Our January 20th Supply Chain Management Peer Group meeting addressed various ways for balancing cost vs flow and the tradeoffs to consider during this period of change and recovery.
Cost, time, and quality are all important to consider, especially because strength in one may require a compromise in another. A company must make key tradeoffs to balance the three in a way that’s optimal for meeting the company’s needs.
Our featured speaker, Venkat Vasan of SAP, outlined three different models and associated strategies for supply chain management: global supply chains, migrated supply chains, and regional supply chains.
With businesses being more dependent on one another than ever before, Vasan stressed the importance of digitalizing your operations and global supply chain to fortify your business. By keeping the customer at the center of the digitalization strategy, a company can handle disruptions faster, with less complexity, and at a lower cost.
A digitalized operations system will enable the supply chain to achieve both speed and flexibility. A resilient supply chain will deliver end-to-end process acceleration using agility, productivity, connectivity, and sustainability. This aids a company in heightening their planning, execution, production, and collaboration throughout and outside of their company.
Following Vasan’s presentation, the event attendees engaged in breakout groups to discuss specific approaches around inventory planning, KPIs/metrics, costs, forecasting, and capacity planning. Each breakout leader then shared the key ideas with the broader group so all could benefit from these peer learning experiences.
As we emerge from the current supply chain disruptions towards a new normal, now is a perfect time to reflect and listen, and envision the future of supply chain resilience and what that means for your company.