Image by mohamed Hassan from Pixabay
There are steps you can take to alleviate the health and economic challenges to your supply chain – now – and for the future.
Naturally, you must simultaneously act on multiple fronts. Not only must you quickly act to solve short-term challenges, you need to focus on long-term resilience.
But consider this: The coronavirus is an opportunity for growth. That means you must act to solve short-term challenges while thinking long-term to optimize your resilience.
First things first
Mobilize your team for short-term solutions:
- Review your supply chain at every level. Understand your salient elements, risks to your vendors, and identify options to solve potential risks.
- To ensure you keep operating successfully, evaluate your inventory. That includes everything from spare parts to leftover inventory.
- Study your customers’ buying habits and needs.
- Maximize your capabilities in production and distribution by first safeguarding employee health and safety. Next, maximize your operational capacity in materials and human resources.
- Assess and safeguard your systems, and stay agile with your logistics.
- Implement stress tests on your cash flow and understand how and when to flatten the curve should any supply-chain issues erupt.
Secondly, inspire your staff for long-term resilience
For the health and productivity of your team, there are seven Cs to building resilience:
1. Seize control — ask the necessary questions, and design and strategies.
2. Enhance greater competence — manage your staff to maximum efficiencies.
3. Imagine coping strategies — hold blue-sky planning sessions to think of coping strategies to anticipate and overcome newly evolving obstacles.
4. Build organizational confidence — look for opportunities to praise your team members for their ideas and productivity. Encourage your team members to recognize their successes before tackling new challenges.
5. Continue to connect with your staff — walk the floor to engage your employees. Ask questions and offer support for their work.
6. Build organizational character — strengthen it by espousing values to your team and encouraging discussion of them.
7. Look for ways to inspire employees to continue their contributions — reinforce good behavior and productivity. Congratulate employees. Remind them of the value they’re contributing and how to build on it.
Thirdly, build resilience in your supply chain
Robust risk analysis is key. Plan to guard your vendor network against shocks – from tariffs to new virus outbreaks.
Start by assessing risks and vulnerabilities, strategizing, updating your forecasts, and establishing a chain of command to oversee your supply chain.
Documentation of procedures and collaboration is important.
Monitor your logistics and take steps for resilience.
Build feasible financial models to forecast possible shocks and to maintain strong cash flow.
Continue to look for alternatives in vendors and locations to produce products.
And always know this: New crises are unavoidable but you can plan and act to mitigate the shocks and ramifications to your business.
From the Coach’s Corner, editor’s picks:
10 Leading Principles for Your Supply Chain Success – Explosive disruptions from weather, commodity shortages, price volatility, and shifts in buying behavior are examples in the challenges of supply chains in the pursuit of profit. Here’s what to do.
Supply Chain Management: 6 Tracking and Expediting Tips – With consumers expecting more merchandise at a faster rate, retailers and suppliers are increasingly under pressure. From supplier to manufacturer to retailer and logistics, there are keys to optimal supply-chain management.
Best-Practices in Protecting Your Supply Chain from Natural Disasters – As a manufacturer, you know the importance of protecting your supply chain for your company’s future. So you might be interested in an academic study — lessons from the earthquake that resulted in a tsunamis and nuclear catastrophe in Japan.
How Your Supply Chain Can Help You Make Customers Happy – A company that fails to meet customer expectations on store inventory and delivery has problems in supply chain management. Such a company minimizes its profits. Worse, it’s a red flag about competitiveness and long-term sustainability.
Need a Great Manufacturer? Here Are 5 Tips – To save time and money for your supply chain in choosing the right manufacturer, you need to take at least five precautions in your risk management. It’s a painstaking process. What works for other companies, might not work for yours.
“Looking at the world through a sustainability lens not only helps us ‘future proof’ our supply chain, it also fuels innovation and drives brand growth.”
-Paul Polman
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