In today’s fast-paced world that is constantly changing, effective supply chain management is essential for businesses to stay competitive and responsive to the changing market dynamics. Supply chains face numerous challenges and opportunities on a daily basis. In order to navigate the world of supply chain management, here are the top five to-do’s that will help you easily succeed.
1. Review Resiliency Investments
Resiliency investments aim to enhance preparedness and promote adaptability when faced with disruptions. Reviewing resiliency investments involves assessing the effectiveness of the initiatives taken.
First, looking back on what your company spent money on to ensure it can handle disruptions is essential. Measure the impact those investments had on your business, whether the investments were a detriment or a benefit.
After reviewing the resiliency investments, you can identify the best practices that worked and apply them to future initiatives. Continuously evaluating the productiveness of the investments is essential to improving your supply chain.
2. Establish An AI Framework
Today, AI is revolutionizing business operations. Establishing an AI framework ensures AI developments are used ethically within supply chains. The framework can also help assess needs, provide consistency and efficiency, and increase performance optimization.
The AI framework should meet ethical guidelines, ensuring fairness, transparency, accountability, and privacy. Reducing discrimination is another way to ensure values are being met. Establishing strategies to identify biases in AI systems helps with this issue.
Lastly, your AI framework must adhere to data protection and AI laws to avoid non-compliance fines. Currently, four states in the U.S. have legislation in place for ineffective or unsafe AI: California, Connecticut, Louisiana, and Vermont.
3. Build Supply Chain Partnerships
Building a supply chain partnership is critical in ensuring your business is on the path to success. A partnership is when two or more suppliers team up from different parts of a supply chain. A partnership allows one brand to outsource the manufacturing of a product to another.
Partnerships in a supply chain have many advantages. The first benefit is that they improve efficiency, leading to an overall increase in customer satisfaction. This is because the bigger the supply chain, the faster orders can be fulfilled and delivered to the customer.
Collaboration across logistics can make a business more competitive in customer service, pricing, and delivery time, leading to greater success in business logistics.
4. Manage Your Transportation Portfolio
A transportation portfolio is a collection of projects, initiatives, or investments that help improve transportation systems. With a transportation portfolio, you can address travelers’ needs, enhance mobility, improve safety, promote economic development, and minimize environmental impacts.
The most crucial part of managing your transportation portfolio is developing a plan and assessing needs. Identifying key priorities such as improvement based on population growth, safety concerns, and environmental impacts will help manage the portfolio.
Monitoring projects within your transportation portfolio will help you assess progress toward goals and objectives. Key performance indicators (KPIs) related to safety, mobility, environmental sustainability, financial efficiency, and customer satisfaction will help your portfolio thrive.
5. Prepare For Disruption
Disruptions are inevitable, but preparation is key to minimizing their impact. Supply chain disruptions can be caused by internal and external risks, such as data errors, economic, political, and environmental factors, and price fluctuations.
To prepare, it is important to identify potential risks and develop contingency plans. This will make it easier to address various types of disruptions when they occur.
Preparation also includes communication and collaboration with your partnerships. Communication and collaboration speed up the problem-solving and decision-making process in supply chains. The number of partners and suppliers you have does help mitigate disruptions. The more partnerships a supply chain has, the higher the chance of continuity of supply in the event of a disruption.
Mastering The Top 5 Supply Chain To-Do’s
Understanding the top steps of managing a supply chain is essential for businesses seeking to thrive in today’s interconnected market landscape. Prioritizing reviewing resiliency investments, establishing an AI framework, building partnerships, and managing your transportation portfolio will allow a business to grow and succeed in the future of freight.
Give one of our agents a call at 800-716-7608 to make running a supply chain easier.