Ultimate Guide: Supply Chain Risk Management

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Table of Contents:

Introduction

What is Supply Chain Risk?

Why is Supply Chain Vulnerable to Risk?

Why should you pay attention to Supply Chain Risks?

Challenges that Supply Chain Face?

Different Types of Supply Chain Risk

How to Manage Supply Chain Risk?

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Introduction:

In this interconnected atmosphere where inter-country and Intra-Country transactions of Goods and Services is becoming a business necessity, having a good control over supply chain becomes increasingly important.

In the quest to have production superiority while retaining the cost advantage, we go to offshore and remote locations for manufacturing and delivery requirements.

This makes Supply Chain an important part of your entire business operations.

And as with any other business operation, supply chain comes with a lot of risk i.e. possibility of anything going wrong is high.

Supply chain especially is more vulnerable to risks because of many factors involved.

In this blog, we are going to talk about what can possibly go wrong in your Supply Chain environment.

Moreover, we have tried to help you out with possible standard solutions which apply to those risks.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css=”.vc_custom_1587994455887{margin-top: 20px !important;margin-bottom: 20px !important;}” el_id=”supplychainrisk” el_class=”getacall”][vc_column][vc_cta h2=”Looking for a First-Class Supply Chain Consultant?” h2_font_container=”font_size:20px|color:%23000000|line_height:24px” h2_use_theme_fonts=”yes” style=”outline” color=”orange” add_button=”right” btn_title=”get a call” btn_style=”flat” btn_color=”theme_style_2″ btn_align=”right” btn_i_align=”right” btn_i_icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-chevron-right” use_custom_fonts_h2=”true” btn_button_block=”true” btn_add_icon=”true” el_class=”third_bg_color” css=”.vc_custom_1587994381965{margin-top: 20px !important;margin-bottom: 35px !important;padding-right: 20px !important;padding-left: 20px !important;background-color: #fde428 !important;}”][/vc_cta][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]

What is Supply Chain Risk?

Wikipedia defines Supply Chain as,

“Supply-chain risk management (SCRM) is “the implementation of strategies to manage both every day and exceptional risks along the supply chain based on continuous risk assessment with the objective of reducing vulnerability and ensuring continuity“

However, I personally don’t like the above definition, as it makes up a good fairy definition which soothes up English language and hardly defines the entire concept of Supply Chain Risk.

But it does give us some light to explore more.

It covers some of the key components of Supply Chain Risk, like:

Everyday Risk to Supply Chain Processes:

Everyday risks are the risk which comes up very regularly and impacts supply chain process on a daily basis. Some of the risks which fall in this category are exchange rate fluctuations, transport delay, manufacturing shortfalls etc.

One key thing to note here is that all such risk is always pertinent to the supply chain process. Hence planning for such risk is a lot easier and therefore should always be done.

Exceptional Risk to Supply Chain Processes:

Exceptional risks are the risks which cannot be foreseen easily. These risks come out of any unwanted situation which deters smooth supply chain operations.

Some of the prominent Exceptional Risks which cannot be foreseen are Political Risk, Environment Risk, Weather Risk etc.

The problem with these risks is that they can’t be planned ahead. What one has to do while planning for these type of risks is to minimise the impact of these risks on supply chain operations.

Vulnerability of Supply Chain Processes:

Vulnerability means how much the supply chain processes are susceptible to deviations from normal.

Some of the processes are more susceptible and hence more vulnerable. For eg, transportation and movement is more vulnerable. So is Manufacturing Demand. One has to find the more vulnerable processes and hedge the risk against them.

Continuity of Supply Chain Operations:

Another key factor which is a big part of Supply Chain Risk Management is continuous operations of Supply Chain.

We know the kind of costs that a business has to incur for simple delays in delivery/manufacturing etc.

Hence Supply Chain Risk management entails how to keep the operations up and running after mitigating various supply chain risk.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css=”.vc_custom_1587994474671{margin-top: 20px !important;margin-bottom: 20px !important;}” el_id=”scvulnerabletorisk” el_class=”getacall”][vc_column][vc_cta h2=”Looking for a First-Class Supply Chain Consultant?” h2_font_container=”font_size:20px|color:%23000000|line_height:24px” h2_use_theme_fonts=”yes” style=”outline” color=”orange” add_button=”right” btn_title=”get a call” btn_style=”flat” btn_color=”theme_style_2″ btn_align=”right” btn_i_align=”right” btn_i_icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-chevron-right” use_custom_fonts_h2=”true” btn_button_block=”true” btn_add_icon=”true” el_class=”third_bg_color” css=”.vc_custom_1492960401760{margin-top: 20px !important;margin-bottom: 35px !important;padding-right: 20px !important;padding-left: 20px !important;background-color: #fde428 !important;}”][/vc_cta][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]

Why is Supply Chain Vulnerable to Risks?

I always believe that to get to an understanding about anything, we have to first answer the big WHY behind it.

Supply chain generally is a risky affair. The variables and factors which impact the entire supply chain process and operations are ever changing.

Their dynamics are difficult to understand and very hard to read. Let’s first understand what makes Supply Chain so hard to study!

Supply chain especially is more vulnerable to risks because of the following:

• Number of stakeholders:

Any Supply Chain of a business is a complex structure. Especially when there is more than one country involved in the operations, a number of stakeholders involved are a lot.

This increases the risk as more the stakeholders, more are the chances of anything going wrong.

This makes the entire supply chain vulnerable to risks.

• Fluctuations:

The entire supply chain process is not a one-day affair. Rather it involves multiple parties, situated in multiple time zones working over a long period of time.

Hence there is a lot of scope of fluctuations in the entire supply chain process and its operations.

These fluctuations can be in the exchange rate, cost of transportation, environmental structure, political discourse, labour cost, cost of raw materials.

This zooms up the risk in supply chain and makes it more vulnerable.

• Inter-Dependency of Stakeholders:

All the stakeholders are in the entire supply chain process is interdependent.

The nature of dependency might change i.e. the dependency can be linear or vertical or the dependency can be in series or in parallel, but the dependency makes any risk with a particular stakeholder, a potential risk to the entire supply chain.

Hence inter-dependency of stakeholders in any supply chain process is a big risk to the entire length and breadth of the supply chain operations & processes.

• Lack of Transparency:

Because of the various kind of stakeholders in any supply chain process, it is very difficult to keep a continuous channel of communication and reporting.

Moreover, given the stakeholders are situated in different time zones, different cultures and different setups, it increases the lack of communication and reporting.

This results in lack of transparency in the entire process unless we have systems of eas reporting.

• Lack of Clarity:

Such is the nature of operation of any supply chain process that the exact nature of issue and position of various variables is very difficult to determine.

It takes a good deal of systems and analysis to determine exact nature of supply chain.

In normal scenario and in absence of good supply chain risk management, there is humongous lack of clarity.

• Dynamic nature of Process:

The kind of processes which make up the entire supply chain i.e. procurement of raw materials, transportation, quality control, manufacturing as per demand, inventory management etc has a lot of variables which play a key role.

This makes the entire process very dynamic in nature. Because of dynamic nature, it is very difficult to plan supply chain and hence there is a risk which comes with the supply chain processes.

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Why should you pay attention to Supply Chain Risk?

Deloitte reported in 2014, 79% of businesses with good and robust supply chain which perform well, report greater than average revenue growth within their industries.

This clearly depicts the importance of Supply Chain and its application. Companies which are able to figure this out well and optimise their network, normally tend to much better than their competitors who still lag behind in Supply Chain Optimisation.

Supply Chain’s Direct Impact on Profitability:

Supply Chain Planning has a direct impact on how businesses perform in the marketplace. It can make or break any company’s profitability prospects.

The biggest reason is that Supply Chain helps a business to optimise resources, thereby enabling them to invest in places where there is more value.

This helps them to beat the competition. Let us look at some of the ways it is possible.

Quality Control of Inputs: This really helps in increasing the profitability of any business. The more control we have over the quality of our inputs, the more control we will have over the end product we have manufactured.

Now we all know that quality commands a premium for products. This shoots up the profitability.

As you know that supply chain optimisation helps us to control the quality of products. Supply Chain Optimisation helps us keep tab of suppliers which gives us the larger bandwidth to choose from a list of suppliers so that we can eliminate the bad ones. Also, there are checks and balances in the supply chain to continuously keep a tab on the quality of the inputs to the manufacturing process.

Therefore, Supply Chain Optimisation indirectly impacts profitability of the any business

Cost of Distribution: The problem with the distribution of products is that there is a lot of uncertainty in the entire supply chain.

Uncertainty in terms of delivery schedules, demand for the product, transportation glitches etc.

This uncertainty results in huge inventories, irregular delivery schedules, last minute transportation issues and arrangements.

This in turn again results in increasing the cost of distribution. Which in turn impacts bottom-line of any company.

Deciding on Manufacturing Infrastructure: There are a few things which impact the manufacturing infrastructure of any manufacturing facility of the company.

They are major, demand for any product/s, the source of demand, inventory required, labour planning.

Having supply chain optimisation helps in understanding the product requirement from the customers. Which in turns helps us in demand planning.

This goes a great deal in deciding the amount of inventory we need and hence helps us in deciding the manufacturing infrastructure of any facility.

Planning for your Suppliers and Customers: Your suppliers can get a great deal if your supply chain is optimised.

This goes to great length in finding the right fit in terms of what and how much your customers are demanding vis a vis how much raw materials we need from our suppliers in order to match our manufacturing requirements as per our customer’s requirement.

Hence supply chain optimisation helps in planning for suppliers and customers a great deal.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css=”.vc_custom_1587994507317{margin-top: 20px !important;margin-bottom: 20px !important;}” el_id=”challengesc” el_class=”getacall”][vc_column][vc_cta h2=”Looking for a First-Class Supply Chain Consultant?” h2_font_container=”font_size:20px|color:%23000000|line_height:24px” h2_use_theme_fonts=”yes” style=”outline” color=”orange” add_button=”right” btn_title=”get a call” btn_style=”flat” btn_color=”theme_style_2″ btn_align=”right” btn_i_align=”right” btn_i_icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-chevron-right” use_custom_fonts_h2=”true” btn_button_block=”true” btn_add_icon=”true” el_class=”third_bg_color” css=”.vc_custom_1492960401760{margin-top: 20px !important;margin-bottom: 35px !important;padding-right: 20px !important;padding-left: 20px !important;background-color: #fde428 !important;}”][/vc_cta][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_video link=”https://www.youtube.com/embed/UVGBipc67g4?rel=0″ image=”4064″ img_size=”full”][vc_column_text]

Challenges that Supply Chain face:

Apart from the many benefits that Supply Chain industry has to offer, there are many challenges that supply chain industry has to battle with. Let us look at these challenges:

Manufacturing Operation in Different Countries:

There was a time when all we had to plan was how to solve intra country issues and challenges while planning for supply chain w.r.t. manufacturing operations.

But nowadays with increased cost benefits in tapping optimised labour and resources for different categories of products, it has become even more important to look for best place to source products/establish manufacturing facilities.

This makes the job of a supply chain consultant even more difficult. Now apart from the intra country risks, one has to counter inter-country risks as well. This brings with it a host of other problems as well as Cultural Risk, Political Risk etc.

Hence, now supply chain optimisation has to counter everything while planning and strategizing for optimisation.

Quality Control and Safety of Products:

With the Globalisation of manufacturing operations coming up, it becomes even more difficult to control quality.

There is always a risk of contractual differences with the suppliers because of language barriers which might bring in quality differences.

Also, to be above the market and lead it, quality becomes an important aspect for any business success.

Apart from it, safety of the inventory and product while delivery is also an issue.

Customers are now expecting that the product’s packaging should ber intact while the delivery of the product is being made. So, safety of the products is a big issue.

Especially with the advent of ecommerce which requires last mile connectivity, safety becomes more important.

Reduced Lead Time and Inventory with Improved Efficiency

With the business environment becoming more competitive and the fast-changing demands of the consumer, being lean is very important for any company.

Being lean means less inventory and less machinery. This means that we have to optimise what we have.

But it is easier said than done. It makes it very difficult for the supply chain expert to optimise on lead time, inventory and ensuring better throughput.

However, one has to ensure it when planning the supply chain.

Supplier base consolidation

There was a time when suppliers were considered an alien party to the business success. However, that has changed over time.

Now-a-days suppliers are an integral part of business success. They have become so important that some business models thrive on supplier relationship.

Hence Supplier Base consolidation is becoming very important. We have to identify the right suppliers and then nurture them.

This is fast becoming one of the most important challenge for supply chain consultants. 

Access to latest technology:

Being agile is very important now-a-days. Agility comes with reduction in Manpower.

This is where technology becomes very important. Technology helps us to reduce redundancies, eliminate errors etc.

However, with the demand for more agility, new technology is being made. This brings up a challenge about accessing the new technologies in front of supply chain consultants.

One has to keep learning to be informed about these technologies and then plan accordingly.

Planning & Risk Management:

If there is one aspect where most of the supply chain professionals lack is articulate planning and strategy.

Biggest reason for that is lack of practical exposure to understand every aspect of supply chain.

This also limits them when they are planning for Risk management.

But now-a-days Risk Management and planning becomes very important for effective planning of supply chain.

Talent in the industry

Despite Supply Chain becoming an important component of business success, not many individuals are actually taking supply chain industry as the preference of career.

This creates a huge talent gap in the industry vis a vis requirement.

Hence spotting young fresh talent is becoming very difficult. So the only way out is to nurture talent slowly and steadily.

But then this is a costly proposition. As nurtured talent may want to switch when it matures to actually start delivering and becoming of use.

Hence, talent in the industry is a big issue. 

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Different Types of Supply Chain Risk:

The only constant about supply chain risk is its volatility. And the volatility is because of the various factors which impact any supply chain.

The various factors span from not only internal business oriented factors but also from external factors impacting the economy, labour, market etc.

Let us look at some of the major risk that impact Supply Chain:

Strategy Risk: 

Choosing the right strategy is the most important part of managing any supply chain.

It requires one to understand the business goals and state and then plan accordingly.

The supply chain strategy for any small to medium size business shall be different from any enterprise.

One may choose to go for local sourcing because of shortage of resources for small businesses but will want to go global for enterprise to get the best sourcing plan.

Have market intelligence when delving into this risk. This will help you to plan properly for this risk.

Market Risk

Market Risk is how the market may be able to impact performance of your business. This is very important to understand and plan as it may turn out to single biggest hurter to your bottomline.

Major things impacting your Market risk are your brand, your financials, compliance and market exposure.

Anything going wrong in any of these will impact your business adversely.

Bigger problem is that your role in making sure all of these are in place is limited. For eg, if you outsource any business manufacturing, your supplier has to comply with the product specification and market compliance on your behalf. This makes it very difficult to manage.

Plus how the market is going to change with respect to demand and supply is again an uncertainty.

You can find about their standards and keep checks and balances for the same. You must clearly define your tolerance for deviations from the compliance and brand standards to your suppliers. This way you can mitigate this risk.

Implementation Risk:

This normally happens when the promise made is not delivered. This happens normally because of overpromises.

Easy way to find out about these overpromises is that you check the capacity of the implementation team (implementation can be from your or from your supplier etc).

Once you have checked the capacity, only then sign on the agreement. Also do check how important are you to your implementation team.

Performance Risk: 

This risk is linked to the suppliers you have selected. Once has to keep constant look into what is happening with their suppliers.

They might have had a shift in their strategy, which makes performance on your contract not important to them.

This will lead to performance issues. Hence to mitigate the same we need to constantly check our suppliers for performance risk.

Demand Risk

Demand Risk is when the demand for any product might fluctuate in response to the market.

This normally happens when there is a fluctuation in the customer demand or supply or some external risk.

This helps us to understand the various possible fluctuations that any business might face and can consequently plan their inventory.

Also, similar factors might impact your supplier. They might give preference to other clients over you. Which might delay your supplies impacting manufacturing and inventory.

One has to keep a tab on this to mitigate the Demand Risk.

Financial Risks 

Well this again becomes a very important risk to counter while planning and executing supply chain risk.

Financial Risk essentially is about anything which impact the cash outflow/inflow related to anything in your entire supply chain.

Some of the possible Financial Risk are fluctuations in Exchange Rate, Non-compliance of Financial Standards, suppliers Bankruptcy etc.

One of the way to counter Financial Risk is that one should always keep a buffer. For exchange rate fluctuations, hedging should be done.

Also one should evaluate the financial position of the supplier before executing any contract.

This gives you a much better sense about the financial capability of the supplier before executing any deed.

Scope of Schedule Risk

This is one risk which is often not seen and evaluated by us. But this might well be the worst possible start to any supply chain contract.

This happens when one does not define properly the entire scope of work.

Scope of Work essentially is very important to define upfront. This defines the expectation to the supplier and us very clearly and hence leaves very little room for ambiguity.

Once the scope is clear, it is very easy to understand what one has to deliver.

Another part of this Risk is schedule risk. A supplier might not be able to stick to schedule disrupting the entire supply chain.

The schedule might be faulted because of many reasons like natural disaster etc.

Legal Risk

This follows the Scope of schedule risk. This often arises because the contractual obligations were not clear to the either of the parties entering in a supply chain contract.

Also now-a-days we try to get our manufacturing outsourced to a supplier. And hence we might share our designs and specifications to our suppliers.

This gives them access to our innovation. Which in some cases might be misused in terms of intellectual property infringement?

They might share the designs etc to competitors.

We have to clearly specify the recourse action and liabilities whenever such infringements happens in the contract itself.

Environmental Risk

Whenever one enters into a contract with any of the supplier, the environment risk starts coming in.

It depends very much on how the supplier has utilised resources from the environment.

For example, the supplier might have exhausted all the water and hence the manufacturing might take a hit or the cost of manufacturing might zoom up.

This makes it important for us to make sure that the supplier takes care of environment like water etc., so that the impact of environment risk is minimum.

Socio-Political Risk

This risk comes into picture whenever there is a change in the government or the social structure of the place where either us or the supplier or any part of the supply chain is situated.

We all know that nowadays political structure is changing very fast. It is creating a lot of problems as with the change in political structure, the social impact is humongous because of change in ideologies, making it difficult for us to understand and hedge it.

The only thing we can do is minimise the impact of the same by making sure that the supplier and us included is not having any lineage to political ideologies.

Project Organisation Risk 

This is a risk which occurs the moment any supply chain project starts.

This basically deals with the any risk which the team members for any supply chain project have.

There might be incompetent people sitting at the wrong places. There might be people with capability handling wrong profiles. Or there is always a risk of health of the team.

We can hedge this risk by having backups for the team and making sure the task-capability matching is done properly for the entire supply chain team.

Human Behaviour Risk

As volatile the human behaviour is, this risk is also volatile.

It is very difficult to predict this risk and understand the impact prior hand.

The behaviour of any human might be impacted because of the environment one is spending time.

The only way to hedge this risk is that we have t create backups and keep the members focussed towards the entire goal of the project.

Cultural Risk 

This risk is a result of many of the nuisances associated with the culture of the place where the project is being executed or the supply chain is being handled.

This risk can be handled by understanding the major cultural behaviours of the native place and then have the people participating in the project to orient themselves as per the culture.

This helps them to also manage in terms of cultural contingency and make sure that the project is not being impacted.

Manufacturing Risk

Manufacturing Risk is a result of many of the many reasons that there could be manufacturing delays.

Some of those reasons that we might have manufacturing risks are:

1. Delay in supply of raw materials
2. Delay in labour arrangement
3. Labour Strikes
4. Lack of Power
5. Lack of Transportation etc

Apart from the above, there are much other reason which is responsible for manufacturing delays.

What we have to do is to find all the possible reasons for delays and then tackle them all one by one.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css=”.vc_custom_1587994552717{margin-top: 20px !important;margin-bottom: 20px !important;}” el_id=”managesc” el_class=”getacall”][vc_column][vc_cta h2=”Looking for a First-Class Supply Chain Consultant?” h2_font_container=”font_size:20px|color:%23000000|line_height:24px” h2_use_theme_fonts=”yes” style=”outline” color=”orange” add_button=”right” btn_title=”get a call” btn_style=”flat” btn_color=”theme_style_2″ btn_align=”right” btn_i_align=”right” btn_i_icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-chevron-right” use_custom_fonts_h2=”true” btn_button_block=”true” btn_add_icon=”true” el_class=”third_bg_color” css=”.vc_custom_1492960401760{margin-top: 20px !important;margin-bottom: 35px !important;padding-right: 20px !important;padding-left: 20px !important;background-color: #fde428 !important;}”][/vc_cta][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_video link=”https://www.youtube.com/embed/gYky0_torao?rel=0″ image=”4065″ img_size=”full”][vc_column_text]

How to Manage Supply Chain Risk?

It is very critical to manage the supply chain for your business. Reducing Risk in the supply chain can be done by paying attention to the critical factors in the entire Supply Chain of any business i.e by looking at the following:

Supply Chain Strategy: 

Supply Chain Strategy is one of the most ignored strategies in any business’ working. Most of the business seldom give it the time and important that this strategy deserves.

What is more shocking is that even the businesses which do pay attention to supply chain strategy don’t take it as something which impacts business overall.

They normally take it as a separate strategy which doesn’t impact the business goals overall.

Hence the major issue is that most Supply Chain Strategies are never aligned with other business operations and goals.

Resulting in issues and problems which make it even more difficult for the strategy to be a successful one.

And what we do is shoot the messenger i.e. we think that the supply chain doesn’t work! Whereas the supply chain strategy was wrong.

So as a business you must make sure that your supply chain strategy is linked to the overall business goals and to every operation of the business.

Supply Chain Network Design: 

This is probably the most critical part of any supply chain strategy. Supply chain network design makes or breaks supply chain of any business. If this is done properly then we have cracked a major aspect of our supply chain planning.

Supply Chain Network Design essentially deals with how goods and raw materials will be dealt during our manufacturing and selling process.

In this design distribution of goods from manufacturing plants and warehouses is the most critical part. It solely results in business failure and success.

If this is not done properly, it will cause major delays hurting business sales and serious loss of reputation.

Normally a network is a result of the kind of operational and demand challenges we face. So it is safe to say that a supply chain network design is an evolving process.

It is a result of supply chain risks that any modern business faces like; policy, political, cultural, environment etc.

And one has to look at the supply chain design both at Maco level and more importantly at a micro level.

If the above is not done, then one must seriously start evaluating their supply chain network design.

Supply Chain Service Performance:

Supply chain service performance is creating a way to actually drive customer experience by designing supply chain in an effective way.

Customer service is becoming increasingly important. This has become so important that it has been estimated that now over 90% businesses shall be competing solely on Customer Experience (Recent Survey).

Supply chain service performance is becoming an interesting way to helps us drive customer experience. How we develop our supply chain strategy, our network design and manager our performance defines our overall customer experience.

If we have issues with our supply chain, following impacts shall kill our customer experience:

1. Delay in replacement of defective products
2. Damage in Finished Products while in transit (even a small defect in packing will kill our experience)
3. Delay in delivery of products and service
4. Poor tackling of customer service requests
5. Shortage in inventory
6. Delay in manufacturing due to raw material delays

When we see the above in any business, it brings a bad customer experience. Supply chain service performance helps us to find solutions to the above problems so as to enhance the experience for our customers.

Supply Chain Costs

Supply Chain costs are now becoming the central part of all boardroom discussions.

What should be the cost of meeting the demand? What should be the inventory? What should be the raw material requirement?

All such questions constitute to supply chain costs.

Moreover, it has a direct bearing on the financial function of any business. For eg, Larger inventory can be helpful for meeting demands but results in larger inventory holding costs and storage cost thereby shooting pilferage costs.

If we are keeping larger raw materials, we are increasing our working capital, and hence financing costs.

Concepts like ‘Cost to Serve’ Reveals some interesting insights into the effectiveness of supply chain costs.

Some of the parameters like customers’ lifecycle analysis help us to find which customers are actually delivering value to us.

We can then plan as per them to develop our inventory.

Then, we have product lifecycle analysis, which helps us to find the best time to ramp up production of hold manufacturing of any product line w.r.t to their contribution to bottom-line.

This entails in figuring out the operating profit from each product line and then plan accordingly.

When it comes to controlling the costs, we can do so by:

1. Controlling Inventory Costs
2. Controlling Transportation Costs
3. Controlling Distribution Costs
4. Controlling Wastage
5. Controlling leakages
6. Forecasting better for customers and product lines

Let us get one thing clear, controlling supply chain costs is now essential to achieve bottom-line success and be in the competition.

Supplier Performance 

Gone are the days when suppliers were just another external stakeholders of the company. Nowadays suppliers are internal stakeholders of the company.

What do we mean by this? Actually, customers have stopped taking suppliers are a different part of any business. To them, they are part of the business as they have no contact with them.

Supplier performance has become so important that many contemporary businesses are dependent only on how well they manage their supplier relationships.

This is also understandable to any extent. The business now focuses on their core functional requirements internally and outsource most of the other requirements like raw material procurement, customer service, finance etc.

Hence their performance impacts businesses as such. This makes managing them well very important.

They might be able to drive up the supply chain costs or to increase the RoI on Supply chain investment.

Ethical Procurement and Corporate Responsibility: 

This is very important to understand that it’s not only about delivering the best products to your customers, it is also important how you are delivering the bests products?

Recent examples have shown us how some of the best-known brands have had a loss of reputation and consequently loss of revenue because of their mal-practices in procuring the raw materials or manufacturing the product.

Mal-practices can be for reasons like:

1. Procurement at the cost of environment
2. Use of money power to drive leverage to your procurement deals
3. Ill-treatment of labour during procurement process
4. Using unethical ways to get raw materials
5. Poor working conditions while manufacturing any product

The list can get very exhaustive if we try to get to delve. However, the important point is to find what do we stand for as a business entity in the eyes of consumers.

That should be followed up with all our procurement processes.

Inventory Management

As pointed out earlier, we have to find the best inventory levels to reduce supply chain costs.

It is easier said than done. The reason is that inventory has a direct bearing on distribution and demand management.

We don’t want to be in a situation where our products do not reach our customers at an appropriate time.

Hence this calls for proper inventory management to find business profits and drive revenue to newer heights.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css=”.vc_custom_1587994570970{margin-top: 20px !important;margin-bottom: 20px !important;}” el_id=”conclusion” el_class=”getacall”][vc_column][vc_cta h2=”Looking for a First-Class Supply Chain Consultant?” h2_font_container=”font_size:20px|color:%23000000|line_height:24px” h2_use_theme_fonts=”yes” style=”outline” color=”orange” add_button=”right” btn_title=”get a call” btn_style=”flat” btn_color=”theme_style_2″ btn_align=”right” btn_i_align=”right” btn_i_icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-chevron-right” use_custom_fonts_h2=”true” btn_button_block=”true” btn_add_icon=”true” el_class=”third_bg_color” css=”.vc_custom_1492960401760{margin-top: 20px !important;margin-bottom: 35px !important;padding-right: 20px !important;padding-left: 20px !important;background-color: #fde428 !important;}”][/vc_cta][ultimate_modal modal_title=”Kindly share the following details to get a Call” modal_on=”custom-selector” modal_size=”medium” modal_style=”overlay-slideup” overlay_bg_color=”#ffc107″ overlay_bg_opacity=”60″ header_bg_color=”#848484″ header_text_color=”#ffffff”][ipt_fsqm_form id=”9″][/ultimate_modal][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]

Conclusion:

The above factors are very important to find business success and manage supply chain risks.

Supply chain is getting very complex, but if we follow and take keen interest and due deligence in strategizing the above points we must be able to manage supply chain risks for our businesses.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]