Supply Chain Management - A Uk Perspective

By Author: johnn
Total Articles: 4
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Companies often focus efforts to improve business efficiencies on internal systems and significant benefits can be achieved by so doing. However, the magnitude of the realised benefit is restricted if only processes within the organisation are targeted for improvement. Effective implementation and management of systems delivering efficiencies throughout the supply chain are considered to be critical to long-term survival and competitive advantage.

Today's business leaders can be grouped into four categories depending on their perceptions of the implications of the internet to their businesses, in essence these are:
1. Cynics - these people believe that the impact that the internet will have on business has been hyped and that the hype will be short-lived. Improvement efforts in these businesses tend to be focused on internal issues.
2. Cautious Sheep - these will go with the crowd and accept new technology and the efficiencies it affords when it has been fully tried and tested. This is a low risk strategy inasmuch as by the time leaders in this category start to use the technology available to them ...
... it will have been proven to be effective. However, it is a riskystrategy in the long term due to the fact that at the times that these businesses start to benefit from technological advances many of their competitors will have been benefiting from them for some time and will be implementing new systems to provide continued advantage in the market place.
3. Ostriches - heads buried deep in the sand these people do not understand and do not want to understand the benefits and efficiencies that sensible application of
technology can yield, they believe in ‘business as normal' in an ever-changing world.
4. Crest Riders - these people represent a new breed of business entrepreneur keen to exploit the potential of enabling technologies.
In the manufacturing industry in particular it is especially important that we in the UK tend towards the ‘crest rider' end of the spectrum as labour costs are extremely high relative to those in developing economies and this will be the only way that UK manufacturers will be able to be profitable and successful in the longer term.
Problems common to many UK manufacturers / supply chains are:
Measurement of performance i.e. ‘you cannot control what you cannot measure'
Realism in relation to targets and plans - better to be realistic with your targets and
achieve them than to be optimistic and fail.
Traceability of items parts
Delivery route optimization - mitigated by the use of a route planner / distance
Calculator
Visibility of job status and targets both internally and in the supply chain
These problems can often be overcome by all parties in the supply chain having easy access to a centralized database would ensure that each would be working Distance calculatorto the same set of information and that this information could be up-to-date (live / real-time).
The benefits of implementing and using an effective (micro) SCM system are significant and Far-reaching, in this particular instance the benefits included:
reduced visits to Stores
improved working efficiencies (of the Engineers, Stores personnel and fabricator)
more realistic production plans
morale raised on the shop floor
improved efficiency of shop floor
reduced shop floor overtime
improved profitability per job
better service provided to the customer
It is important to remember that effective and mutually beneficial communications necessitate that information flows in both directions. More details about the micro SCM system that has been developed can be found online at: http://www.postcode.org.uk