Like your business, your supply chain is a vast and complex network. Businesses need to source product from suppliers, who may also source materials and components from their own suppliers, and so on. If one part of this network faces a problem, it makes every part vulnerable. Having a deeper understanding of how supply chains work and how efficiently you can manage potential risks will help you resolve issues quickly. There are steps that you can take to cultivate resilience in your supply chain, which means you can better anticipate, react to, and recover from unexpected problems. If your goal as a business is to emerge stronger as the days go by, you can implement some of these steps to achieve supply chain resilience. Here are some tips to build a resilient supply chain, and how our supply chain services can help you.

Steps to Build a Resilient Supply Chain

Analyze the Risk

Analyzing the risk in your supply chain is your starting point. You need to understand what risks each of your suppliers brings to you, how significant these risks are, and how you can prevent them. By understanding the risks associated with each supplier, you can get proactive to protect your business against it. By analyzing the risk, you will gain an understanding of the maturity of your suppliers, and how capable they are of managing any issues that come up. Then, you can ensure that they have processes to mitigate their own risks as well.

Take the Long-Term View

As you build your supply chain, you should take your time and be proactive. A reactive solution that involves just-in-time procurement and managing cash flow raises the risk of your business facing challenges. It’s common for organizations to forget that incentives to save money can also bring serious risk because they focus on perceived short-term benefits instead of having a long-term view. By having a proactive solution, you can review potential threats and ensure that you are not spending too much for possible risks. From this larger perspective, you can create a better strategy for yourself and your suppliers.

Centralize Your Risk Monitoring

By centralizing your risk monitoring you will save time, resources, and confusion. There are many tools in the market that can help you monitor your supply chain and build a responsible one for various risks. The goal is to keep your data consistent within that framework. You will need to host your own facility data, supplier data, and third-party risk data in one place.

Be Targeted

After identifying the risks in your supply chain, you should develop mitigation strategies that are sensible and innovative. Sensible mitigation strategies simply mean you are choosing a strategy that caters to the specific risks in your supply chain. It should be a quick and effective solution that is appropriate and cost-effective. In terms of innovation, you should constantly be updating your strategy with your suppliers to find even better ways to reduce risk. There is no one size fits all solution, which is why you should be targeted in your approach.

Communicate What You’re Doing

Your consumers, partners, suppliers, and investors need to know that you are responsible to the environment and your communities. This requires effective communication of what steps you are taking to mitigate risks head on. Doing this will be good for your brand and create new opportunities to expand. A great tool to illustrate improvements in your performance is analytics.

Evolve Your Approach Through Lessons Learned

Despite being proactive, things may still go wrong. However, it’s how effectively you respond to these hiccups in your supply chain that will keep it operating well. Be sure to take note of any lessons learned about the risks that happened and how you responded to them, so that you can create a database of best practices. These learnings can be applied to your overall supply chain management strategy and can be taught to your employees to improve chances of future success.

Benefits of a Resilient Supply Chain

Availability

The first benefit of a resilient supply chain is availability. With quality operating systems, you can access real time inventory data and adapt to global constraints. This gives you and your suppliers peace of mind during unexpected weather-related events and catastrophes. Even if one location gets hit with a blackout, you can still access the latest information on your system elsewhere at the click of a button.

Flexibility and Configuration

Unexpected disasters do occur, and your business needs to be able to respond to these challenges. Using cloud-based software, you can be ready for anything with original configurations from any device, without needing to set up a new system. Resilient supply chain management also allows you to collaborate with your vendors to adjust the flow of products based on changes you make at your facilities or distribution points. This interconnectedness allows you to have full control of how you manage your inventory and respond to challenges.

More Control

Total control in your business means knowing and seeing exactly where your inventory is at anytime. By obtaining cloud-based software and working with a third-party logistics provider, you can have a single view of your inventory across your entire network. This visibility gives you more control over your business.

Contact Lean Supply Solutions for Low-Risk Supply Chain Management

With the right supply chain management, storms can come and go without affecting your business. With resilient cloud solutions, quality inventory management, and other beneficial supply chain services, you can prepare for future challenges and be ready with solutions that help you and your suppliers.

A third-party logistics supply chain provider can help you deal with the challenges of a growing business, whether you are a small- or medium-sized organization. With their supply chain services in your hands, you can benefit from their efficiency and talent, as well as many other advantages such as supply chain management software and technology that increase visibility and communication between you and everyone in your business network.

If you are looking for the right company to partner with, Lean Supply Solutions is the answer. We rise to the challenge of meeting our clients’ needs through our services which include product fulfillment, warehousing and distribution, e-commerce fulfillment, warehouse pick and pack, order fulfillment, and more. To learn more about outsourcing to our supply management in Toronto and Vancouver, or to ask any questions, contact us today.

Corporate social responsibility and supply chain sustainability are buzz phrases in the industry today, but what do they mean? Sustainability is more than just the icing on the cake; now it has become a necessary part of every business model. Here’s what you need to know about the importance of sustainability and supply chain management, and why you should get on board as soon as possible.

What Is Sustainable Supply Chain Management?

Sustainability is the future, and it is more important than ever that your business’ supply chain establishes a sustainability program. This program will help you understand the level of social, environmental, and economic impact and viability that your suppliers and customers have. There may not be government pressures to push sustainability, but there are already corporate pressures on suppliers and vendors. Sustainability is more than just going green and being environmentally friendly. It also impacts the entire manufacturing process, from where raw materials are obtained, to the processes within the plant, to the use and potential recyclability of the product or service.

Why Is It Important?

Innovation

When manufacturing inventory, the first aspect that will lead your business to a more sustainable future is the supply chain. Manufacturers need to create new ways to manage and track their practices in the supply chain, manufacturing process, and in sales and marketing. Customers are also becoming increasingly active in supporting these measures.

Brand Enhancement

Sustainability does more than improve product quality; it can also improve customer relations. Focusing on cost alone when considering manufacturing inventory won’t cut it. Customers become loyal to brands that they share their values with, which is why you should invest in sustainable practices that reduce waste and use ethically sourced materials. Makeup brands that use plant-based ingredients and recycled packaging, and those labelled as “vegan” and “cruelty-free” quickly build a loyal customer base. Consumers are more aware of the things they buy, and many choose to trust brands that do their best to protect the environment.

Cost Control

When shifting to a sustainable supply chain model, it might be expensive at the start, but it has proven to bring greater efficiency in the long-term. Companies experience a significant decrease in expenses over the long term, which is attractive to both manufacturers and customers. All parties gain something when you move to a sustainable business model.

Tips for Supply Chain Sustainability

Map Your Supply Chain

Many companies do not completely understand how sustainability affects their supply chain. As you prepare to improve, one of the first changes you should make is to the inventory suppliers. Identify the most significant environmental and social challenges they have and then prioritize your efforts with them.

Related: A Comprehensive Guide to Supply Chain Mapping in 2024

Communicate Expectations

By focusing on sustainability within your supply chain, you can effectively communicate corporate values and cultures to your customers and suppliers. By establishing and communicating expectations, you can involve your business relationships in your sustainability efforts. These expectations can be communicated through a supplier code of conduct. There are many resources and tools available to assist companies with developing a supplier code of conduct. These guidelines and tips for writing and adopting a successful supplier code of conduct can be found by doing a little research and using the tools available online.

Develop Training and Capacity Building Programs

Another important step to improve sustainability and drive behavioural change includes training development and capacity building programs. You can transfer knowledge across the supply chain by leveraging the best practices and case studies from your best performing suppliers via online training modules, annual conferences, and capacity building campaigns. As you showcase the success of your best suppliers, you encourage everyone to recognize their efforts and demonstrate the practical benefits of sustainability initiatives. You also establish an incentive for the rest of your suppliers to do better.

Baseline Supplier Performance

Once you have set compliance standards for your target suppliers, you should collect data from them through a simple benchmarking questionnaire or self assessment to understand your starting point. Many organizations have begun to evaluate their supplier performance using surveys and questionnaires. Many organizations also incorporate every area in their code of conduct with special focus on the self assessments related to important areas of their business. Baseline assessment of supplier performance are the starting point for future programs aimed at improving supply chain sustainability and assessing where the greatest need for improvement exists.

Drive Performance Improvement

Once your business has a solid understanding of supplier baseline performance, you can create an audit program to measure performance improvement as time goes on. Although the self assessments are completed by a corporate group, on-site audits can reveal local practices, practical optical opportunities for improvement, and behavioural challenges that are challenging to identify through surveys alone. When your organization implements an audit program, you should be prepared to act on the findings by preparing corrective action plans that include communicating the results and expectations, and if necessary, terminating suppliers if they do not comply. You compare these audit programs with incentive programs that reward suppliers that comply.

Lean Supply Solutions Provides Logistics Management Support

As a business, sustainability in the supply chain allows you to reap countless benefits. Offering a transparent business model to your suppliers, investors, and consumers allows you to demonstrate your commitment to sustainability. This attracts customers who are now becoming more aware of their impact on the environment. To keep up with this competitive environment, you should always strive to move forward and exceed the expectations of your relationships.

Ready to benefit from a sustainable business model? Partner with a third-party logistics provider and start today! Lean Supply Solutions rises to the challenge of meeting our clients’ needs through our services which include product fulfillment, warehousing and distribution, e-commerce fulfillment, warehouse pick and pack, order fulfillment, and more. To learn more about outsourcing to our supply chain management company in Toronto and Vancouver, or to ask any questions about our supply chain services, contact us today.

Today’s supply chain business is more challenging than ever. There are endless things to consider, such as how to reduce costs, increase safety in the warehouse, and deliver products to customers faster, etc. Although the supply chain is a big business for many companies, the rise in the consumer electronic industry has brought a whole new set of challenges that are unique to its processes, functions, and data requirements. Depending on the industry you work in, the challenges you face could vary; however, there are some key challenges for supply chain management in Toronto and Vancouver that you should know about. Here’s how supply chain services can help you face these top challenges in the consumer electronic industry.

Short Product Life Cycles

Short product life cycles create an environment full of risk. There are so many changes that happen over the course of the life cycle, so you will need to carry extra inventory to make sure you have enough products on hand to meet your customer demand. Unfortunately, this means higher carrying costs and a greater risk to your bottom line if the product does not perform the way you expected it to.

To resolve this issue, you need to create several supply chain policies that show the changes in life cycle demand. With these patterns on hand, you’ll be able to compare your plans based on changes in prices and customer segments and/or new markets to find the best results.

Multiple Partners/Globalization

There are so many partners involved in a product’s journey from the raw materials to the product being delivered, which means you will need to collect and organize various sets of data. Strong visibility across your supply chain is paramount to ensure that you are not constantly reworking plans and dealing with communication problems between your partners and suppliers and yourself. A lack of visibility can also cause you to miss any discrepancies. You won’t be able to see a problem coming from far away—you’ll have to wait until it hits you.

To anticipate change and risk, you need a single, harmonious end-to-end network. In other words, you need to capture all master and transactional data with one system, capture details from your partners, and operate from that single source of information. This will reduce the time it normally takes you to gather current data and search for any issues that you need to resolve. It will also serve you well to set control limits on international standards, regulated compliances, and customs requirements, etc.

Slower Decision-Making

Everyday you must be prepared to deal with any possible problems that come your way. You will need to dedicate yourself to finding the right harmony between costs, revenue, and service. For this to happen, you need to collaborate with your coworkers, and unfortunately, getting on the same page isn’t usually the top priority. It can be a struggle to get everyone on your team in agreement. This inability to balance daily decisions can slow down the decision-making process, and hold you back when you need to respond to changes in supply, demand, or capacity.

Merger and Acquisition Activity

The slower your data integration process, the slower the pay off. Mergers and acquisitions are valuable in company expansion and the consumer electronics industry, but that means you need to consider a variety of enterprise resource planning (ERPs) systems. However, in the supply chain, these systems don’t usually work well together.

The faster you can merge data, planning, and analytics, the faster you will reap the rewards of your investment. You’re planning solution should be able to incorporate data and model the behaviour of multiple ERP systems. Once this data is collected, you can manipulate it, analyze it, and reduce your inventory and cost risks. With a current set of data, your plans will be more accurate and likely to succeed.

Demand and Variety

Consumer tastes and interests are more customized than ever before, and supply chains face the constant urgency to create new products to match the changing preferences of customers. This will lead to more SKUs and shorter product life cycles. Aspects like product development, sourcing, and fulfillment, are more complicated than ever before. Transportation costs are also higher. The better a company can manage their inventory, the better they can meet these demands.

Implementing a quality inventory management software (IMS) will allow you to track the movement of the products in your warehouse. It will provide information so that you can forecast which products you need to restock, and which items have gone dead. With this visibility, you will be able to make better decisions that will save you money and ensure that you are getting the right products to your customers.

Pricing, Logistics, and Other Cost Pressures

The competitive global marketplace has benefited consumers because it has brought in the latest and greatest innovations at lower prices. However, for supply chains, this has led to shrinking margins. Manufacturers in the electronic industry must find ways to deal with this downward pressure on operating margins and find ways to save money without compromising service.

How Lean Supply Solutions Can Help

As you can see, there are many challenges in the electronics industry. However, with the right support you can face these challenges head on and gain a competitive edge. Large businesses may have the manpower and resources to tackle the challenges of their supply chain, but how can small- to medium-sized businesses compete? The answer is simple: Partner with a third-party logistics provider that has all the capabilities necessary to give you that competitive edge.

If you are looking for the right company to partner with, Lean Supply Solutions is the answer. We rise to the challenge of meeting our clients’ needs through our services, which include product fulfillment, warehousing and distribution, e-commerce fulfillment, warehouse pick and pack, order fulfillment, and more. To learn more about outsourcing to our supply management in Toronto, or to ask any questions, contact us today.