PART 1: Streamline Your Supply Chain: Expert Consultation Services

In the fast-paced world of high-volume, low-margin businesses — such as grocery, big box retail, e-commerce, and food & beverage — a streamlined supply chain isn’t just important. It’s essential for remaining competitive and thriving amid disruptions. 

Even executives who believed their supply chains to be optimized and efficient discovered how wrong they were during COVID, when existing flaws couldn’t be overcome by accelerating production or expanding safety stock. Yet, even without a global pandemic, streamlining a supply chain is challenging. 

Companies struggling to streamline their supply chains don’t have to go it alone. Instead, they can leverage strategic supply chain consulting services to help identify areas for improvement throughout their operations and logistics network.

Customer Service: Why a Streamlined Supply Chain Is Critical

Creating an efficient, flexible, and resilient supply chain is truly an undertaking that requires dedication to continuous improvement across an endless array of perpetually moving targets.

For instance, it requires cultivating a finely tuned list of primary suppliers and backup suppliers in different geographies to compensate for unexpected delays in original shipments. It necessitates a network of optimally located distribution centers (DCs) positioned to minimize shipment time and maximize labor availability. And it commits to ensuring those DCs are stocked continuously with the right product mixes for the regions each supports. 

The less streamlined an organization’s supply chain, the more difficult it becomes to attain the service levels customers expect. Companies that fail to meet customer requirements risk losing them to a competitor. For example:

• If a typhoon in the Pacific Ocean delays a shipment from a supplier in Asia, having a backup supplier in North America can ensure a customer’s order is filled on time. 
• Two-day shipments from a Seattle warehouse to retail outlets in California have lower transportation costs and faster delivery times than four-day shipments from a Midwest DC. 
• Stocking more organic and natural products on the West Coast and value products in the Northeast maximizes sales in each region, while reducing waste and overhead costs. 
• Locating DCs in markets with larger potential labor pools — or leveraging automation to compensate for workforce shortfalls — ensures orders are packed and shipped on-time and in full.

Working with a reputable, experienced provider of supply chain consulting services can help a company identify and remediate these issues to ensure customers’ expectations are met.

Understanding Your Supply Chain Challenges

Expert consulting services help streamline and optimize a supply chain through comprehensive evaluations and tactical recommendations in two key areas: logistics network design and operational performance. 

A logistics network design (also known as a network logistics study) assessment examines a company’s current distribution network. It determines if the facilities’ locations are optimized to ensure timely customer service while reducing transportation cost as much as possible. A range of factors are considered, including the locations of all existing operations, the distance between them, and both inbound and outbound transportation costs. Based on those findings, the consultant models different scenarios to assess the impact of changing those locations, then presents those to the client to determine the optimal logistics network design.

An operational performance assessment analyzes each individual DC within the company’s network to evaluate current processes, systems, software, equipment, layout, inventory mix, slotting, throughput and more. As part of this supply chain consulting service, the consultant will work to identify distribution bottlenecks and inefficiencies. This includes an examination of workflows to assess how each DC receives, stores, picks, packs, and ships goods. It looks at how each of these tasks are accomplished and determines where obstacles exist. The final deliverable of an operational performance assessment includes recommendations for process changes. It also frequently suggests hardware and software solutions to further improve each DC’s operation.

As part of both types of supply chain consulting services, the consultant will also assess inventory management practices to identify issues. This process looks at on-hand inventory to determine whether both product mix and quantities are optimized. Facilities that store high volumes of excess or obsolete inventory expose themselves to excessive carrying costs and are not streamlined.

Additionally, an analysis of an organization’s demand forecasting and planning procedures can reveal patterns of over- or under-buying inventory. Each situation can negatively impact a logistics network and the performance of the individual DCs within it. Purchasing an incorrect amount of inventory so can stress a distribution network that lacks excess capacity to handle large quantities of products that won’t sell. Conversely, out-of-stock products create disappointed customers who will shop elsewhere.

Learn More About the Supply Chain Consultant’s Role

Working with an independent, third-party consulting firm gives companies an unbiased, deeper examination of the supply chain challenges they’re currently facing. The consultant will also help the organization determine the best approaches to address those issues. The second part of this post will share insights into the role of a supply chain consultant and the consulting process. 

To discover how Waller Consulting, a subsidiary of DCS, works with a variety of commercial and government clients to help them streamline their supply chains, connect with us today.