In the past year, the global pandemic, economic disruption and broad shifts in consumer behavior caused a domino effect of supply gaps that exposed long-standing vulnerabilities in our supply chain.
Despite the need for better supply chain management, business leaders have been slow to act, having for years chosen efficiency over resilience. In Forbes’ 2021 CxO Growth Survey, C-suite respondents ranked “revising supply chain strategy” as a low priority. Delaying action, however, can expose supply chains to serious financial risks and prevent companies from seizing the benefits of resilience.
While massive shifts in consumer behavior brought on by the pandemic have uncovered a large gap in our supply chain, it has also created an opportunity for IT leaders to identify areas where they can improve.
A connected and resilient supply chain helps you respond to changing demands without impacting production. It also ensures the cost of production and delivery is consistent and predictable.
At HSO, we suggest the following actions to ensure supply chain resiliency:
- Analyzing how your existing supply chain works, the strength of your supplier relationships and how much is impacted by internal versus external resources
- Identifying where workforce gaps exist along the supply chain and where they can be better filled and retained
- Investing in new R&D and to connect your finance, sales and operations systems, and develop opportunities for innovation
- Building and machine learning models to maximize equipment uptime, quality and efficiency and product life
In order to facilitate these improvements, you need two things as a foundation: a responsive, connected technology system and a strong supplier relationship strategy.
A responsive and connected technology system allows you to quickly scale the production from new or existing suppliers up or down. If your systems are disconnected, it can leave parts of the business working at cross purposes. Often, a lack of consistency and standards, or of a systemized approach for your operations is at the heart of the problem.
In the case of supplier onboarding, it’s not uncommon for new supplier approval to take weeks, or even months. The traditional RFQ process is an extensive task and you need suppliers to meet your needs and standards. Yet once approved, it can still be a manual process to monitor supplier standards.
Balancing Speed and Quality
The agile manufacturer requires speed, control, and the ability to turn the taps of your supply chain on and off. But how can you achieve speed without compromising quality? Automating your supplier management, finance and production processes is one way and manufacturing technologies such as Microsoft Dynamics 365 provide the complete platform to do this.
With a secure, cloud-based platform that you can trust, is paving the way for manufacturers to strengthen and innovate in a rapidly changing economic climate. By providing organizations of all sizes with the right tools to manage their supply chain, finances and operations, along with support for customer relationships from a single application, you can gain complete control and full visibility across all areas of your business.
Improve Your Manufacturing Business with Microsoft Dynamics 365
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