Protect Your Supply Chain in an Uncertain World

by | Jul 5, 2023 | Business Accountability, Business Development, Business Development Support | 0 comments

The Need to Protect Your Supply Chain

With Globalisation and new emerging markets and economies, it has become critical to protect the organisations Supply Chain to maintain the market position. Evidence considered by Yadavand Sharma (2016), and Lima-Junior and Carpinetti (2016) is that over 50% of an organisations revenue is acquired externally with many businesses are finding the value chain transition,from order management process, complex to driving an integrated supplier management focus within the supply chain. Maestrini, Luzzini, Shani, and Canterino (2016) capture the complexity of behaviour and relationship challenges.

Blending of Boundaries

The amount of movement between the traditional structure view blurs the boundaries between public and private companies, with social, ethical, and environmental concerns, against more diversity and complexity to supply chain management with interactions and objectives potentially being misunderstood or interpreted by functional silos.
Supply Chain management pressures extend not only from legal and regulatory but also externally from customer expectations driving the reduction in new product development time with the aim of quick and superior return on investment. This additional strain on the traditional structure through new relational attributes and critical power plays affects all stakeholders with very different expectations from what they want to take from the relationship.

 

The drive against internal scorecards and individual targets with assumed requirements within the organisation’s structure and operational management system alongside weak feedback loops or even undocumented controls and preventative failure mechanisms can add significant delays to understanding the needs to support the supply chain as indicated by Araujo and Gadde and Dubois (2016).

Value Relationships

A visual understanding of the Product Lifecycle Phases capturing the necessary Supply Chain operations and understanding of how the current or future Supply Chain shall provide the resources to support the long-term aims of the project requirements.

This aspect of social capital with the relationship having a value, as Son and Kocabasoglu-Hillmer and Roden(2016) and Preston and Chen and Swink and Meade (2016) highlight.

The complex nature of Supplier Development focuses throughout the product lifecycle providing evidence to modernise an organisations supply chain is critical to ensure compliance with legal and regulatory documentation as well as providing documented evidence, often driven by customer demands for traceability /transparency concerns.

Depending on the project requirements and the core capabilities, supplier involvement is inevitable, and early supplier involvement can add considerable benefit to the achievement of the organisation and project development project. This, though with significant challenges to achieving optimal Supplier Development by the Supply Chain Professional in both technical and fundamental skills as Chiang and Wu (2016), Ciarapica and Bevilacqua and Mazzuto (2016) collaborate.

Traditional versus Customer led

Organisations that continue to apply a traditional economic theory in the supply chain as order management process should find it difficult to compete against supply chains that are forming rapidly such as – Facebook, AirBnB, UBER which base their entire business model on external “Suppliers”. Sanders and Fugate and Zacharia (2016)

The change in Supplier Management Focuses on Strategic Management of the Supply Chain andby identifying critical knowledge streams to mitigate traditional complexity and uncertainty is rapidly driving the Supply Chain Focus into Supply Chains for the future.

Looking at how supplier development strategy is managed in organisations either as a proactive strategy to avoid replacement or switching strategies which are high risk, or a reactive activity, based on inadequate performance or relationship management in the supply chain.

Definition of supplier development

“Supplier Development is the process of working with certain suppliers on a one-to-one basis toimprove their performance for the benefit of the buying organisation. It is closely associated with  supplier relationship management and partnering” CIPS
The aim is to determine whether supplier development activities within an organisation ensure an optimal and efficient supply chain, driving benefit and value through the Supply Chain, or as a reactive business model based on slower procurement strategies leading to more of a development role rather than driving innovation.
Looking to answer the following research questions;
  • Are Supplier Development activities reactively driven by Supply Chain Professionals or proactively ensuring a current and future supply chain?
  • Whom in the organisation is responsible for monitoring and transparency of the Supplier Development activities?
  • Are the Supplier Development activities cost upfront against Projects and included in the financial bottom line?

#supplierdevelopment #costevaluation #developingstrategy #questioningthenorm

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