Today’s manufacturers face an increasing number of challenges, with fluctuating exchange rates, problem in the steel industry and the need to provide a good wage to workers, with that rate continuing to increase. Ensuring that the supply chain visibility is appropriate throughout the manufacturing process is crucial to ensuring the process is as efficient as possible. Reorganizing the supply chain can infuse more money into the economy and make the manufacturing process more efficient without sacrificing quality.
Areas Where Supply Chain Visibility Needs Improvement
Many manufacturers have visibility at specific points along their supply chains, but lack visibility in others. Some areas where more visibility is needed include:
- Materials management
- Customer service
- Quality management
- Plant management
- Fleet management
- Finance and cost control
In these different areas of the supply chain, efficiency and income is often lost, without the company’s awareness.
A Closer Look at Supply Chain Partners Is Necessary
While analyzing supply chain visibility, manufacturers often find that they lack insight into the effectiveness of their supply chain providers. Closer inspection often shows that some suppliers are not a good fit for the supply chain goals of the organization as a whole.
When analyzing supply chain partners, manufactures need to see if they are able to seamlessly integrate into the process they plan to implement. They also need to ensure that the supply chain partners use appropriate security to properly manage and protect he supply chain. Finally, full visibility will show how dependent the company is on the supply chain. This, in turn, will show the dangers of a true supply chain emergency involving one of the partners, allowing companies to create an emergency plan.
Supply chain visibility is essential to ensuring the manufacturing operation can continue efficiently and effectively. Companies who do not have adequate visibility across their supply chains are going to suffer, and need to take measures to improve visibility and find areas where problems exist.