Our Approach to Supply Chain Management

With offices and trusted partner facilities strategically placed around the globe, the experts at Stephen Gould can transform your global supply chain and offer unparalleled insight into all manufacturing operations. We provide supply chain services including Sourcing Analysis, Supplier Selection and Onboarding, Procurement Planning, Performance Analysis and Risk Optimization.

Supply chain management is the coordination and integration of all the processes required to move a product from creation to the customer’s hands. Businesses are increasingly making supply chain management one of their top strategic priorities in order to serve their customers to the best of their ability. The knowledge and skill sets associated with supply chain management have become much sought after, with a number of universities now offering degrees in supply chain management.

Developing a Supply Chain Management System

Effective supply chain management involves five key strategic areas of focus:

1. Planning
Demand forecasting is essential to supply chain management. Supply chains need to be designed to anticipate and quickly adapt to fluctuations in customer demand. Planning also involves determining metrics for measuring efficiency, customer satisfaction, and other organizational goals.
2. Sourcing
Sourcing is identifying, selecting, and building relationships with suppliers who provide all the goods, materials, and services necessary to create your products. Supply chain managers must oversee the various processes involved in ordering, receiving, and managing inventory, as well as monitoring supplier progress and solving problems as they arise.
3. Making
The more complex the product, the more steps and processes there are to coordinate. Supply chain managers need to make numerous decisions about raw materials, manufacturing, quality testing, and packaging. They also need to establish standards for quality, output and employee productivity to ensure production is consistent and reliable.

4. Delivering
Logistics encompasses all activities involved in getting the finished product to consumers, from coordinating the orders and scheduling delivery, to invoicing and receiving payments. This is typically outsourced to other organizations who can oversee special handling requirements and last mile delivery.
5. Returning
Supply chain management also includes product returns. In some cases, this may include scrapping or re-producing a defective product; in others, it may simply mean returning a product to the warehouse.

Each of these components requires a solid network of supporting processes that can effectively monitor the information across the supply chain and assure adherence to laws and regulations. This involves a wide number of departments, including HR, IT, quality assurance, finance, product design and sales.

The Benefits of Supply Chain Management

Effective supply chain management will provide three main benefits to an organization.

1. Lowered Costs
Companies can lower operating costs by integrating suppliers and using technology to respond more dynamically to customer needs. This not only helps organizations avoid the labor and materials costs of overproduction, but also cuts down on the costs of inventory management and transportation.
2. Increased Revenue
Applying technology to dynamically respond to customer demand means that products are more likely to remain in stock and available for purchase. By streamlining manufacturing to produce just enough product, labor and materials can also be strategically used to develop new products and expand product lines.

3. Asset Utilization
Effective supply chain management makes it possible for organizations to produce to need, which in turns allows for wiser capital allocation throughout the supply chain. For example, producing to demand avoids needless wear and tear on machinery and equipment.

Supply chain management ultimately allows organizations to deliver products faster, ensure products are always available, reduce quality issues, and navigate returns with ease, all of which creates value for the organization and its customers.

Assessing and Improving Your Supply Chain

Improving your supply chain starts with strategy. It’s often best to start with a bird’s eye view of how your supply chain is helping or holding back your business. This conversation can be aided with a framework like a SWOT Analysis, which identifies strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats in your supply chain management.

One common area of improvement for companies is defining and aligning their operations strategy to support overall business goals. Refining operations strategy typically involves addressing questions like the following:

Is the logistics infrastructure in the right location?
Are the inbound and outbound flows of products optimized?

Is your supply chain compliant with regulatory requirements?
Do you have the required technological systems to support your future operations strategy?

The key to improving your supply chain is conducting a full assessment. A supply chain assessment is a comprehensive review of your company’s data to find unseen patterns in demand and cost. This also involves various statistical modeling and data analysis strategies to identify opportunities to reduce costs, improve service, and maintain competitive advantages.

Supply chain assessment includes the following activities:

Sourcing Analysis is a collaborative approach that leverages suppliers and organizational strategy to yield long-term cost benefits. This approach focuses on building sustainable relationships with suppliers and other partners to achieve more optimal results. It boils down to analyzing and selecting suppliers based on long-term organizational objectives.
Supplier Selection and Onboarding is the systematic process that enables businesses to collect documentation to qualify, approve and contract suppliers. This process is similar to employee onboarding, where new in-house suppliers receive an understanding of the business practices, processes and regulations.

Procurement Planning is the process of consolidating requirements that determine timeframes for procurement. Solid procurement plans thoroughly describe the process in identifications and selections of businesses and their suppliers. Procurement planning optimization creates improvement between low inventory levels and a high availability level.
Performance Analysis and Risk Optimization develops key performance indicators (KPIs) such as total operating expenses and gross margin return on invested inventory (ROI) to help deliver products to customers at the lowest total cost with the highest level profit.

Supply Chain Assessment with Stephen Gould

Stephen Gould’s experienced team can assess your supply chain operations and provide the expertise you need to help your supply chain develop and mature.

Transforming supply chains is no small task. Many companies invest significant time and resources into supply chain optimization only to see outcomes fall short of expectations. That’s why we offer our consulting and assessment services that allow your organization to draw on the expertise of our experienced team. We can bring a depth of service knowledge, technical expertise and objectivity to help your organization design and implement a supply chain that aligns with your business’ goals and objectives. Our team offers unparalleled responsiveness and insight into all manufacturing operations and can provide a full supply assessment that transforms your global end-to-end supply chain.

Manufacturing & Production Management