More often than not, I get the following questions about my company, “So, how many employees do you currently have? or “How big is your team?” I really love this question, not because of the question itself, but the answer that I have been able to prepare, being that I have heard it so many times. Here it goes. It is not about the size of your team, but the “right” people and their supporting training, processes, and tools, the “right stuff.” Sure, these may not be the answers to all your problems, however, attaining the right people and right stuff, will lead you down the path to long term supply chain success.

Successful stock investing strategies have long included developing a diversified portfolio of assets to reduce overall investment risk. As with mitigating risk in your investment portfolio, mitigating risk in your supply chain can be accomplished by ensuring your suppliers and their suppliers are different companies having a host of different risk profiles thus reducing your overall supply risk.

There is an ever growing focus on how to shorten lead times, reduce inventory levels and increase free flowing cash in just about every industry. One way to approach making a impact on your supply chain’s performance is to identify and evaluate where critical value added activities are taking place. Each of the value added activities are necessary in order to produce a finished product, however there is a tremendous opportunity to postpone performing the value added activities at different stages until there is a clear demand signal from the market.

The sales and operations planning process has taken various forms throughout the decades, but ultimately became standard practice for many organizations. Today’s customer-driven business environment poses new obstacles for companies, particularly in the consumer products industry, that is experiencing short product life cycles in tandem with high demand volatility.

Efficiency, is a word often associated with automation, time savings, productivity, and now Radio Frequency Identification (RFID). “Driving Efficiency” is a frequently used term in the office, usually followed up with the question; How do we achieve this? One of the technologies that is more recently seeing expansive and creative use to drive efficiency in the Supply Chain world is RFID.

The key to successfully managing logistics comes from a well thought out strategy on how companies will reach the consumer base. Logistics & Inventory Management is a very critical supporting function on how these activities will be executed. Recent studies show that nearly 50% of businesses surveyed continue to see logistics as a nonstrategic business function, while the other 50% are investing in developing logistics as a competitive advantage.

At this moment, an organization somewhere in the world is struggling to support its customer’s demand requirements. The result from failing to meet customer demand requirements can lead to disruption in product supply, decline in sales, and harm to the company’s reputation.

This blog post is the continuation of our Identifying the Factors for Successfully Managing Supply Chain Risks – Factor 4 – Performance Metrics (Part 4 of 5) research post. Our recent study to better understand supply chain risks focused on the structure, implementation, and maintenance of a formal system for managing risks in the supply chain.