A supply chain refers to the entire network of organizations, activities, processes, and resources involved in the creation, production, distribution, and delivery of products or services to the end consumer. It encompasses all the stages and entities that contribute to the flow of goods and services from the initial source of raw materials to the final customer. Within an individual business it will often be curtailed to those activities involved in the physical movement of goods, but will include the forward planning of those activities. in reality, the Supply Chain Director in a business will spend much of his/her time working hard with C-suite colleagues to coordinate activity to ensure that the supply chain can work efficiently.
Logistics tends to be seen as the planning, execution, and management of the movement, storage, and distribution of goods and services from one point to another within the supply chain. Logistics encompasses various activities and processes, including:
The supply chain strategy should align with and support the broader business objectives and goals. It should consider factors such as market expansion, cost reduction, customer satisfaction, and innovation. It needs to co-ordinate with other strategies in the business, such as manufacturing and procurement strategy and the sales strategy. The company may set it's goals and objectives, but the supply chain is more than likely to be the key factor in delivering goods to customers, to the right service level and to cost.
Network design has to suit the needs of the business. Determining the optimal configuration of your supply chain network, including the number and location of suppliers, manufacturers, distribution centres, and retail outlets is critical. It's not a task to be done frequently, but periodically the network needs to be reviewed to accommodate a change in company strategy in another area or growth in throughput or range.
Sourcing strategy will determine how and where to source materials or components. This may involve considerations like single or multiple sourcing, global or local suppliers, and supplier relationship management.
Production strategy will define the manufacturing and production processes, technology, and capacity required to meet demand efficiently. This also includes considerations of lean manufacturing, just-in-time production, and automation. This can impact on supply chain requirements by affecting the amount of finished goods that heave to be held in stock. Running smaller but more frequent batches reduces stockholding, but it may be less efficient production.
Inventory Management policy will determine how much inventory to hold at various points in the supply chain to balance cost, lead times, and service levels. This involves optimizing safety stock, reorder points, and inventory turnover.
Risk Management: every business should identify and mitigate risks that could disrupt the supply chain, such as natural disasters, political instability, or supply chain disruption. Many companies look simply at risks but fail to calculate the financial impact of an interruption on the companies financial performance.
Inventory Management is a mathematical science, but few recognise this and practically all Inventory Management teams are run using poor systems and / or old Excel spreadsheets. It is one of the few areas of Supply Chain activity that could be automated almost entirely.
The Inventory Management team sits at the crossroads between the sales/commercial team and the operations team. Most receive little in the way for forecasts, data or support to do their job, yet they have a critical role in ensuring customers get the stock they order on time.
Typical Issues
How We Can Help
We can review you current inventory management processes, system and people. We can develop new ways of working, specify and source software solutions to automate much of the daily workload, design and deploy new processes to improve all KPIs and cross company communication
Relevant Experience of the Team
Setting up an Inventory Management team in a multi brand food business. Procurement of invenotry management software. Development of MRP processes using SAP, BC, Sage X3 in various businesses.
Warehouses are key parts of any supply chain. Simplistically they are there to hold stock to allow a business to meet variable demand with short lead-times and high service levels. They are, though, very complex. Apart from how big your warehouse needs to be, which in itself is determined by your stocking policy, storage systems and handling systems, they are major financial investments, need to be well run and efficient. And it’s not a once in a lifetime exercise; demand profiles change month on month, so the throughout needs continual review, and the warehouse needs regular review to keep it running sweetly.
Typical Issues
How We Can Help
We can review your current operations to identify the root causes of the issues with your warehouse. We can carry out data analysis to review the demand profile and warehouse flows. We can develop an optimal layout for your warehouse and provide a plan showing how to get from where you are now to where you need to be. We can review your operations and systems and assist with the development of or procurement of a warehouse management system. We can run a competitive tender process to source a third party to provide warehousing services .
Relevant Experience of the Team
Design of many warehouses for clients in multiple sectors, incorporating varying levels of automation of storage and picking systems. Review of warehouse operations, reviews of picking layouts and methods. In depth knowledge of the warehousing sector and the major players in it.
Reviewing and redesigning distribution operations are a necessity given the dynamic nature of industry today. Business requirements include new customers, reduced lead times, changing order profiles, increased back haul, and the continued pressure to reduce costs. The transport sector is one of the most regulated in the UK, and compliance is an absolute necessity to be allow to continue operations.
Typical Issues
How We Can Help
We can model your distribution operations using transport modelling software to determine resource requirements. We can run a competitive tender process to seek third parties to provide some or all your transport needs. We can review your current operations and administration processes to identify areas where you may not be compliant.
Relevant Experience of the Team
We have many years experience of supporting clients with transport modelling projects in complex environments. Our lead consultants have personal experience of running larger distribution operations.
In our work we interact with a lot of members of the management teams in our clients businesses. ON of the things that strikes us is that many managers have never had any formal training ion warehouse or transport management. Alot of them have worked their way up from the shop floor which is to be lauded, but they are now managing an operation having not had the benefit of seeing other operations an dtraining in the principles of operations.
Typical Issues
How We Can Help
We have developed training courses for this level of management which provide a good overview of the principles of warehouse design, transport network design, current technologies available. The course also gives delegates an overview of techniques to be used in day-to-day management.
Currently there is increasing pressure on transport operators to understand, report, and demonstrate a plan to improve their carbon footprint in the context of the UK’s Net Zero legal commitments. Recent EU and US legislation mandating Scope 3 emissions reporting across global supply chains is increasing demands for UK companies to be able to at least accurately report emissions in a way that conforms to developing international norms. This is a burden on LSPs but also an opportunity for those who embrace it. Where logistics makes up around 1 to 5% of the total cost of a product but accounts for around 20% of its carbon footprint, businesses looking to reduce their footprint will increasingly be willing to pay more to logistics providers that are ready to offer solutions. In many cases even doubling the cost of logistics would only have a marginal impact on overall costs.
It’s not possible to move onto the later stages without first cutting through the complex morass of information on standards and legislation etc and setting up your processes for accurate measurement.
Typical Issues
How We Can Help
There is room for a more cost-effective solution to help smaller businesses get started on their Net Zero journey. The product is a template in a common format, designed to be as universally-accessible as possible as well as a step-by-step guide to help LSPs understand how and what to measure and how to use the template. The product cuts out the unnecessary detail by focussing on only what is relevant to UK LSPs. The template and guide take away the burden of having to work out the best standards or choose the most appropriate conversion factors, for example, and simplifies the whole process of setting up their base measurement internally, using their own resource, without having to shell out for expensive consultancy.
Relevant Experience of the Team
Our consultants have been working with clients on the development of processes and systems to comply with Scope1 & Scope 2.
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