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Collaboration is steadily emerging as a 21st-century buzz word within the manufacturing industry, but it is often plagued with generalized quasi-understanding. Is it data sharing? Is it software integrations? Is it minimalist iconography of shaking hands? 

Collaborative Supply Chain Management can mean all of those things. Most importantly it means adopting tools and processes to develop meaningful, strategic, and mutually beneficial relationships with your internal team, your outsourced partners, and the global network of manufacturers.

| Supply Chains of the future are collaborating

The supply chains of the world are rapidly decentralizing and becoming more complex and sophisticated. Manufacturing experts are beginning to look at their supply partnerships as interconnected webs of suppliers, producers, and customers, rather than linear buyer/seller links in a chain. As this networked perspective takes hold, the traditionally defined Supply Chain will morph into a Supply Web. 

Technologically, however, companies are not keeping up to this increase in complexity. A shocking 94% of SME global manufacturers have no system in place to manage their supply chains beyond email threads, spreadsheets, PDFs, WeChat, and fax. Sound familiar?

Harnessing the Supply Web and creating processes to behave as one requires innovative technology that fosters collaboration on several levels. In order to create true collaboration, companies need to collaborate internally, with their partners, and with the global Supply Web

Internal Supply Chain Collaboration

Internal collaboration for supply chains means utilizing tools that decrease siloes and boost efficiency and communication between your team members. Implementing this means adopting systems and procedures that allow your team members to work together on multiple projects without repeating data entry or tasks. 

An internal collaborative supply chain management system would allow many functions within your team to work together on a single platform and perform different tasks, including:

• CXOs – Gain full visibility into supply chains to mitigate risks, reduce costs, and make proactive decisions. Centralize oversight and reporting.
• Engineers & Designers – Upload your specifications and collaboratively review and revise your products for manufacturability and manage NCRs. 
• Purchasers & Procurement – Source new vendors or work with existing partners. Submit RFQs, manage bids, and keep track of order statuses in one place.
• Quality Management – Manage and report quality metrics for all your parts and partners and easily resolve NCRs.
• Logistics Management – Track order progress and shipping, coordinate drop-shipments and manage billing and courier accounts.
• Inside Sales and Customers Service – Find new customers or support existing ones. Receive and manage RFQs, bids, and quality inquiries.

 

By supporting all these functions under one roof, collaborative technology can centralize data and file management in order to boosts efficiency and synchronization of internal teams by:

• Vastly reducing data entry and replication across multiple spreadsheets
• Eliminating sending/receiving and potential misplacement of files and critical data via email
• Creating visibility into entire product lifecycles

External Supply Chain Collaboration

External collaboration for supply chains means implementing tools and methods of communication that allow you to share data, workflows, and strategic information between outsourced partners – all around the world. 

This means utilizing a digital platform that operates for both vendors and customers and allows each to perform their own functions in synchronization with their partners. In today’s marketplace this kind of technology takes two primary forms:

1. Large, resource-intensive ERP integrations
2. Lightweight cloud-based SCM platforms

 

There are advantages to both of these categories, and which suits your company depends entirely on your available resources, time, and structure. However, as digital SCM technologies get smarter and more accessible, the wisdom behind spending multiple years and potentially multiple millions of dollars on a robust ERP integration is being questioned. 

The advantages of inter-company collaboration are numerous. Most saliently, it creates a centralized and transparent shared single source of truth that ensures you and your partners are always in agreement and synchronization on: 

• Data management procedures
• Part Specifications 
• Revisions
• Order Details
• Pricing
• Shipping and Delivery Dates
• Quality Control 
• Forecasting
• Strategic Adaptations

| Global Supply Web Collaboration

Global Supply Chain Collaboration truly means the creation of a Supply Web. Technology that allows for inter-company, multi-tier collaboration creates a web of visibility across all contributors to a product and global production as a whole. 

Global outsourcing has historically been shrouded in a mindset of scarcity: brands closely coveting their supply chains and guarding all quality and output data in order to maintain confidentiality and security. The downside to this is an industry that is fraught with non-accountability, information siloes, and a complete lack of governance and transparency. 

By reversing that mindset – and adopting technology that can make it happen – to one of transparency, interconnectedness, and accountability the manufacturing industry will flourish as one of continuous improvement, ethical best practices, and global standardization. 

Not only would it benefit the companies and workers of the world, but it would also benefit the companies that participate in it by:

• Increasing efficiency with standardized processes
• Creating visibility across the entire production of goods, from raw materials all the way to consumers
• Distributing proactive warnings if there is a disruption anywhere in the supply web
• Providing a competitive advantage to companies with provable reputable supply chains

| The SCM technologies of the future are driven by collaboration

The technologies that will allow your team, partners, and industry to collaborate are emerging and they are lightweight, collaborative, and digital. Companies and brands that adopt these technologies proactively will become the most resilient and adaptable. With collaborative digital technology moving into the supply chain world the question really comes back to you: will you innovate and grow with this changing industry or will you keep digging through your email to find that lost revision? 

Ready to see what the future of supply chain management looks like? Book a Consult today.

For any company that makes commodities, taking steps to create resilience in your supply web can make or break the survival of your business when confronted with unforeseen events. Creating supply web resilience means having processes, systems, and/or technologies in place to ensure the continued success and longevity of your supply and relationships over time.  

In the manufacturing industry, resilience means one main thing: Adaptability.  

| But first, what’s a Supply Web?

You are familiar with Supply Chains – the linear view of the processes that contribute to the production of a commodity.  In a typical Supply Chain model manufacturers function as links in a chain through which information and goods travel in a two-way linear fashion: up and downstream. 

A Supply Web is a networked model of outsourced manufacturing management. Think of every contributor to a commodity – every material provider, component manufacturer, assembly house, 3PL, and OEM – as a node.  Each node is part of an interconnected many-to-many network that shares information, communicates, and collaborates.  In this model, information flows between and amongst every node and is distributed network-wide simultaneously.  It is similar to the connectivity model of a social network.  Each member is part of the same platform, can interact in the same ways, follows the same rules, and maintains existing connections, and discovers new ones. At scale, a Supply Web would be a digital map of all of the globe’s manufacturing resources, capabilities, and connections. 

Each company has its own Supply Web – the nodes of the global whole they interact with.  It is comparable to your own neighborhood in a vast city. This includes every node, from raw materials all the way to logistics that touch your product before it reaches its destination. 

| Resilience through Adaptability

Supply Web adaptability is the capability of a company to efficiently manage and react to changes or disruptions (political changes, natural disasters, pandemics, resource shortages) without substantial negative impacts on time, cost, quality, or performance. Potential disruptions include:

• Geopolitical, trade and tariff changes
• Natural disasters
• Human pandemics
• Resource shortages

Businesses can implement several strategies to build adaptability in their supply webs including (A) diversification strategies and (B) agility strategies.  

(A) Diversification Strategies 

Proactive business owners place a high value on geographic diversification of their sources. It is important to have access to sources from diverse areas of the globe to mitigate risks in the event of geopolitical and geographic emergencies or changes in supply. There are two main ways to approach geographic diversification of supply webs:

1. Redundant Multi-sourcing. Ramping and maintaining multiple sources for any given product over time, in order to decentralize production and mitigate risks. This is a high-cost and proactive approach ideal for enterprise-scale manufacturers.
2. Agile Multi-Sourcing. Having ready access to a large network of trusted sources that can respond quickly and reliably meet your expectations to ramp up production in the event of a disruption. This is a low-cost proactive approach ideal for small-to-medium OEMs. 

 

(B) Agility Strategies

To create resilience through agility, a company must employ tools and procedures to quickly respond to changes, disruptions, and growth. This includes taking proactive steps to establish:

1. Scalability. Working sources that can grow with you over time from the very beginning, or have the ability to quickly and reliably find new sources as your company grows. 
2. Collaborative technology and data sharing. Proactively adopting innovative, collaborative technology will enable businesses to maintain centralized data, records, and communication when working with remote teams or ramping up multiple suppliers.
3. A culture of employee adaptability. By creating a culture of continuous improvement and learning, employees will more easily adapt to changes in operations or technology.
4. Consistent market research.  Keeping up with consumer trends, new technologies, and strategies will ensure you stay up-to-date in competitive global marketplaces.

| Finding the right mix of strategies and tools

Creating resilience and adaptability is essential to businesses survival in the manufacturing industry. Finding the right mix of strategies and tools for your company requires proactive action based on your company’s size, market and goals. As the manufacturing industry matures into a digital era, it is time to start harnessing supply as it truly is – a networked ecosystem instead of siloed chains. Innovative and adaptive tools to harness the Supply Web are emerging – will you be part of the evolution?

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Strategies for Supply Chain Resilience: A Definitive Guide for today’s Custom Manufacturer

Future-proof your supply chains, navigate unforeseen socio-economic shifts and scale operations through the next normal. Crafted from over 30 years of Custom Manufacturing experience. 

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