As I’ve been going through my hundreds of articles to put together the 100 tips, it’s become obvious as to which topics resonated with me as those essential to delivering bottom line business results. Here are a few highlights from supply chain management:
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- Demand Planning – It starts here. What do you think your customers need? What will set you apart from the competition?
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- Planning/ Inventory management – Who doesn’t have too much, too little, or not the “right” items at the “right” place at the “right” time throughout your end-to-end supply chain?
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- Inventory accuracy – Of course inventory accuracy affects efficiencies across the board but little matters if you cannot find your inventory to ship to the customer on time!
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- Capacity & staffing – Do you have the machines, tools and resources to produce the demand plan? Are they cross-trained?
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- Customer service & lead times – Is your supply chain set up to deliver on-time and with lead times which will edge out the competition?
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- Logistics – Are you warehousing, distribution and transportation processes set up to achieve your customer expectations at the lowest cost to you?
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- Customer & supplier collaboration – Only those who collaborate will thrive.
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- SIOP/ S&OP – aligns all functions on 1 plan while balancing supply with demand.