Supply chain vulnerabilities and disruption are a common phenomena for many businesses around the world. This is why it’s important to diversify your supply chain so if one part gets disrupted, your whole operation isn’t disturbed. The hurdles to overcome and problems to solve are enormous for supply chain management.
Whether you offer a service or are selling products such as makeup, digital marketing for organic website traffic or professional ATV equipment, the supply chain will always play a critical role in your business upbringing. Therefore, here’s a guide for beginners on how they can efficiently manage their supply chain to ensure their business keeps growing.
Supply Chain Management: What Are the Risks?
Many research and reports conclude that companies with highly efficient supply chain management ability make 79% more profit than other companies that are not that improved. The risks associated with the supply chain are highly dynamic as every scale of business may suffer from any of them anytime.
Even when excellent shipping and supply chain management is in place, many companies expect the hurdle in their way, called the budget. As the growth of the e-commerce market leads to the simultaneous increase of the shipping market, Amazon reports a $21.7 billion shipping cost in 2017, which was previously $11.5 billion in 2015. But how do these cause problems? Read further.
1) Lack of Transparency
As the supply chain management strictly remains a very confidential department of any business/industry, the risk associated with its operations increases as there is no way of introducing transparency in the system. Even the use of tracking and shipping software sometimes misses the mark when it comes to tracking the items throughout the time.
2) Multi-Tier Dispatch Risks
For products that are complex to ship and handle, it becomes difficult to manage the operations of the supply chain. Often the supply chain is divided among multiple tiers when a complex product is shipped and the time for it to reach the destination increases. At the same time, the transparency of the operations decreased significantly. And this makes it even more tricky to tackle any problems if encountered.
3) No Patterns to Follow
Depending on the location of the manufacturer or seller, precautions must be taken. Also, if any risks that relate to the surrounding conditions occur, they are irreversible and often end up costing loss of millions. There are no patterns that can help deprive when and how to prevent these conditions.
Therefore, the requirement for supply chain management increases to keep your business running successfully. But this task asks for expert support and experienced professionals who can manage the tasks and schedule everything in the right manner to produce excellent results.
For beginners, this may not seem an easy task, but by following the right approaches, they can also ensure efficient supply chain management.
How to Mitigate a Supply Chain: Easy Tips to Follow for Beginners
Mitigating a supply chain required personnel to dedicate their time and skills thoroughly after managing every step and process of the supply chain. However, by knowing the best practices one can use, many of the risk occurrences can be prevented in advance for efficient management.
1. Assess Each Node
Each node of the entire supply chain must be known to you.
Without having to fetch information from multiple sources or waiting for other persons to share the details with you, you must know the operations and procedures executing at a particular node. Starting from the manufacturer, supplier, shipping, transition, warehouse- and any more nodes included in the chain must be covered.
Maintain a risk register where you can enter the information and check for the potential risk occurrence at each node. Enter the data regularly to check for any possibilities of risk. This is one of the oldest tricks to use to find out the risks that keep occurring and solve them in time before it costs you millions. And now, the easy availability of software has made this process even easier than before.
Now you can track and report any potential risk before it happens to ensure the transition doesn’t stop at any cost, and the known risks are prevented before they take place.
2. Endure Sustainability
What if your supplier is not able to deliver because of unknown reasons?
Have you got your back covered? During these situations, it becomes crucial to have a back up ready to keep your supply chain sustainable. The reason that is causing the delay in shipping might not get solved in time. Then you should be prepared to jump to another supplier who can give you a hand during these tough times.
Introduce your business to more than a single supplier who can supply the same product/services without compromising with the quality standards you have set. Despite depending upon a single-source contractor, try to maintain your relationship with multiple suppliers. It helps you cope up during tough times and cover up the lost goods and manage a sustainable supply chain.
3. Do Not Forget to Check on Quality
The products you order must not fail the quality standards you have set. For example, as the demand for electric vehicles increases, aluminium foil or battery copper foil for cell manufacturers are becoming popular options. Therefore, it is important to check the quality of the material to ensure safety of the customer. Additionally, they are often said to be more efficient and reliable types for transferring energy as well as increasing the longevity of the battery.
Even when you have finalized the contract with a supplier, it is essential to keep checking the quality of the products or services you are receiving. The best way to do this is through customer reviews. For example, an uber clone app owner determines whether their drivers are providing excellent services or not through the reviews they receive. You can implement the same system in your business to keep a check on the product quality.
Also, it helps you know if any further upgrades or changes are required in your business operations and delivers excellent services to your customers.
4. Engage Employees
You should think about engaging your employees within the supply chain mitigation operations.
They can also be directed to keep their eyes open and find out if any risks are there and help you prevent them in advance. You can ensure employee engagement by assigning tasks to them that they are dedicated to complete.
Also, it is crucial to introduce transparency in your work culture as your employees can inform you of the possible changes and the risk factors before they occur. This helps you prepare in advance and generate the best results. If you are inclined to mitigate the risks of supply chain management, your staff must also know about it to put their best efforts forward to help you out.
For beginners, these steps are very easy to understand and take, but the effects it can bring for business are significant. By dedicating their time for planning and strategizing the risk mitigation in advance, any company can ensure there are fewer problems encountered in their supply chain.
Infographic created by Track Your Truck, a GPS vehicle tracking devices provider
Experience is a great teacher. With time, you can learn many other ways of managing your supply chain and mitigating the risks. And can invent some newer ways yourself! But before you start, this gives a simple overview of your strategizing procedure and helps learn the primary ways an organization can use to mitigate risks. Be ready to take on every challenge and work your way out by planning out in advance. Start mitigating the risks and produce results your organization will love by starting on the right foot!Conclusion
