The supply chain is an important part of a business. Sales and revenue are largely dependent on the supply chain, which ensures the uninterrupted movement of inventory from the manufacturer to the retailer. Be it the shoes, electronics gadgets, consumer goods, or pharma products, every manufacturer needs a robust supply chain to sort, store and transport their products. In this article, we will look at how to manage your supply chain with 9 tips.
What is Supply Chain?
It is a connected system of individuals or organizations responsible to ensure a seamless flow of goods from the factory to the end consumer. It comprises the entire process of manufacturing from raw materials to finished goods. The supply chain involves a robust network of wholesalers, suppliers, vendors, distributors, distributors, and retailers to ensure the smooth movement of inventory.
Below are the tips on how to manage your supply chain that will help you to manage your supply chain and increase business profit and efficiency.
Leverage New Technology
The movement of goods is becoming faster and wider day by day, which cannot be managed by conventional tracking and tracing method. You need to introduce new technology such as artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of things (IoT), and blockchain to bring automation to inventory management. Automation will streamline the movement of inventory across the supply chain and increase efficiency to save cost and increase profitability.
Integrate Supply Chain With ERP
In the age of the internet, businesses need to adopt digital solutions such as Enterprise Resource Planning (EPR) to manage their supply chain through single-window software. ERP is software that helps enterprises to manage their day-to-day activities like finances, operations, manufacturers, sales, and supply chain. This platform ensures coordination and integration between all business activities and stakeholders to ensure transparency and efficiency.
Improve Distribution Network
The backbone of a robust supply chain is the distribution network. Inventory movement, storage, sorting and sales solely depend on the distribution network. To manage your distribution network you need to evaluate the performance of your distribution channel. Technology also plays a vital role in managing distribution networks, as such you must introduce automation and robotics to bring efficiency. The robotics can be used in packaging, lifting, handling, and sorting the inventory. RFID tagging or RF barcoding can be used on the product’s labeling to track and trace the inventory and collect and analyze the data.
Real-Time Tracking and Tracing
The movement of goods across the supply cycle is needed to be monitored and audited on a real-time basis to ensure speed and efficiency. The technology-based on AI and blockchain must be roped in to optimize the whole tracking and tracing process. Advanced QR-coding and geo-tagging technology must be used to keep track of the goods while keeping an eye on infringers.
Bring Transparency
The supply chain is always rattled by fraud and human errors, which increase the manufacturer’s cost and bring down the efficiency. This can be fixed by bringing transparency to the supply chain system by adopting technology such as ERP. It keeps the manufacturer updated with the real-time movement of inventory at every stage of the supply chain, and while monitoring damaged or unexplained inventory.
Increase Speed and Efficiency
The supply chain of a business can prove to be a major source of losses if it is not managed efficiently. The leakages and lethargies in the system may damage your business to a greater extent. As such you need to bring innovative solutions in such as artificial intelligence, IoT, ERP, or QR coding to strengthen your supply chain.
Monitor Vendor Performance
Third-party vendors play a vital role in running a supply chain. Their performance needs to be monitored periodically by analyzing the data collected from ERP, AI, or blockchain to ensure there is no lapse in the system. Monitoring and analyzing the vendor’s performance reduces inventory costs and increase customer satisfaction. Vendor management protects your brand’s reputation, eliminates leakages, and increases profitability.
Optimize Return Management Process
Return management is the process of overseeing the return of products from customers to the manufacturer. Also known as reverse logistics, it involves all parties of the supply chain to transport a good from a customer to the manufacturer while passing through different stages. Return happens due to some defect in the product or delivering the wrong product. Reverse logistics incurred a high cost to the manufacturer which happens due to a lapse in quality control and audit. Introduce a transparent monitoring system to know why a product has been returned. Businesses can incorporate technology such as transportation-management system (TMS) and warehouse management system (WMS) to streamline the whole return process.
Prevent Counterfeit Products
The supply chain is encountered with the influx of counterfeit products at different stages like wholesalers, distributors, and retailers. Counterfeiting not only damages your brand’s image but incurs a heavy loss. Blockchain-based anti-counterfeiting by Blockchi enables the manufacturers to stop the flow of fake products in their supply chain. Blockchi uses NFT-enabled QR codes for product packaging which stores information about the product to verify its authenticity.
Wrapping Up
From incorporating new technology to building a strong distribution network, the above-given tips must have given you in-depth insight on how to manage your supply chain by bringing automation efficiency. You need to examine which method best suits your business model to revamp your supply chain.
