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.

Why the Smart Manufacturing Will Grow This Year?

Factories, by and large, are conceived as a dark place where people keep standing nearby assembly lines … doing the same old thing every day, every hour and every second. However, this concept can be associated to a traditional factory—and it has thankfully changed in the recent past because of the marvelous influx of manufacturing technology.

The factories that are driven using technologies are dotting the global landscape. Be it an established country or a developing one, manufacturing is undergoing a sea change. And this transformation is carried out because more and more countries are not only recognizing the change but also adopting it by investing in cutting-edge technologies.

The manufacturing incentives breed the concept of Smart Manufacturing

For example, The EU is investing close to 2 billion euros in the “Factories of the Future”—a public/private partnership in which manufacturers are encouraged to leverage new technologies for manufacturing in a more efficient, a more profitable and a greener way.

And it is not only the EU that is in the race—many countries are offering a range of incentives for manufacturers so that they can transform their operations and can reduce the amount of waste as well as energy that goes in producing something.

If we are referring to developing nations, there are many which are offering good incentive packages for luring native manufacturers. This is how Smart Manufacturing, the concept, has come into existence; and it comes with a host of benefits and is slated to become as the way to manufacture in the future.

The force of the labor will rise

Pessimists always point out those workers who will lose their jobs once this concept gains ground. However, who really wishes to stand daily at a long assembly line without feeling any sense of creation or achievement? No one wants to have a job at a manufacturing unit where everything is so mechanical and where there is no scope of experiment and newness whatsoever.

By adopting new technologies in a manufacturing unit, the number of jobs will become more than what can be found today. Several studies are undertaken indicating the total number of indirect jobs, which are required in a manufacturing unit, to support the cutting-edge manufacturing processes will actually quadruple in quantity. These indirect jobs will be a necessity for such factories to function properly and efficiently.

When the computer technology was first introduced for the private/public use, a couple of Luddites stated that this introduction will automate business processes and will promote unemployment. However, as we can witness today that never happened—rather once the computers found a firm footing in the manufacturing world, more and more people learned the computer systems and started working in different capacities within the production facility. And similar results are presumed to be found when the Smart Manufacturing will be deployed.

The environmental impact of the Smart Technology

Smart factories are regarded as the absolute representation of the future as they can easily reduce the negative impacts of manufacturing activities on the environment. As the main focus has been shifted to environment today, manufacturers are bearing the brunt for polluting it and for making it hostile for the humanity.

For this reason, it becomes important for manufacturers to stick to a concept or a way of thinking that will make the production facility more sensitive to the requirements and the needs of building a greener environment.

What does the smart factory do?

Factors that implement the Smart Technology put to use the reusable packaging techniques and other methods that bring down the harmful impacts on the environment. Other effects that the Smart Technology is designed to reduce on the environment comprise:

• Reducing greenhouse gases, which carry a negative impact on the environment
• Using natural resources efficiently
• Deploying improved waste-control mechanism that, further, brings down the environmental damage

As consumers are becoming cognizant of the environmental issues, they have started clamoring for the adoption of environment-friendly manufacturing principles. And because of their responsibility toward the environment, these manufacturers are implanting the principles of Smart Technology within factories—both large and small. And this has, further, given rise to Industry 4.0.

Industry 4.0—in a nutshell

The movement of Smart Technology has indeed got its own nickname—Industry 4.0. This movement is all about changing the manufacturing techniques for the better; and this improvement will be justified only when the cost is contained well. So the 4.0 is completely expected to:

• Put concentrated efforts for using sustainable materials
• Look toward the closed lifecycle loops where the waste is zero
• Reduce the overall cost, which will eventually bring down the amount that will be paid by the end user

Because of all such factors, you can expect the concept to grow in 2016 as now any day is a good day to start saving Mother Nature. However, when it comes to implementing the Smart Technology, building a smarter factory and becoming the smartest manufacturer, many companies lack the required know-how and the experience. Here is where the knowledge of a manufacturing consulting company comes into play.

Such consultancies have manufacturing and strategic planning consultants who can work along with the manufacturer to deploy the technologies and the processes that are at the leading edge of the production sector.

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