The past couple of years has highlighted that manufacturers need to up their game to overcome the many challenges within their industry, including fragmentation, poor visibility, and overcomplicated logistics. There’s also been a rise in the purchasing power of consumers, placing increased pressure on businesses to deliver products that are high quality at a lower cost.
Let’s take a look at what your business must do to ensure your supply chain remains robust, resilient, and adaptable:
1. Have better cost control
The result of nationwide lockdowns and Brexit has led to the soaring prices of raw materials, and with the additional pressure of the recent fuel crisis, manufacturers will need to take this into account when ordering more stock. If you have poor cost control within your supply chains, this could lead to:
Businesses can develop a plan to create an agile supply chain, with one that includes their entire network of vendors and suppliers to improve cost control. If any costs have increased within your production lines or sourcing materials, you can identify this by having full visibility of your processes, allowing you to react quickly.
Having a strong relationship with your suppliers increases trust, reduces the risk of waste and errors within orders, and enhances your ability to resolve issues such as delays.
One of the biggest challenges businesses have to overcome with their supply chains is order fulfilment. If a supplier is running late with delivering stock and they aren’t aware of this, for example, it could lead to delays within their production lines. Here are some ways you can prevent this and strengthen your supplier relationships:
As we mentioned before, more customers are after products that are higher quality, making it essential for manufacturers to enhance their production lines to ensure any defects don’t go unnoticed. However, due to the number of products produced on a daily basis, this can lead to challenges around traceability and consequently, could lead to damaged reputations from unsatisfied customers.
To overcome challenges with managing quality control, you can hold unscheduled equipment use tests. This ensures your employees are able to use the machinery safely and effectively, allowing managers to analyse how proficient your teams are at completing day-to-day tasks.
The increased complexity of fragmented supply chains around importing and exporting materials poses a challenge, especially if you have multiple warehouses and sites globally. A report found that 62% of companies have limited visibility of their supply chain, showing just how much of a role the right technology can play with effective data management. Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing can help you:
Find out more by clicking here.
Trying to keep track of all the information within any global business is a headache - especially in manufacturing. There’s numerous suppliers, vendors, and relationships you have to manage, in addition to keeping on top of your internal data. Security incidents can take place within any tier of a supply chain, and mitigating security risks is a massive challenge facing manufacturers today.
However, businesses can learn from best practices such as access management, which limits the users who can access your sensitive information, mitigating vulnerabilities. With the help of appropriate technologies, this can help you tighten security processes and increase trust across your supply chain.
In our report, we explore how manufacturers like you can be better prepared to overcome supply chain challenges through the use of digital technology. We also outline the importance of digital transformation, and how it can make businesses more agile and adaptable towards sudden changes in the environment.
Interested? Get your copy below.