What is Supply Chain Strategy
Organizations that are serious about being competitive and gaining market share for the long term should ensure that they develop a well thought out supply chain strategy. A lot of persons tend to get confused about what is really a supply chain strategy. For those of you who don’t what is a supply chain strategy?
It’s basically a strategy used to overview your whole supply chain. It can also be used to drive down operational cost and maximize efficiency within your supply chain. In the supply chain strategy you are going to plan out how you are going to work with distributors, customers and suppliers.
You should also think even broader to ensure that your strategies are going to have a real impact on your overall business.
If you are serious about developing a supply chains strategy in your organization. Below you can see couple tips you can follow to make your process better.
Communicate and collaborate with your partners
When developing a supply chain strategy, make certain to include your key partners in the mix. Communicate how you and they are going to do business. Additionally let them know how they are going to fit into your overall strategy. Develop and share goals that you and your supply chain partners could work on.
By achieving those objectives you could both improve each other’s organizations.
Outsource
One of the main goals of a supply chain strategy is to bring down cost and improve efficiency. If outside partners could do part of your supply chain’s management operations better and cheaper.
That would be great and it would be necessary for you to let them do it. This will allow you to focus on the core tasks that your organization can do extremely well. This tends to also improve overall productivity in your organization.
Identify your operations strength and weaknesses
Before developing a strategy or while developing a strategy, ensure that you evaluate your supply chain operations properly. The reason for this is because you don’t want when you’re executing the strategy old machineries unexpectedly broke down or your old IT system keeps on crashes.
This can cause you to spend a lot of money to help fix your systems. Furthermore this is going against the whole idea of driving down cost by using a supply chain strategy. So make certain to evaluate your operations and invest in your supply chain system before you implement the strategy.
Measure performance
It’s necessary to put metrics in place to help measure your different supply chain operations. This will also allow you to spot areas of inefficiencies when your performance goals are not met. You can then develop strategies that will help solve those issues and make your overall business perform better.
In summary developing a supply chain strategy for your organization should be necessary especially in your business plan. It will help you to drive down operation cost, create a better relationship with your partners, improve overall productivity etc. It can also allow you to create better valuable products for your customers and allow you to compete in your market.