Building a Road-map for World-class Supply Chain

Supply Chain is the management of network interconnected business involved in the ultimate provision of goods and service required by the end customer. It spans all movement and storage of raw materials, work in-progress inventory & finished goods from Origin to point of consumption (QSR perspective it’s FARM TO FORK).

Critical aspect of SCM is that everyone is involved, system approach to reducing cost and lastly integration being the key to drive it. In nutshell - Effective integration of Right product at Righty Quantity, Right Quality, Right place, Right time and Right value. Supply Chain comprises of Planning, Buying & Sourcing, Inventory Management, Distribution, Merchandizing, Logistics & Fleet operation.

Here are 5 ways to build up road map to World-class Supply Chain:

• Managing Demand: Managing demand is an important part of running a smooth supply chain. Many a times we see that there is less demand but we see lots of wastages being done all because of the supply chain miss management.
• Achieving Manufacturing Excellence: It is all about providing high quality, competitively priced products and services in a global marketplace. This is a major hurdle confronting manufacturers. Generally what happens is that suppliers always try to improve product quality, drastically shorten product development cycles, increase productivity growth, stimulate product and process innovation, and respond quickly to changing customer demands.
• World class Logistics: Maintaining a world-class logistic is a major challenge in India market. Half of the products get wasted mid-way while getting them supplied to the hotel or the restaurant. An efficient supply chain isn’t just a way to get reduce operating costs, improve your margins and get products delivered faster. The most complicated issue for any restaurants is logistics handling and that needs to be managed well. Most of the restaurants do not have sufficient space for the storage and hence the JIT delivery method is used to ensure proper supplies. It’s of utmost importance that the restaurants have loyal suppliers who supply products as and when required so there are no excess or short stocks. It also allows the restaurant to provide fresh products all the time.
• Minimizing Risk: Risk is part of any business you do. Especially, there is lots of risk involved in managing supply chain for restaurants. Ideally, if risk is properly managed, nothing occurs that has a negative impact on operations or profitability. Hence, it has to be taken care.
• Product Innovation and use of Technology: Innovate if you want to succeed tells expert in the business. With more technological advancements restaurant owners can minimise any supply chain related faults.
• Human Resource: It is all about team and people. Right people doing the right things in the right way are very important for a successful brand. World-class companies expect supply chain management to focus on the following value adding outputs:

• Quality – purchased materials and services should be virtually defect free. Many defects can be traced back to bought in items.
• Cost – minimisation of total cost of acquiring, transporting, holding, converting items as well as quality costs.
• Time – need to minimise time to market for new products as well as minimising lead-times to increase flexibility.