Sourcing Models and Supply Chains that Excel

Most companies are operating old sourcing models and supply chains – in spite of some newer, significant businesses realities.

Leadership companies such as Honda, Toyota, Cisco and Nike are in a constant state of examining the supply chains for opportunity.  They also understand the value of close relationships with their vendors – sharing goals, sharing data and cooperating on improvement projects.

While anytime is a good time to reexamine your sourcing strategy and supply chain management systems – it is essential in times of high cost.

Some significant supply chain realities – and opportunities:

Energy is so expensive that the cost of transporting products often exceeds the benefits of pursuing cheap labor.  We can help you develop a greater understanding of your energy costs and the opportunities to save energy in the supply chain.

Climate change, or global warming, is a reality that will increase the operating costs of traditional supply chains.  We can analyze your business risk and your supply chain opportunities.

There are growing expectations that you will operate a “green supply chain.”  We can help you define the opportunity and the cost of “greening” your supply chain.

Consumers increasingly hold companies – and their products - responsible for the actions of vendors.  There is risk if you don’t have transparency to how your outsourced supply chain is doing business – in your name.  We can develop cost effective systems to increase visibility to risk and opportunity.

Waste in factories is increasingly expensive – partly due to the rise in energy costs.  Outsourced vendors and brokers are all too happy to live with high waste costs and simply pass them along to you as a component of overhead.  We have great depth of experience in analyzing waste and developing systems to gain financial benefit from reducing waste – whether that is physical waste or waste as defined in Lean Manufacturing programs.

Leading companies, who may be your competitors, use their supply chains as sources of innovation – finding and exploiting new opportunities in cost reduction, sourcing raw materials, lean manufacturing, streamlined logistics and better products.  We can help put you on that same track.