A continuous improvement process to harness the energy of change
  • Level VI: Velocity
    • The ideal state of synthesis with speed. Faster! Faster!
      

      
      

• Benchmarking and Best Practices: This is required in order to achieve the following;
  • How are we doing in comparison to others?
  • Are our costs reasonable and in line with others like you?
  • Are we missing any breakthrough opportunities?
    

• Leadership: Leadership gives us direction regarding, where are we right now, where are we to go, how to reach there and other such things. It also helps us to motivate our employees to achieve what is desired.

• Assess and Prioritize: It is helpful to create a supply chain roadmap which helps us to know where to go reach and how.
  • Actions:
  • • Expand on inbound freight management initiative to include electronic PO transmissions, acknowledgment, confirmation and changes. Expand integration with current system to include relevant updates from inbound freight management.
  • Benefits:
  • • Expand on inbound freight management initiative to include alert capabilities to buyers, suppliers, agents and integrated updates with the current system.
  • • Near-real-time updates and visibility to production events based on tight integration among suppliers, inbound freight management and current system.
  • Responsibilities:
  • • Merchandising to expand focus on product strategy and reduce focus on administrative elements.
      
      

• Core Competencies: These are helpful to kill and win over competition. These are of two types;
  • Primary focus core competencies: Those activities and processes that differentiate an organization in the marketplace
  • Secondary focus core competencies: Those activities and processes that must be done well for the organization to retain market share but are not visible to customers
    
    

• Partnership:
  
  • Supply Chain Partnerships believe relationships should be based on:
    
    • Building on each other’s strengths
      
    • Growing the pipeline’s competitive strength
      
    • Integration of systems
      
    • Frequent communications at all levels of the organization
    • Frequent structured interactions on creating supply chain peak-to-peak performance
  • Supply Chain Partnerships believe relationships should:
    • Not be based on antagonism, leveraging, hammering and negotiating
    • Be long-term based on trust and a true understanding of Supply Chain Excellence
    • Be based upon sharing of information, planning, scheduling, risk, rewards, problems, solutions and opportunities for creating peak-to-peak performance
  • Supply Chain Partnerships believe relationships should be based on working together toward improved performance of the total pipeline on:
    • Quality
    • Lead times
    • New product development
    • Time
    • Inventories
    • Waste
    • Costs
    • Customer satisfaction
  • Growing the Supply Chain Partnership:
    • No two relationships ever develop in the same way
    • Relationships evolve not as cold-blooded business negotiations, but as comfortable personal bonds between individuals
    • A positive chemistry exists between the two parties involved in a relationship
      
      
      
      
• Continuous Improvement: The last thing is to improve continuously, this is so because if you want to remain at the top then you must always be at least two steps ahead your competition and this is done through continuous improvements.