Supply Chain Consulting to Make Your Organization Adjust Dynamically to New Markets and Changing Economies

The supply chain is a complex mix of activities that is focused on cost effectively delivering products and services. Supply chain management is all about the management of processes such as planning, operations, logistics and sourcing. It involves applying different approaches for the effective management of goods starting from the raw material supplier till they reach to the end user as value.   

Group50, a leading Supply Chain Consulting Company has managed supply chains of all sizes from $20M to $4B. They understand that companies need to be effective at designing products, defining services, forecasting, acquiring materials and resources, purchasing and delivering those products and services to their customers. And, they need to do it with lower cost year in and year out with supply chain optimization. Their consultants provide strategic sourcing services and have designed and implemented optimized supply chains in many industries as a result of the experience and knowledge of best practices and an integrated approach to designing and implementing an optimization roadmap.

Global markets are expanding their reach and re-defining the ways how supply chains need to be managed. Effective supply chain management is like critical backbone for the success of organizations. With it, companies become competent in responding quickly to the changes and making most out of the emerging opportunities.

Supply chain management leads your organization towards the road of various new opportunities such as:  

Improved cycle time and increased efficiency

Cycle time refers to the duration of time taken by the business in completing an entire process. Through supply chain management, the most effective ways of carrying out the various operations are revealed which further improves the cycle time. When organizations become competent at integrating supply chain and logistics, they are in a great position to not only predict the demand but also respond accordingly. It is one of the greatest advantages of optimized supply chains that companies can adjust dynamically to the new markets, shorter product life cycles and changing economies.

Decreases costs and improved financial flow

Supply chain management helps the organizations to identify the most cost-effective supplier and distributor channels and in predicting the customers demand. This significantly lowers the amount of inventory on hand and saves a lot on costs. Moreover, with supply chain management, organizations can evaluate their processes, address all the cash flow challenges, identify and eliminate all the weaknesses which hampers financial flow.

Improved customer service

By investing in supply chain management, organizations can easily manage the logistics. They can track their shipments, materials and products. With improved supply chain technology, it has become easier to deliver the products to the customers.

For reaping all these benefits, consult Group50 to carry out an effective Supply Chain Optimization program for your business. The first step they will take is to understand how well your supply chain is doing through their Supply Chain Effectiveness Assessment. From there, the Supply Chain Consultants will work with the senior leadership team to develop an optimization roadmap and implement a continuous improvement program that will generate 5-10% cost improvements, reduced working capital and reduced lead times year over year.

Attain Visibility and Traceability in Your Supply Chain with Effective Supply Chain Management

Supply chain involves all the activities that are focused on delivering the products or services to the customers in a cost-effective manner. It is the network of resources, activities, people and technology that starts from the sourcing of raw materials to the delivery of finished products eventually to the end user. Supply chain management is the process that helps in maximizing customer value by making the supply chain efficient and cost-effective. It is an integrated management that keeps a check on the flow of inventory, finance and information to maintain the supply chain efficiency. This increased transparency enables in improving the supply chain performance. 

Group50, a leading Supply Chain Consulting firm has managed supply chains of all sizes ($20M - $4B). Companies need to be effective at designing products, defining services, forecasting, acquiring materials and resources, purchasing and delivering those products and services to the customers. They understand in order to optimize a supply chain, it is important to find the existing strategic and operating gaps in your company, your vendors and your customers. Their consultants have designed and implemented optimized supply chains in many industries as a result of the experience and knowledge of best practices and an integrated approach to designing and implementing an optimization roadmap.

How supply chain management can be advantageous for your organization

Improved product flow

Effective management of supply chain allows the organization to predict the accurate market demand and the sales forecasting. This improves the inventory management and the product flow. The increased transparency and the ability to trace the movement of goods starting from the supplier to the end user eliminate all the delays and bottlenecks.

Collaboration between various businesses

As supply chain involves the various different interconnected businesses to work together such as raw materials suppliers and the distributing companies etc. With supply chain management, the collaboration improves which allows these businesses to work effectively with one main goal.

Improved cycle time

The amount of time taken by the organization in completing any of its entire process is termed as the cycle time. Through supply chain management, the most effective ways of carrying out the various operations are revealed which further improves the cycle time.

Improved financial flow

With supply chain management, organizations can evaluate their processes, address all the cash flow challenges, identify and eliminate all the weaknesses which hampers financial flow.

Decreased costs

Supply chain management helps the organizations to identify the most cost-effective supplier and distributor channels and in predicting the customers demand. This significantly lowers the amount of inventory on hand and saves a lot on costs.

For leveraging all these above mentioned advantage of all the above mentioned points, contact a reputed supply chain consulting company like Group50. They will work with the senior leadership team to develop a supply chain management roadmap that can generate 5-10% cost improvements, reduced working capital requirements and reduced lead times year over year. 

Utilizing supply chain management for improving your organization’s bottom line

The supply chain is a complex mix of activities that is focused on cost-effectively delivering products or services. It can be associated to any manufacturing company that is in business to provide a product or services to its customers. All the activities included in delivering the quality product from the time of raw material extraction till the time the product reaches in the customer’s hands come under supply chain management.

The motive behind effective supply chain management is manufacturing and delivering the product better, faster and cheaper. It is an effort towards making the supply chain effective and efficient.  

Group50, a renowned firm provides supply chainmanagement consulting and have managed supply chain of all sizes from $20M to $4B. Companies need to be effective at designing products, defining services, forecasting, acquiring materials and resources, purchasing, and delivering those products and services to their customers. And, they need to do this by optimizing their supply chains. To understand how well their supply chain is doing is through supply chain effectiveness assessment.

Supply Chain Effectiveness Assessment

This assessment examines how effective your company’s supply chain is in acquiring materials, moving them through your required value added processes and delivering them to your customers. It looks at the ability of the current systems and provides a gap analysis of the supply chain with a perspective to responsiveness, best practices, scalability and sustainability.

How Supply Chain Management Benefits Your Organization

Greater efficiency

It incorporates various aspects of business such as logistics, product innovation methods, production, demand forecasting etc. This lands the organizations in a position where they can predict demand and make their moves in that direction. Greater efficiency helps in delivering the product to the customers at a faster pace.

Lowers costs

One of the main advantages of supply chain management is that it lowers the total supply chain cost. All the costs related to materials procuring, inventory, transportation and others are reduced significantly thereby increasing the organization’s profitability.

Enhances collaboration with vendors and suppliers

There is an interconnection of various businesses in a supply chain that work with one main objective to provide value to the customers. Effective supply chain management allows you to evaluate supplier relationships and accordingly, you can take decisions like choosing the supplier for raw materials and also the distributors. Based on this transparent view and the customers’ demands, you can utilize the service of different suppliers and distributors that fit best.   

Improves financial flow

With supply chain management, organizations can evaluate their processes, address all the cash flow challenges, identify and eliminate all the weaknesses which hamper financial flow.

To take advantage of all the above-mentioned points, contact a reputed supply chain consulting company like Group50. They will work with the senior leadership team to develop a supply chain management roadmap that can generate 5-10% cost improvements, reduced working capital requirements and reduced lead times year over year. 

 

Importance and Four Key Elements of Supply Chain Management

Supply Chain Management (SCM) is the management of a set-up of all business activities and processes including obtaining of raw materials, manufacturing and distribution management of end goods. SCM is also known as the art of management of giving the accurate product, at the accurate place, accurate time and at the accurate cost to the customer.

Why SCM strategy is essential for an organization?

Today, the life-threatening pillar to business organizations is supply chain strategies. Availability of products at locations and effective market coverage that are keys for revenue generation is based on the effectiveness of a supply chain strategy that is implemented. In a simple language, when a product is launched in the market and promoted, the entire market throughout the country and all the sales counters require having the product where customers can purchase and take delivery. Any problem in the product available at the accurate time can result in the loss of customer interest and demand which can be dangerous.

Key elements to supply chain management

Supply chain operations

In the supply chain, this link manages the details of daily operations for the company. It plans the output of the company to ensure everything is going on well and the benefits are high. Operations mainly view the company’s inventory.

This utilizes the business forecasting to foretell which supplies will be required, by whom, when and also search for the ways to predict the marketing approaches, the effectiveness of products, along with end-user output. Operations oversee the overall company’s production.

Distribution of business commodities

Distribution coordinates how business commodities end up where they need to. In the supply chain, the distribution part is responsible for the logistics of communications among clients, retailers, or wholesalers. These groups watch shipments, and not only know about what is required in-house production for producing products but also the products should be delivered to the end-customer on right time and in perfect shape.

Integration – Heart of the supply chain

It is considered as the heart of the supply chain. Because supervising supply chain integration means coordinating communication between the remaining supply chain to generate outcomes in an effective and timely manner. However, this means discovering new technological ways to create communication among departments. Those who manage integration needs to ensure that things are occurring within the budget and on time without compromising with the quality.

Buying sources a company requires

In this department, products, materials, and other goods are sourced for generating the company’s products. Buying sources foster relationship with suppliers and also find out the quantities and qualities of essential items. It’s vital for the people in purchasing to view the budget for making things to be affordable for the company.

It can be ensured that all these four elements are working in harmony with the help of a prominent supply chain consulting firm like Group50 that has consultants who know how to manage different supply chains. For optimizing supply chain, they provide strategic sourcing services and have a wide experience in executing and designing an optimization roadmap.

To get help from their supply chain management consultants, you can call them. 

Why looking for supply chain management consulting firm is important?

Today, supply chain management plays an important role in providing the competitive advantage to any manufacturing industry. It enables the business owners to reduce the inherent risks that are associated with the purchasing of raw materials or the selling of products and services. So, let’s discuss all the benefits of a supply chain:

• When supply chain will be incorporated into an organization, along with product innovation strategies and integrated logistics, one can easily predict demand and can act according to that. In this way, the business can easily adjust with the fluctuating economies, shorter product life-cycles and emergency markets.
• It improves communication due to which one can easily coordinate and collaborate with shipping and transporting companies, suppliers, and vendors.
• Due to better communication, there will be no further delays in processes of an organization because now, everyone knows about their activity as well as about others.

When the new technologies will be implemented in your business and also, the communication will be enhanced, you can easily ensure the profit of your organization. It is true that managing the supply chain is not an easy task and especially when it is complex and interconnected at a large level. Therefore, it is required to look for the supply chain management consulting firm.

These firms have consultants who analyze each and every aspect of a supply chain in a corporation that include manufacturing plants, headquarters, customers and shipping centers. With the help of ideas and observations of analysis, they work in a way through which the supply chain can become more efficient. Along with this, they offer strategic sourcing services and optimize the supply chain as much as possible.

Therefore, it is vital to find the supply chainconsulting firm

that has highly experienced and knowledgeable consultants. In this manner, you can ensure the better management of supply chain as well as the profit of your business. 

A Brief Overview of Hiring a Supply Chain Consultants and Consulting Firms

One of the main objectives for successful companies and business leaders across the world is to build a strong and optimal supply chain system. In the era of globalization and harsh competition, a supply chain of any organization needs to be adaptive and always aiming for continuous improvement. The advantages of hiring supply chain consultants in California are briefly discussed below.

Benefits of supply chain management consultants

• Focus:

Internal managers of companies, with the best will in the world, can rarely be freed from the complete range of challenging obligations their roles demands. Consultants have only one obligation that is to solve complex and complicated supply chain issues of their clients. Hence, they can maintain a laser focus on the supply chain issues to be resolved within time and at cost effective prices.

• Objectivity:

They can provide fresh, impartial and independent viewpoints on various supply chain improvement that are free from company’s internal influence like politics and culture.

• The breadth of experience:

Consultants will have dealt with the same issue in different organizations many times over. This means that they have more experience at their disposal to know-how to navigate the issue and its potential solutions.

• Quantified change benefits:

Consultants can help companies to quantify the benefits of the change in their supply chain systems, due to their extensive experience of change and improvement projects. An innate knowledge of where to look and what to look for and insight into an improvement opportunity has helped professional consultants to recommend chance that ensure supply chain improvement.

• Additional skills:

They have skilled necessary for projects to be successfully executed, aside from the expertise in supply chain matters. They have developed these skills by working on different projects for large periods of time. These skills include analytics, change management, leadership, project management and communications.

Why engage a supply chain consulting company?

The basis aim of the company to hire supply management consulting firm is to develop an effective supply chain strategy. Most of the companies do not have clearly documented supply chain strategy. Without supply chain management, the supply chain of companies will cost more to run than it needs to, which effectively reduces overall profitability.

If developing an effective strategy was easy, a lot more than 30% companies in the world would have effective supply chain strategy. Benefits of hiring a supply chain management consulting firms are discussed below.

Reasons number 1: To gather information

It is important to understand that supply chain improvement initiatives can often entail the need for large quantities of accurate data. Supply chain consultants are adept at digging up important data and presenting it to its clients as usable information. One of the benefits of hiring supply chain consultants California is that they can provide information in less time than it would take to acquire it internally.

Reasons number 2: In order to solve problems

It is important to understand that complex supply chain problems in any organization can be extremely hard to identify, let alone solve them with internal resources alone. Consultants examine the supply chain of their clients from impartial and objective standpoints that lead to more effective solutions and accurate problem identifications.

Reasons number 3: To recommend actions

There may be several possible solutions, once a problem is identified by the consultants. By effectively evaluating all the possible solutions, consultants make objective recommendations to their clients. When possible solutions may be unpopular or politically sensitive, hiring reputed supply chain management consulting firm for this purpose can be very beneficial.

Reasons number 4: To assist with implementation

Supply chain managing consultants in many cases help culminates in recommendations for solving different problems & issues and ensures effective supply chain improvement. They can effectively assist companies with the implementation of supply chain improvement, especially for more complex projects.

Other reasons for engaging a supply chain consultant

Besides these popular reasons for hiring supply chain consultants, there are other less common reasons, including to act as a substitute for permanent internal resources, to facilitate internal learning and to introduce new ideas, best practices, and methodologies into a supply chain organizations.

Here Is The List Of The Most Common Lean Myths

Commonly referred to as “Lean,” this form of management — without Six Sigma or with it — is sometimes a controversial subject. However, this process has continued to dominate the corporate world and improved the existing processes; but many manufacturers and corporate people think that this process comes with several shortcomings. That is why this post is devoted to debunk mostly all the myths associated to this manufacturing concept.

Lean means cost cutting and layoffs

As per a leading manufacturing consulting company, this is the most common myth to surround this particular school of management for quite some time. And part of the reason can be that this principle is often related to cutting expenses and even FTEs (Full-Time Equivalents). This concept makes Lean to be associated with pure “cost cutting.” At this point, let us approach the concepts of “cost cutting” and “layoffs.”

• Cost cutting:

Although the chief aim of Lean has been to identify and remove different form of wastes (or “muda”), the true meaning of “waste” is never explored or considered. Waste, as per Lean, is an activity that never contributes — directly or indirectly — to value creation for customers and organizations. However, how can anyone define the thin line between wastes and values?

Let us consider inventory to be an example of waste. As per Lean, the inventory must be as low as possible; but, again, this does not mean that management can easily eradicate any inventory. For example, critical spare parts are significant to all machine-manufacturing units; likewise, in a service organization, black ink toners rely on printed documents. Now, can anyone imagine what the consequences will be if a manufacturing unit lacks spare parts or a service organization does not have printed docs? It will be completely disastrous. And this concept can be at odds with the concept of interrupting value-adding activities with other non-value adding activities. That is, all the primary processes must never be interrupted because if interruption happens, then it will affect the overall workflow.

• Layoffs:

Further, organizations applying Lean properly make employees (who get lower workloads —thanks to waste elimination) more productive. And when employees become more productive, they become more motivated.

Lean should be deployed to raise the job satisfaction levels of employees because they are executing more and more valuable tasks; this sense of evaluation may even lead to personal growth and development.

Lean is meant for manufacturing companies only

Lean’s origins come from Manufacturing sector only — it was even called “Lean Manufacturing” in the past; the Toyota Production System gave this principle. However, since this principle was born in the manufacturing sector, it does not mean that it cannot be implemented in any other sector. These Lean principles, such as ISO quality management, Theory of Constraints and Six Sigma, are applied for different industries, including healthcare, not-for-profit and governmental organizations.

Every true Lean-minded organization is generally advised from a leading manufacturing consulting company and does not restrict its Lean efforts to operational activities only. All the true Lean organizations will need a systemic, holistic approach because then only it will be called a pure Lean enterprise. A complete Lean philosophy will have two processes:

• Supporting processes (Lean Accounting, for example)
• Management processes (Policy deployment and strategic planning)

In short, a pure Lean company will implement this philosophy beyond its walls.

Lean is only one of the tools and methods

Lean is truly a set of tools and methods, but not every organization is adept at using this set properly. Organizations tend to use this set of tools, called Lean, blindly without considering its impacts. And after doing so, Lean will be implemented vaguely throughout the organization.

The solution is that this philosophy must be implemented within the business models and cultural foundations of the organizations. That is because if an organization does not include Lean in its DNA, it will never be able to use this philosophy completely. It is a well-known fact that Toyota always encourages its competitors to visit its manufacturing unit, and many have done that as well. However, how many of its competitors have truly implemented this philosophy successfully? The answer is only a handful.

So here are the top three Lean myths that must be understood quickly if a company wants to implement this philosophy on a large scale. Different leading manufacturing and distribution consultants know these myths, so if an organization is looking forward to implementing this philosophy by the book, then it should consider hiring a true consultant that differentiates between Lean’s myths and its realities.