Whether you’re operating with a complex trans-continental supply chain or using local materials and vendors, the same principles apply. Supply chain mistakes are hugely costly to businesses of every size and there’s always more steps you can take to optimize your supply chain or introduce greater resilience.
Here are 7 supply chain errors commonly made – and how to avoid them.
1. Discounting Supply Chain Data
Your supply chain data is one of the most powerful tools you have in the fight for optimized logistics and increased supply chain resilience. Yet because data is produced every minute, every second of the day, it can be an overwhelming task to gather and analyze your supply chain data.
Nevertheless, ignoring supply chain data is a fatal error. Integrating the appropriate software to collate and interpret your data can influence future business decisions as well as provide an advanced warning of logistical challenges in the pipeline. Ignore your data at your supply chain’s peril.
2. Failing to Reduce Costs
Successful businesses become adept at knowing where they can reduce costs, slashing margins to reach an optimized state of supply. Whilst most organizations are investing some energy in reducing costs, are you sure you’re doing this effectively and efficiently?
“One of the most powerful ways to reduce the costs accrued in your supply chain is to take away points of contact with your product,” says Jordan Gainsville, a writer at Assignment Help and Essay Services. “Simply put, every time someone handles your product, there’s a risk of damage and delay – and even seemingly negligible actions add up.” Are you able to combine some steps in your supply chain, or remove others, to strip away these touch points?
3. Working With Too Many Partners
Resilience in supply chains is important – market fluctuations as well as acts of God can affect supply chain partners and if you have too few relationships this can hit your bottom line. However, spreading yourself too thin with your logistical partners can erode the relationship you’re building with these organizations. Finding an optimized group of partners to work with lets you access greater discounts and economies of supply.
4. Not Investing in Customer Services
Your customers are at the end of your supply chain, so finding out how they evaluate your performance is vital to operating more effectively as a business. Too many organizations treat customer services as secondary – somewhere to deal with complaints and problematic customers – but in fact, your customer service department is a vital source of information about what you’re doing right and what you could be doing better. Invest in customer services to tap into the feedback.
5. Not Planning for Logistical Disruptions
Supply chain disruption can come in many forms. A lack of raw materials can prevent first-stage components being built, or legislative changes can impact import/export laws and stop you getting across borders. “Organizations need to make an effective risk assessment for a number of scenarios – even unlikely ones,” says Rachel Macuna, a supply chain expert at Revieweal and Ukservicesreviews. “Determining likelihood and impact in a risk matrix will allow you to solve any problem.”
6. Neglecting Physical and Cyber Security
Traditionally, ensuring the physical security of your supply chain has been a matter of chain-link fences and security guards, and while break-ins are still more common than we’d like, the risk of physical interference is minimized. Increasingly, however, cyber security risks are more prevalent than physical breaches. Ensure your digital supply chain – and your vendors’ – are regularly serviced to prevent painful breaches in cyber security.
7. Neglecting Vendor Relationships
Vendor relationships are at the heart of any supply chain and in times of crisis and disruption this has never been clearer. For example, if a raw material becomes scarce, your vendor relationships can insulate your organization from the greatest impact of increased competition in the market. Yet too many businesses take their vendors for granted, neglecting to build secure vendor relationships. When choosing a vendor, don’t just look at the price. Select vendors who share your values and can become strong partners in your business model.
Conclusion
In the competitive, modern marketplace the supply chain is an important site of optimization, efficiency and resilience. Build strong relationships on both the vendor and customer-side, enact risk management for disruptions and enforce cyber security standards to ensure your supply chain is up to scratch.
Author Bio
Lauren Groff is a journalist and writer at Big Assignments and Custom Essay. Lauren writes about logistical challenges and contemporary supply chain management. You can read more of her work at Best essay writing services.
