Supply Chain Resiliency – A series of short articles – Part V – Deliver
Supply Chain Resiliency – A series of short articles – Deliver
The supply chain is made up of a sequence of highly inter-related serial and parallel dependent activities. The delivery portion of the supply chain is the last link between you and your product arriving to your customer with the right quality and on time. Areas of potential risk are capacity shortages, lack of proper security, lack of data quality, and lack of automation among other concerns.
Let’s take them one at a time:
1. Capacity shortages
a. We addressed this in the “Make article” under the topic of inventory shortages. By the time you get to the final delivery to the customer, capacity issues may mean lack of the right inventory in your distribution center or complex transportation issues.
2. Lack of proper security
a. An area of concern is import / export regulation and compliance which can impact delivery by stopping or delaying shipment. Although it looks like a capacity or security issue to your customer, it does not matter because customer satisfaction and goodwill suffer.
3. Lack of data accuracy
a. Inaccurate inventory data from distribution centers can lead to poor customer commitments, inaccurate shipments, early or late delivery (and yes, early shipments can cause many of the same issues as late shipments).
b. The same is true for transportation as above.
c. Poor poor data accuracy has a significant impact on customer service communications with customers:
i. No Delivery: The worst possible issue – the shipment never arrived as promised. Worse yet is when you cannot answer where is it, why it is late and when it will arrive.
ii. Complex Customer Care: Do you transfer your customer to 3, 4 or even 5 people and still no answer is surfaced? Your customer cannot get the information they need so they can implement contingency plans for what was your problem in the first place.
iii. Customers need dependable deliveries from suppliers with limited early- and late-deviations to avoid excess supply chain cost. As customers increasingly penalize suppliers for early as well as late deliveries, having the right data is key to maintaining control over the process within the service level expectations, and can avoid repeated penalties.
4. Lack of automation – this problem is pervasive across the supply chain and will be covered in detail in our next post in this series.
Risks in the Deliver area are very high due to the closeness of this activity to your customer. Poor inventory, security, data or transportation processes can all lead to major customer issues and a competitive disadvantage. All of these risks can be significantly impacted by network design which in turn, is a function of geopolitical, geo-economic and geo-environment issues and concerns.
Review Parts I – V in this series:
Supply Chain Resiliency – A series of short articles – Part IV: Make
Friday, August 16, 2013 – The supply chain is made up of a series of highly inter related and dependent activities. The decision to manufacture is a complex area, especially due to the make vs. buy component of manufacturing. You can now take all the supply chain resiliency issues involved in our previous sourcing articles and add them to this discussi…
Supply Chain Resiliency – A series of short articles – Part III: Source
July 12 2013 – The supply chain is made up of a series of highly interrelated and dependent activities. Sourcing is complex due to geo-economic and geopolitical risks, and climate challenges along with country specific rules, laws and regulations. Sourcing challenges also exist due to single supplier issues, poor vendor compliance and lead time issues.
Demand Planning – Part II of IV in Supply Chain Resiliency
Jun 27 2013 – Demand Planning – Part II of IV in Supply Chain Resiliency – By Robert Benny & Missan Eido – The supply chain is made up of a sequence of highly interrelated, serial and parallel dependent activities. Demand planni…
Supply Chain Resiliency – A series of short articles – Part I: Where to Look is a Critical Success Factor – Jun 19 2013 – Supply Chain Resiliency – A series of short articles By Robert Benny & Missan Eido From Jim Satterfield: As the President of Firestorm, I am pleased to introduce this Series Introduction and first article, …
“What should we do now?” “What should we say?”