The awareness of the importance of international supply chains has grown in recent years, not just among the business fraternity, but more widely in the media, among politicians and ordinary citizens as well.
Executives are tired after surviving the pandemic, navigating supply chain disruptions, handling soaring inflation, and dealing with one challenge after another. However, it is not time to rest as supply chain risks abound.
The critical importance for owners and business leaders to understand how current events can significantly impact their supply chains. LMA Consulting Group works with manufacturers and distributors on strategy and end-to-end supply chain transformation to maximize the customer experience and enable profitable, scalable, dramatic business growth.
The Panama Canal has a 40% market share for containers moving goods from Northeast Asia to the U.S. East Coast, and drought conditions are creating a new round of supply chain disruptions. There have been between 130 - 160 ships waiting, leading to supply chain delays.
Manufacturing is in a state of flux. After seven straight months of contraction in manufacturing, it is not surprising manufacturers are thinking about cutting back. On the other hand, in many industries, manufacturers continue to have a robust backlog and are growing faster than their capacity.
Supply chain risks are exploding. Just look at the news, and you'll see a potential UPS strike, a Canadian port strike, potential hurricanes (Hawaii, Florida), China stirring up potential conflict with China, the Crimean bridge attack, and much more.
The world of supply chain and logistics has been plagued with volatility, disruptions, geopolitical issues, concerns about energy availability and transition, increased regulations, and rare earths.
Making the appropriate business decisions will make or break success. Executives get paid the big bucks to make these decisions. Unfortunately, one poor decision can outweigh thousands of good ones rapidly. SIOP (Sales Inventory Operations Planning), also known as S&OP, is a tool that will optimize these tradeoffs for effective decision making.
ERP and related technologies should only be a priority if you want to grow and succeed for decades to come. If not, it will be the same as if you said you wanted to stick with the horse and buggy instead of leaping into a Ford.
In this episode of Interlinks, I am joined again by my colleagues from the supply chain special interest group of the Society for the Advancement of Consulting to discuss the issue of how and why so many businesses are overlooking the fundamentals of business as we emerge from a period of turbulence characterized by pandemic war and supply chain realignments into an uncertain future.
