SUPPLY SCANDALS – What’s Infesting Your Supply Chain?

Last month I discussed some of the implications of the horse meat scandal that was still unfolding in Europe.

After noticing another food supply chain calamity cropping up in China, I’ve decided to readdress the topic, focusing on some practical ways you can boost your supply chain visibility immediately.

Regardless of what industry you’re in, increasing the visibility of your supply chain is the only way to keep your company from ever facing the intense consumer backlash that comes with the discovery of counterfeit components cropping up in your supply chain. Increasing your visibility and allowing your customers to peer behind the curtain increases their confidence and inspires trust in your brand. Visibility is an asset.

These simple tools will boost your oversight and give you a clear view of your kingdom.

Upgrade Your Communication
Communication is the fastest and most holistically beneficial way to improve your supply chain visibility. Designate a single point of contact for each supplier and give them the authority to resolve issues as they crop up. Be up front about your expectations and consistently available.

Communicate with your suppliers with the same diligence, openness, and personability you would a customer.

By communicating with your suppliers, you improve the relationships that your value is built on. Without clear communication, expectations will remain nebulous, creating incentives for suppliers to employ lower quality methods and products. How can someone deliver what you’re looking for if they don’t know what you want?

Conversely, if you are upfront and clear about your standards and needs, suppliers will know where the bar is set. If you’ve found a true partner in a supplier, you’ll even find them over-delivering based on the bar that you’ve set.

Building a relationship through open and honest communication can open the door to a long-term partnership where your company is prized as an efficient, tier-1 customer.

Supplier Audits
The word audit seems to come with an expectation of gargantuan webs of red-tape and a plethora of convoluted processes, but it shouldn’t when it comes to your suppliers. Conducting effective supplier audits can deliver a depth of visibility in your supply chain unlike anything else.

Supplier audits have a wide-scope of assessment and investigate areas such as: manufacturing processes, design change processes, quality standards, financial processes, and logistics practices. Through their sweeping nature, they yield enormous returns for the work that goes into them.

The supplier audit process will give you confidence in the entirety of a supplier’s operations and practices.

The outcome of a supplier audit is usually focused on rooting out bad practices and identifying areas of noncompliance, however, these audits have a much more powerful application: setting a new standard for everything to come.

Areas of noncompliance should be fixed, no doubt, but once you understand a supplier’s true position, you can communicate more efficiently and set clear expectations. Clear communication backed with audit-fed understanding is the largest underpinning to supply chain visibility.

Distribution Partner Relationships
Maintaining your own network of retailers or attempting to divine consumer channels on your own can cause more complication and increase uncertainty in who you’re dealing with. On the other hand, distribution partners should have readily accessible information on the retailers they utilize to get products to market.

By employing a distribution partner, you might lighten the workload of your employees while simultaneously building downstream visibility into your supply chain.

Generally, increasing the number of times a product changes hands before finally making it to consumers will decrease your ability to maintain visibility. However, if you’re selling to consumers through a large number of retailers, it’s going to be nearly impossible to maintain oversight while keeping an eye on your own operations.

A distribution partner will manage relationships with retailers and ensure that your product makes it to market exactly as you intended.

If it suits your industry, find a distribution partner that can ensure your supply chain visibility extends downstream as much as up.

Data Analysis
Communication is paramount to your success, but even the most efficient suppliers are likely to miss a detail here or there. On the other hand, data doesn’t gloss a single point. Data analysis can be boost your visibility and provide exact, real-time feedback.

Data begins at your BOM, making it imperative that your own team is thorough. But having the data is only part of the tool. To develop the greatest supply chain visibility possible, modern data analysis tools must be employed.

Utilizing real-time supply chain management tools, such as Global Supply Chain Solutions’ proprietary SystaiNet, ensures that every movement and value-add process within your supply chain is accurately reported and recorded.

Cloud-based solutions create immense visibility and flexibility by giving you precise, immediate feedback on everything from your BOM to inventories to schedules to costs.

Today’s world has made supply chain more possible and more necessary than ever before. On one side, ravenous media channels have created an environment where any slip in your company’s supply chain, no matter how far upstream, could become tomorrow’s headline scandal.

On the other, new technology and global communication tools are able to provide unprecedented cooperation and data-analysis, making almost perfect visibility within your supply chain attainable.

No matter where you’re starting from, improving your supply chain’s visibility should be a priority. It might not be rats, but a lack of visibility only leads to places like this.

Editors Note: Philip Odette is the CEO of Global Supply Chain Solutions (GSCS) and passionately pursues enriching the lives of its stakeholders while developing the supply chains of its customers. GSCS has optimized hundreds of high-tech companies’ supply chains, enabling them to become the leaders in their respective market space. Philip serves on the board of several other entities, striving in each instance to leave every person, company, and cause with dramatically improved circumstances.