What have you done to make your supply chain secure and under control?

Filed in archive Point of view on August 16, 2007

Well It's not a new thing but it has been highlighted by another research done by ARC Advisory Group. Based on the results of a survey, the company has found out that the common mental model among the companies regarding supply chain investments is that they are willing to keep their investments at the minimum level. Hoping that the rate of disruptive events will stay low, the companies usually don't try to develop risk plans or necessary investments to cope with such issues and at the end of the day face huge amount of difficulties.

There are a series of recommendations that come to my mind to attack this problem, among the more important ones are:

- Develop contingency plans based on the historical data related to disasters and accidents.
- Using the Risk management features of the supply chain softwares. I think I wrote a post on this last year: Hey folks, for many of the solution providers' packages, it's already there; just use it.
- Incremental investments on visibility technologies: This would make your supply chain more flexible and at least you would know early when something happens.
- Inventory optimization initiatives: Such programs will take unnecessary inventory out of the supply chain and in the case that something happens, the damage will be reduced.

I appreciate if you also let me know about your experiences and ideas.