While businesses big and small all begin with a business plan and idea of greatness, conducting the daily operations of your company is a whole different challenge that cannot be ascertained with pre-determined analysis alone. It takes experience and a motivated group of individuals to grit through every day, tackling new problems, and continually making incremental progress toward attaining their goal. And one aspect of business that always seeks improvement is operations and supply chain management.
What is Operations and Supply Chain Management?
Although it may sound technical, operations and supply chain management (OSCM) easily refer to the design, operation, and improvement of systems that deal with manufacturing and delivering its products and services to its customers and clients. As such, excellent logistics and constant management play an essential role in increasing the system’s efficiency, ensuring that products are made and services are delivered promptly.
However, because increasing overall efficiency and speed without jeopardizing quality is the name of the game, OSCM faces many struggles and becomes hard to workaround. So, to help improve this critical aspect of your company, we’ll be exploring some ways you can innovate with the five primary processes, namely, planning, sourcing, making, delivering, and returning.
#1 Planning
Planning is at the core of operations and supply chain management. It identifies the necessary strategies a firm must undertake to guarantee the most success that governs the other four processes. It is also responsible for determining how the company will meet the current demand for their products and services and monitoring the supply chain and spot potential areas of risk.
What You Can Do: Assess Your Strategy
Whether your business offers
shipbuilding workforce services or adopts a dropshipping model in housing your products, there is no one-size-fits-all strategy that works for all types of industries. An excellent place to start is by conducting market research to determine the company’s performance with the current system and identify critical areas that you can redefine and make better.
#2 Sourcing
The selection of suppliers is no easy task, and sourcing your raw materials will directly dictate expenses, profit margin, quality of the product, and other aspects of your business. Apart from monitoring pricing, delivery systems, and payment process, sourcing also includes improving the relationships between strategic partners.
What You Can Do: Enhance Your Network
Of course, while there is merit to staying with one supplier and building credibility with them, you should also take the opportunity to
enhance your network and scope out other potential suppliers you can tap. For all we know, you could’ve gotten more competitive prices if you only widened your coverage a bit, and there’s no telling that your current partner won’t face sudden challenges that will directly affect your production.
#3 Making
At the center of everything is making the product or providing the service. It’s where all the magic happens and what your customer base ends up receiving. This step requires handling schedules for workers, coordination with procurement, and monitoring quality and work productivity all the while.
What You Can Do: Introduce Automation
Since we’re stepping into the 4th Industrial Revolution, it’s high time that you also
introduce automation into the manufacturing process to reduce costs over the long-term, maintain a standard of quality with all your products, and reallocate employees for more professional tasks. Although it may seem daunting, the gradual transition will help future-proof your company for any sudden industry changes.
#4 Delivering
Also referred to as logistics processes, this step involves carriers and the moving of products from warehouses to stores, and successfully onto the hands of customers. This step also includes coordinating the delivery schedules, managing a supply network to keep up with demand, and running information and invoice systems.
What You Can Do: Implement Real-Time Tracking
Control and overseeing the movement of products and goods is the bread and butter of the delivery process. One significant step up is to implement real-time tracking onto all your carriers’ progress and location to give you a bird’s eye view on all the action and stay up to date.
#5 Returning
Finally, while we hope that our customers don’t give back our products due to defects or problems, returning is the last process in OSCM and continues to play an important role among the five. Returning services deal with all types of follow-up activities on worn-out and excess products and also include the after-sales reports.
What You Can Do: Keep It Simple
Many companies are guilty of using so many if clauses under their return policy, and while a comprehensive system may feel necessary, it works against the returning process. Our suggestion is to keep it simple and straightforward. That way, customers feel safe and can immediately receive their honest opinion and feedback.
Surviving Economic Downturn
With the world still awry from the
pandemic and major geopolitical events taking place everywhere, supply chains face the risk of instability and economic downturn. So, to keep your business safe and on the path to success, be sure to implement the methods you learned today and tailor these processes according to your needs.
