The role of Operational and Technical Excellence in the Supply Chain
Narendra Mulani who heads up the Accenture Supply Chain Management service line wrote in the August edition of Logistics Management on Operational and Technical Excellence in the supply chain. He highlighted six (6) areas where supply chain masters excel:
- Order Capture enabling a fulfillment team to view the status of available inventory (on the floor and incoming) to support order scheduling and fulfillment
- Inventory Management which provides insight into inventory availability and supports the allocation and reallocation of inventory to optimize order fulfillment and customer relations
- Warehouse and Transportation Management that automates warehouse processes and supports automated management of rate quoting, equipment constraints and lead-times with carriers
- Reverse logistics and Returns management to improve faulty products and services
- Technology and Data Integration to leverage information across the entire fulfillment system, and
- Analytic tools that support sophisticated collection and analysis of information and improve decision-making.
Today, with the available technologies there is little excuse for companies not achieving operational and technical excellence. There are small, medium and large software providers of sophisticated integrated fulfillment solutions at solutions at almost all price points that bring supply chain excellence capability to virtually any organization that wants to see their business excel. The benefits to achieving excellence can be readily supported with a return on investment analysis.
The journey to achieve operational and technical excellence in the supply chain might appear daunting but with the right partner and commitment to the outcome the results are very achievable and the rewards exceptional.