Supply chain management is complex, involving multiple parts of a business as well as third-party partners and logistics firms. Recent geopolitical trends have only made this complexity worse.
Staying ahead of this complexity requires a strong digital backend and constant strategic guidance. A supply chain consulting services partner can help ensure that your business efficiently handles this complexity, and that you have both the right technology and the right processes in place to deal with it.
A good supply chain consulting partner will help a business with commercial resilience, anticipating changes in customer priorities and global trade pressures. They will assist with strategic resilience, embedding scenario planning into decision-making to move from reactive to proactive. They will help with operational resilience, rethinking network design and sourcing, inventory and logistics optimization, and business network transparency.
A good supply chain consulting partner will also help with digital resilience, helping to make sure that the right technologies and software applications are in place to handle geopolitical risk, trade friction, and talent shortages.
But how do you know if a supply chain consultant can help your business? Here are six signs.
Sign #1: Supply Chain Planning and Orchestration is Reactive
A supply chain consultant can help you orchestrate supply and demand with real-time insights and AI-driven automation to plan better and more proactively adapt to changing supply chain conditions as they develop.
This includes help with integrated business planning, improved available to promise visibility, agile production scheduling, and greater supply chain collaboration around planning, purchase, and inventory management, and quality control.
Sign #2: Procurement Lacks Transparency and Agility
A good supply chain consultant can help your business eliminate siloes and manual processes across your supply chain and improve both transparency and agility with your supply chain partners.
With the right technology and processes, a business can collaborate on forecasting, providing trading partners with forecast visibility, including production line capacity. Procurement collaboration can be strengthened with streamlined procurement transactions with digital processes that extend to trading partners and logistics providers.
Inventory and quality collaboration can also provide replenishment orders or scheduling agreements to maintain optimal inventory levels, and visibility into quality issues and complaints while aligning with trading partners to drive quick resolutions.
Sign #3: Product Lifecycle Management is Slow or Inefficient
A supply chain consultant can help your business put the right technology and processes in place for AI-driven product innovation for a shorter time to market.
With the right technology and processes in place, a business can integrate product development with the entire supply chain to optimize efficiency and ensure seamless operations across the product lifecycle, facilitate data-driven product development decisions, and integrate systems for deeper product collaboration.
A supply chain consultant can also help with putting efficient portfolio and project management technology in place, and assist with developing good processes around product compliance and responsible design and production decisions.
Sign #4: Manufacturing is not Flexible and Fully Automated
A supply chain consultant can help your business ensure that manufacturing operations are agile, efficient, and sustainable, with the right processes and technology in place for deep levels of automation.
This includes making sure the right manufacturing execution system is in place and configured properly, enhancing shop floor operations through digital manufacturing technologies that help with production visibility and business-wide manufacturing performance, and both workplace safety and environmental management processes for better compliance and sustainability.
Sign #5: Logistics is not optimized and resilient
Businesses that cannot fully manage logistics end-to-end or lack real-time visibility can greatly benefit from a supply chain consultant.
A consultant can help with warehouse, transportation, and yard management, ensuring logistics are fully optimized, resilient, and transparent. They can also assist with making sure that carrier collaboration is deep, including freight order collaboration, dock appointment scheduling, and shipping execution.
Sign #6: Enterprise Asset Management is Poorly Orchestrated
A supply chain consultant can help your business optimize asset and service management with a closed-loop process that provides complete asset lifecycle visibility and automation through a unified digital thread.
With the right technology and processes, a business can better orchestrate asset health and reliability, cross-asset collaboration, field service operations, and mobile maintenance and service.
Get a Consulting Partner that Understands Your Supply Chain Needs
We understand both your supply chain needs and the technology available to optimize operations.
At Navigator Business Solutions, we’ve been helping businesses with supply chain processes and technology for more than 30 years as an SAP Gold Partner. Our Digital Supply Chain Management Consulting and Services specialize in optimizing your supply chain operations with best practices and the latest supply chain management technologies from market leader, SAP.
Learn more about improving your supply chain with our consulting services by calling one of our experienced consultants at (801) 642-0123 or by writing us at info@nbs-us.com. We love to talk shop, especially when it comes to supply chain optimization.
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