A whopping 42% of the respondents mentioned "Reduction in Lead Times" as their most important and critical goal for this year as they would want to increase their responsiveness to ever changing dynamics of demand in market and at this time when going beyond SLAs is the need of the hour to stay ahead of the competition, this measure is their top priority. The next 2 most important goals that came out from the survey are: 1) Supplier Collaboration - To have an expanded supply chain visibility and de-risk the operations from supplier failures and 2) Improvement in forecasts - To optimize inventory and to reduce working capital as well as obsolete inventory.
The other major objectives that experts from across the globe mentioned, are:
- Enhance spend analysis capabilities
- Better auction capabilities
- Reduction in stock out frequency
- Reduction in physical and system inventory
- Improve communication with customers and suppliers
The total number of votes that I got on this survey...
were 144 and 65% of the respondents were from North America with rest of world including Europe and Asia having 35% share of respondents.
were 144 and 65% of the respondents were from North America with rest of world including Europe and Asia having 35% share of respondents.
In addition, few notable comments that I got on a related discussion in social media are worth mentioning here.
As per Andreas Udbye, who was Executive Director at World Trade Center Tacoma, "Broader diversification of your supplier base, in case key suppliers go out of business or decide to eliminate your line of products. In today's climate it might be unwise to rely too closely on only a few vendors (incl. transportation carriers and service providers)." are the major objectives of a supply chain professional these days, whereas Ashwini Gautam, who is an APO Lead at Bloomberg thinks that, "I would say acccurate demand forecasting rather then proper demand forecasting to be one of driving factors to survive in the present scenario. Large vendor base takes away the ability to negotiate on the basis of volume of busines that you give to the suppliers which in turn can negatively impact the product pricing".
Nancy Valentino (Principal at Alliance Cost Containment) , mentioned that working with cost reduction and cost management professionals is the new "Lean manufacturing" When companies get their politics out of their bottom line the whole global flow of business will start a positive evolution within the corporate world. We need to take EGO out of the boardroom!!!! She agrees with Gerry Bosmans (Lean Supply Chain Manager at Avery Dennison), who said that, "I would propose to focus on developing a responsive supply chain, based on lean thinking. I do not really believe in improving accuracy of demand forecasting as per definition it will never be correct. Let's focus on removing non-value added activities out of the supply chain. Supply Chain can be a real driver of Lean implementations in a company, and in that way develop a responsive supply chain system focussed on delivering value for customers.
Finally, Sumeet Naik, who is a senior business development executive at DIESL communicated that as per him the following are the most critical objectives or principles of survival for a Supply Chain Professional or organization in current environment:
- Stocking the right mix of products
- Proper demand forecasting
- Analysing each link of the supply chain on cost v/s value created basis
- Deciding on the right location for DC/Hub to the stores.Factors to be kept in mind while deciding on the same would be land rentals, distance from the stores to be served, distance from the suppliers etc.
- Collaborations may be sought with the suppliers
- Selecting the right kind of suppliers and proper vendor management
- Pricing of the products
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