These are the opportunities and challenges in supply chain management today
Good supply chain management is an important success factor in companies. But especially in times of a shortage of skilled workers, the complex tasks of supply chain management present companies with major challenges.
What is Supply Chain Management?
1. Complexity through heterogeneity
Along a value chain, there is great heterogeneity among several levels, many companies, and countless departments, all of which, with different competencies, pursue partially contradictory goals (buy cheap, sell expensive).
To function, all participants in a value chain must align their goals and cooperate with each other through supply chain management.
2. Building trust and reliability
Cooperation requires a high degree of trust and reliability. If one link fails to meet its obligations, this has repercussions for the entire chain.
Only when all parties involved pursue their common goals through integrated supply chain management can the flow of goods, money and information take place safely and smoothly.
3. Transparency and communication
To build trust, everyone involved must actively promote smooth communication and seamless information exchange through supply chain management. After all, it is not uncommon for information that has not been shared or processes that have not been made transparent to cause supply chain processes to stall.
A reliable value chain can only be established and safeguarded in the long term if all those involved also share these values.
Supply chain management can effectively increase the profitability of a company; however, good supply chain management is extremely time-consuming, costly and resource-intensive. Especially in times of a shortage of skilled workers, it can therefore be worthwhile to commission an external service provider to systematically manage the flow of goods and information along a company's own value chain.
Supply Chain Management Opportunities
Customer satisfaction is the key to a sustainable, long-term business, and this can only be achieved if the value chains function optimally. Outsourcing such processes and process chains to a specialized partner can help minimize the risk of an inefficient value chain.
Better equipped with human resources, technologies and the effective processes, third-party providers can ensure smooth and efficient operation of all supply chain processes in the long term and better adapt to changing conditions.
Read on to find out when and why it can be worthwhile to outsource supply chain management processes to third parties.
Why outsource supply chain management processes?
What is Supply Chain Management? Definition
Supply chain management is tasked with the holistic coordination and optimization of value and supply chains and thus goes beyond pure logistics, which is limited exclusively to the coordination of goods flows.
It coordinates all flows of goods, money and information, from the extraction of raw materials through processing to sales.
Task groups of supply chain management
Procurement
Manufacturing
Distribution
Thus, supply chain management not only looks at the value creation processes in the direction of the flow of goods; it also ensures that the knowledge and information gained along the value chain flows back via systematic feedback processes and can be used for long-term process optimization.
Problems and feedback from customers
Problems and feedback from suppliers
Problems and feedback from sales