Their are many supply chain management articles which show innovation through the latest technologies, but by working with some of the leading organisations, we have seen that many real innovations are not only technology-driven. By creating a focus on supply chain partnerships and sharing, many of the Supply Chain Innovations that we have seen have been low-cost, high-impact for our clients.
Some of the Supply Chain Innovations that we have assisted our clients to deliver are:
Personalisation/ Customisation: the power has transferred to the final consumer. Supply Chain adjusts to the pattern and behaviours of the consumer and aligns production and related services to meet timely consumer demands. This has led to a shift from mass production (The push model) to customised, small batch production (The pull model) to meet the nearest personalised customer requirements,
Supply Chain Collaboration: Supply chain participants have realised the importance of coordination between partners to deliver a joint-actions-coordinated supply chain, realising synergy impacts across the whole chain
Real Time Data: the focus on real-time data, reporting and relevant information to continuous optimise and improve the supply chain effectiveness has delivered many Food & Beverage organisations profitability improvements, while reducing downtime across their operations
Agility: Flexibility (Agile), faster adaptation to permanent changing conditions in the market to earn or maintain competitive advantages has been the main focus areas for supply chain professionals to increase speed to market
Efficient Processes: By applying the concepts of Lean Management, Six Sigma and other Continuous Improvement methodologies (reducing or eliminating non-value added activities), supply chain organisations have transition to removing waste in their processes
Visibility: Creating end-to-end inside and outside organisational visibility, organisations have been able to understand their impact on the upstream and downstream supply chain processes. This allows organisations to understand their impact on their partners and their partner’s partners, delivering transparency across the supply chain
Traceability: The ability to identify and track a product or a component back to its point of origin during all stages of supply chain has become crucial for Food & Beverage organisations. In this area technologies, like Automation, control cockpits, BlockChain, ERP-integrations and other SaaS solutions have come onto the market to support organisations to further streamline this crucial requirement
Relevant and Trusted Data: Integrating information and sharing targeted, relevant and trusted data with their partner organisations in the supply chain has assisted the overall supply chain eco-system to deliver benefits for all its participants
Profitability: By focusing on Product and/ or Customer profitability, our clients have been able to not only streamline their product and customer portfolios, but allowed this focus to be transferred into a more responsive, targeted supply chain model. By understanding which customers are “important”, it allows organisations to take a very targeted approach to deliver to these customers, instead of delivering to “everyone”.
At Unique Excellence, we closely work with our client’s supply chain, sales and finance teams to develop, optimise and implement innovative operational and supply chain solutions to further enhance our client’s growth targets.
For more information or a conversation, please contact us!