Supply chains continually grow alongside your business, and the two typically build on top of one another over time. While effective, this tendency can lead to situations where processes and systems are not able to keep up with the eventual scale of your operations. Another problem is that solutions and arrangements that made sense at their time of implementation can begin to struggle with more modern realities. An important part of supply chain management is being able to recognize when this time has arrived and to take the steps necessary to bring about a revolution. By revising, replacing, and rejuvenating your supply chain, you can stay on the cutting edge of business success.
Enhance the Tech Side of Your Supply Chain
The technology used in your supply chain plays a large role in how agile and responsive operations can be. Even if you already have existing digital supply chain systems, it’s worth considering whether they are still up to the task or can stand to be improved or replaced. Take the time to do your research into in-house or best-of-breed, or third-party options and see what can meet your needs (present and predicted future) best. When making a technological transition, it is also important to make sure to get as many parties as possible on board. This can include your own workers as well as suppliers. Change is naturally disruptive, so everyone needs to understand the little bumps that will occur before the system is fully implemented and smoothed out.
Get Real-Time Visibility
This is a subset of the above point, but it’s worth emphasizing on its own. Being able to have real-time visibility of your supply chain is an advantage that cannot be underestimated. Not only does it let you spot and react to orders and events in real time, but you can use this information to keep customers better apprised of the status of their purchase. Between letting you stay agile and keeping customers happy, it’s easy to see why real-time visibility is going to become an expected feature of supply chains.
Collect Supporting Data
In addition to it simply being a good idea to have a data backup, collecting supporting metrics is often the first step in improving your supply chain. Without knowing information like inventory order rates, warehousing costs, inventory costs, data on shipping routes, and so on, you can’t find the spots that are most in need of improvement. Having this information on hand also makes it reusable so you can incorporate it into your new systems and/or future projects. Knowledge is power, after all.
Make Sustainability Part of the Supply Chain Strategy
The idea of a sustainable supply chain is worth embracing as part of your revolution both from public relations and practical standpoints. Taking steps to minimize energy consumption, packaging materials, and maintaining a robust reverse logistics process are all able to help you save and recoup costs while doing a bit more to help the environment. These achievements can, in turn be used to enhance your appeal among customers and garner goodwill and interest.
Look to Lean Supply Solutions for Effective Supply Chain Management
Lean Supply Solutions is a third-party order fulfillment company in Toronto whose operations are based around the Lean Methodology, a proven philosophy focused on eliminating any operations, equipment, or resources that are not capable of adding value to clients’ supply chain. By striving to ensure that the right products are provided to the right customers at the right time, Lean Supply Solutions is able to offer consistent, accurate, and quality results.
To learn more about the Lean Methodology, outsourcing to Lean Supply Solutions, or to ask any questions, give us a call at 416-748-8982.
