Tips for Streamlining Your Supply Chain Management

Featured article by Emma Jones, content writer at TechsCrunch

All it takes is one weak link to break a chain and as far as most organizations’ supply chains are concerned, a dysfunctional piece can cause untimely delays, unhappy customers and most importantly, lost profits.

Companies ranging from a multinational conglomerate to a small-town manufacturing facility can use supply chain data and analytics to help improve decision making at every level of their supply chain, including forecasting, reporting, sales, operation planning and logistics. Using the key performance indicators (KPIs) that are available for each of these links can lead an organization to a more efficient and resourceful approach to their supply chain practices.

Forecasting

One of the easiest ways to look to the future is by looking into the past. Most businesses are cyclical and usable data builds up with every passing month and year. Trying to predict something six months or a year out might seem like more of a wish or a guess, but there are actually plenty of aspects that factor into the forecasting process. The data a company generates over time can help immensely in the planning process because it takes into account different values, trends, sequences and variations in your data to make predictions for the future.

Forecasting characteristics like supply, demand and market price can give an organization a general outline on how to adjust their supply chain over a given period of time. Once a forecast is set in place, there may need to be changes to the amount of raw materials being brought in, changes to the transportation budget or changes to sales pricing. Using supply chain data analytics to accurately forecast can reduce the amount of misused resources and will likely require smaller, less costly adjustments as time goes on.

Reporting

How useful is all of the data you can extract from a company if there is no way to accurately present it? Most companies use some form of a warehouse management system (WMS) or an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system to assist in the reporting process. These programs can take large amounts of data and make it easily presentable in a short period of time. A competent reporting tool can track all aspects of warehousing and distribution, production, procurement, transportation, customer service and even accounting. Being able to pull accurate data from all of these portions of a supply chain is critical when analyzing a supply chain.

Sales and Operation Planning

According to Forbes, sales and operation planning (S&OP) is the cross-functional process to align the commercial processes of sales and marketing with the operational processes of supply. The goal of an S&OP is to establish a plan that divides company resources like capital, time and labor. The results of a well-oiled S&OP include better inventory reporting, better budgeting, improved product life cycle and a streamlined supply chain, which all lead to better efficiency and less product loss.

Logistics

One of the hardest links in the supply chain to plan for is logistics. There are a wide variety of variables that can cause a late delivery and an unhappy customer. While some delays can be caused by uncontrollable factors like weather or highway closures, there are plenty of ways to use analytic data to improve transportation performance. Warehouses can make sure product is packed, palletized and ready to load before the truck is schedule to arrive. This keeps the truck at the loading facility for less time and gives the driver more time on the road.

A truck’s time on the road is now being monitored more intensely than ever before, so getting trucks in and out has become even more important for shipping facilities. The Department of Transportation passed a law in December 2017 that requires all semi-truck drivers to operate under an electronic logging device (ELD). The ELD will track the driver’s available hours electronically so drivers can no longer forge paper logs and drive more hours than legally allowed.

Companies need to be adjusting their shipping windows to allow for more time on the road for their freight carriers. Depending on the final destination, shipping a day earlier than normal will give drivers more time to legally make on-time delivery, which will avoid a call from an irritated customer about a late delivery.

Streamlining your supply chain helps develop better forecasts, more accurate reporting, improved operations and fewer delays in logistics. Companies have this kind of data available to them that can be used to restructure their supply chain processes and become more effective in their day-to-day operations and thus, more profitable over time.