Supply Chain for the Future – The Magic Wand

Decades before we all believed that ‘Quality comes with high Cost’; then the Japanese showed us that ‘Doing it right the first time’ increases the profitability. TPS (Toyota Production System) showed us how to work leaner, produce quality products at less cost as well as to provide world class customer experience. Seeing the success of TPS, every organization started to reference TPS and build their own lean production systems. Clearly, those days the lean production systems created the much-needed competitive edge for businesses. The benchmarks are broken quite often, and the bar was kept rising every now and then. Decades passed by and now almost every big organization has mastered the art of lean manufacturing. Thereby, slowly lean manufacturing has lost the status of secret recipe and the competitive edge is lost. The gap is filled by none other than the Supply Chain Management. Supply Chain is one of the key discussion points in every board room and a lion’s share of the Budget is getting allocated to build the supply chain for the future.

As of today, we can loudly & confidently say ‘The Organization with the most successful Supply Chain is the Winner’.

Evaluating a Supply Chain

The Supply Chain has 3 main functions within – Sourcing, Manufacturing and Distribution. The success of Supply Chain is measured by –

Reaction time – Supply Chain is packed with uncertainties, no matter how well you plan. The successful Supply Chain reacts and re-aligns almost real time to ensure the performance is seamless.
Efficiency – Supply Chain has numerous sets of activities bundled together in a sequence. With multiple if and then, the flow is very complex. The successful Supply Chain is efficient by having full control on each step within the process.
Cost – Sometimes we may feel cost is always a sub set of the above two. Partially it is true; by being efficient we save cost. But the point here, the successful Supply Chain has the most updated method of performing the processes and thereby cost efficient.
Starting from Supply Chain Basics till the new trends like IoT and Industry 4.0, all are well aligned to this. For example, in a Nutshell the IoT Supply Chain adds value by aiding in real time decision making which is aligned with the reaction time.
Read more: https://www.insightssuccess.in/supply-chain-magic-wand/