How to Improve Your Supply Chain Efficiency!

Supply Chain Efficiency

With the current rate of inflation in the UK rising exponentially, conserving time and resources is more important than ever before. Whether you’re only just starting out in your industry or you’ve been working in your industry for years, it’s always useful to know how to improve, refine, and enhance your supply chain efficiency to better serve your business.

What makes a working supply chain?

Supply chains constitute a detailed, rigorous process with multiple independent variables, fulfilments, and requirements. Starting from the creation of the product to the moment at which it arrives with the customer, smaller processes and components in the supply chain help the overall product come to life. When you set up a business in any industry, learning about the supply chain is imperative.

Effective supply chain management should focus on the following areas:

Organisation

Early planning stages are amongst the most critical. The establishment of the supply chain depends on the successful collation of necessary resources to provide the service or product offered. Once solidified, the supply chain should be frequently and consistently managed to make sure that it both satisfies customers and meets company objectives.

Sourcing 

As an employer, it’s your responsibility to find and choose business partners. These include the companies who provide the services, components and goods you rely on to produce your products. Suppliers play numerous critical roles, including ordering, managing inventory, receiving, and delivering goods.

Manufacturing 

To support the integrity of your supply chain, you’ll need to be able to organise all activities required to process raw materials, manufacture products, undergo quality testing, and prepare for delivery steps too. 

Which areas should be given the most attention in a supply chain?

Employee satisfaction

Just as in any area of your business, ensuring you have a high right of employee satisfaction. Thinking of genuine, original ways to care about the wellbeing of your staff could help to boost team productivity and individual performance too. 

This can be achieved in different ways, but it always makes sense to prioritise essential care and little perks, too. Along with a comprehensive health and safety policy, why not use site radios to help boost staff morale while they work on your premises?

Automation

Where possible, automation can accelerate processes and reduce the likelihood of human error. The term refers to technologies including robotics in warehouses, Artificial Intelligence, machine learning, and further automated digital processes. Automation is always a sensible approach to simple, repetitive tasks that could become time-consuming for physical staff.

Costs

The cost of labour and materials is one of the most crucial metrics to pay attention to. By focusing on and monitoring costs and their fluctuations, you can identify and respond to areas requiring changes to improve cash flow, thus making your business more profitable.

Closing thoughts

Supply chains can be assessed by time, cost, and quality in order to see if your current strategies are working for your business – but each process requires your time, effort, and dedication.

Don’t lose sight of the fact that prioritising supply chain efficiency can help speed up the product creation process, minimise errors and eventually increase your profits too. 

Supply Chain efficiency article and permission to publish here provided by Megan at Eleven-Tenths. Originally written for Supply Chain Game Changer and published on February 22, 2023.