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Should you Consider Supply Chain Segmentation?

Supply-Chain-SegmentationBusiness success is contingent on maintaining a competitive edge.  Maximizing supply chain activities allows businesses to operate at highly proficient and effective levels.  Supply chain management integrates all facets of business operation and production, including product development, procurement, construction, and logistics.  Businesses are discovering that they are unable to maximize customer value using a single supply chain strategy.  The same supply chain stratagem will satisfy some customers but the desires of other consumers may go unfulfilled, and for others, the costs may be too great. As a business owner, should you consider supply chain segmentation?  The answer is yes.

Supply chain segmentation means grouping services or faculties together to meet an explicit set of requirements.   Segmentation allows businesses to meet their customer needs at the lowest cost.  It provides an organizational framework that consistently delivers value and business control the complete life progression of a product.  Supply chain segmentation generally follows these steps:

Step One – Group Products and Delivery Channels

The first step for segmentation involves grouping products and delivery methods and creating a matrix, where all combinations are represented.  Each combination is considered an individual supply chain.  The distinct supply chains are rated using business revenue factors of gross profitability and sales.  Continue reading

LTL Industry Best Practices for Cross-Border Shipping

cross-border shippingCross-border shipping is an integral part of the global economy and an especially important component of the commercial relationship between the United States and Canada. The United States Census Bureau reported that in May of 2014 the U.S. imported over $30 billion in goods from Canada. If your business is looking to engage in any kind of cross-border shipping, it is important that you ship your goods in an efficient way that also complies with all the pertinent regulations for this type of commerce.

Include the Proper Documents

The first step in making sure that you can properly engage in cross-border shipping is getting your documents in order. Important things that you need to have include:

  • Your bill of lading that is filled out with all the necessary information
  • Evidence of the purchase of the goods, such as an invoice or purchase order
  • A license to import/export: this is usually only required for products that are regulated, like firearms, tobacco, etc.

Continue reading

Checklist for Efficient Global Supply Chain Management

Global Supply Chain ManagementEfficient supply chain management on a global scale is a handful for even the most logistics-savvy companies. When you are entangled in the global market there are a lot of blind corners and gray areas. There is going to be a lot of days that you wish that the straight line you drew between two points on the whiteboard was a reality. With that being said, global supply chain management is a difficult yet not impossible task. Here is a checklist of tasks that every business needs to follow to maintain the efficiency of their global supply chain.

Global Supply Chain Management Checklist 

[  ] Always Start With Risk Management: Operational Risk Management is more than just a buzzword. It has to be the starting point of every logistics operation. While it may not be possible to disaster-proof every movement, you cannot know what contingencies you will need to prepare for if you do not take the time to consider the events that will have the most disruptive effects upon your operations. You need to consider how you will do business if your critical systems are rendered inoperable, what steps to take to respond to these catastrophes, and how to resume operations as quickly as possible. Continue reading

5 Common Mistakes in Supply Chain Management

Supply Chain Management MistakesStudies show that the supply chain accounts for over half of the total cost of production. Successful management of the supply chain therefore requires the ability of a company to recover quickly from disruptions. The supply chain is even more complex than it was two decades ago so it is critical that you remain vigilant, steer clear of common mistakes and appreciate the benefits of proactive management.

That said, here are 5 common mistakes in modern-day supply chain management;

1. Prioritizing functions by spend

Quantifying by spend is probably the most common mistake in supply chain management. Simply put, you look at your suppliers and prioritize functions based on who supplies most of your goods and services. So, even if you have 20 suppliers, you’ll want to prioritize say five suppliers whom you’ve always spent 80 percent of your budget on. This strategy worked well until fifteen years ago when outsourcing was proliferated. Today, supply chains come in layers where you source from several suppliers.

You can no longer rely on a single source for your parts otherwise these parts would become a single point of failure in the supply chain. Continue reading

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