supply chain management
“The supply chain stuff is really tricky.”
— Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX
Let’s Dig A Little Deeper!
The difficulties which surround supply chain management are vast and widespread.
In the days before widespread globalization, operations management and logistics management were separately managed. One business function focused on making things, another planned and organized the movement of things. Doing that today in the age of global supply chains just creates chaos — if for no other reason that different business functions tend to not work well together for all sorts of reasons.
What’s The Problem?
First, a company’s products are made around the world by and equally global workforce. These products are sold around the world and can be purchased in person, on social media, by phone, and on and on. Secondly, points of distribution are varied (Amazon, independent brick and mortar stores, company owned distributors, etc.). As a result, production parts are made in several countries and supply chains are thousands of miles long with long lead times. Because parts are made in several countries it will then vary the pay and benefits. In addition, rules and regulations governing business are uncoordinated and, many times, in conflict. Lastly, the company’s products use both the metric and English measurement units.
What’s The Result?
This reality has given rise to supply chain concepts and, inevitably, to supply chain consulting firms offering their own versions of supply chain solutions. A generally unrecognized problem that has been created is the generic, one-size-fits-all supply chain management solution. A company must completely re-engineer its processes to meet the requirements of the consulting solution or an endless round of customizations begins to make the solution conform to the company’s business model. And, of course, as day light follows darkness, supply chain consulting firms have been formed to meet this new need.
How Can We Help?
We are made up of people who have spent their careers driving improvement. We can help you figure out which processes are broken and what to do about it. We do this by aggressively transferring our knowledge to the companies we support so they can quickly do the work themselves. This minimizes the pain, effort, and cost of transforming to an integrated supply chain company.
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COO
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Vice President
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Vice President
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Vice President
Jim Longshore
Vice President
Insight
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